"That is effectively tool use, something that we have only really associated with more 'intelligent animals'," says Bertie SuesatWilliams, a director of the Crab Museum in Margate in Kent, which calls itself "Europe's first and only museum dedicated to the decapod" - but has ambitions far beyond that.
"The pom pom crab has worked out that if they lose one of their anemones in a fight, they can rip the other one in half, and it will regrow into two. So this animal that has effectively no brain has worked out tool use and propagation, or what we humans would refer to as cloning." And yet, he says, "few people consider crabs intelligent in a traditional sense."
Facts like this are everywhere at the tiny, idiosyncratic museum, which Suesat-Williams founded with his brother Ned and their friend Chase Coley in 2021, while all were still in their 20s. Did you know, for instance, that every year hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs are "milked" for their (bright blue) blood, which is used to test human vaccines?
この記事は The Guardian の March 11, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は The Guardian の March 11, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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