Claws for celebration

Caught in a pincer movement? Feeling the need to scuttle away? You're not the only one: Helen Scales gets under the shell of the UK's crabbiest crustaceans

-  Helen Scales

A MEMBER of the cast of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a dog called Crab. The only canine to appear in a Shakespearean play, Crab is a naughty dog. He steals a chicken and widdles on a lady's dress. His master, Lance, says: 'I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives.' It was in Shakespeare's time that bad-tempered people were first described as being crabby.

Real crabs can certainly appear rather grumpy. If you find one of these crustaceans at the beach hunkering in a rockpool, it will likely either scuttle away sideways and hide in some seaweed or stand its ground and brandish a pair of pinching claws at you, hoping you'll be scared enough to leave it alone. Get to know them, however, and there's a lot more to the 60 or so species of crabs that live around the British coast.

Among the most familiar and easily recognisable is the brown crab (Cancer pagurus) also known as the edible crab, with its chunky, oval-shaped shell and that distinctive crimped, pie-crust edge. They're the most important commercial species of crab in Europe, with more than 10,000 tons caught each year in the English Channel. Traps and pots used to catch them take advantage of the fact that, like many crabs, they are not fussy eaters and will feast on anything they find with their highly tuned sense of smell-mussels, clams, other crabs, live prey, dead carrion and the meat or fish scraps fishermen put inside their pots.

Edible crabs follow the trail of wafting scent through the water, climb inside the pots and tuck into the bait; usually, they're still there when the fisherman comes along and hauls the trap back up to the surface.

Edible crabs have a matching pair of stocky, black-tipped claws (technically called chela), which they use to crush their prey. Another common British crab, the shore crab (Carcinus maenas), has a more refined set of claw cutlery: one is sturdy, for smashing, the other slender, for deftly cutting into prey.