Scorpians/Lobsters

[sr71blackbird]

Ive noticed that scorpions look alot like lobsters. Are they related? Are lobsters and crabs a kind of insect that lives in the ocean? I had heard that horseshoe crabs are related to spiders!

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[FUNKMAN]

not sure, but you just reminded me:

we were crabbing off a pier in Myrtle Beach and the strangest thing happened. pulled the crab cage out of the water and when we got it on the pier there was a "dead" spider crab in it...

question is - how did a "dead" spider crab get in the cage? fuck if I know...

that same day we pulled the cage, got it on the pier and there was a live seahorse in it... one of the strangest animals i've seen up close, he was laying on his side and lifting his head, just like a regular horse would if he was laying on the ground...

what does it all mean?

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[TooCute]

Both lobsters and scorpions are in the phylum Arthropoda (that includes like all insects, bugs, etc. from arthro = jointed and pod = foot).

However, lobsters are in the superclass Crustacea (along with crabs, shrimp, barnacles etc), the class Malacostraca, the order Decapoda (they have five pairs (deca = ten) legs - crabs and shrimp are also in this order)... and goodness I don't know what family they are - and then the american lobster is Genus/species Homerus americanus.

Scorpions (along with spiders, horseshoe craps, sea spiders etc.) are in the subphylum Chelicerata (they have "chelicerae" which are the little "fangs" you see like on a spider's mouth. Keep a look out for Shelob in RotK this winter - she was modelled on a New Zealand spider that has humongous chelicerae!), class Arachnida (in greek mythology, Arachne was turned into a spider by Athena. This class includes spiders, scorpions and mites), Order Scorpiones, Family Scorpionidae... and then depending on the kind of scorpion it will have its on genus/species.

Really, horseshoe crabs are more closely related to scorpions than to lobsters, and lobsters are more closely related to things like centipedes, millipedes, ants and barnacles than they are to scorpions, while scorpions are more closely related to the aforementioned spiders, mites, and trilobites (which are extinct)

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[Death Metal Moe]

http://www.bigrocknroll.com/scorpions.jpg

http://www.marsh.net/meats/Lobsters.jpg

I don't see it.

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[Tall_James]

I wanna meet the first guy that saw a lobster and said..."I'm gonna boil that insect-looking motherfucker and eat it with drawn butter!"

That was a real man.

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[Def Dave in SC]

Goddamn it, Moe, that was exactly what i was going to do.

Well, you did a good job of it. Bravo.

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[East Side Dave]

But the main difference is that scorpions can't swim. Well, they can doggy-paddle and I think they can do cannonballs off the diving board but lobsters are good swimmers because one named Rusty once beat me in a race then again that may have been my uncle and where's the rest of the ether?

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[West Side Claire]

lobsters are more closely related to things like centipedes, millipedes, ants and barnacles

With this thought alone my penchant for delicious lobsters has forever changed...*sigh*

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[sr71blackbird]

I wonder if I boil a scorpion if it will turn red?

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[Death Metal Moe]

Goddamn it, Moe, that was exactly what i was going to do.


That's what you get for NOT wasting hours of your life sitting around waiting for people to reply!

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[guttersnipe]

TC: lobsters are more closely related to
things like centipedes...

That is exactly why you will never see me eat one of
those huge waterbugs.

ESD:...and where's the rest of the
ether?

And suddenly I understand...

~guttersnipe



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[HordeKing1]

Personally, I think that lobsters look like one of Stanley Kubrick's acid flashbacks - a really bad one.

MANY creatures that look similar are very far apart in terms of evolutionary development. Conversely many animals that look vastly different are close relatives (like the whale and deer)

My theory is that the first person who decided to toss a lobster into a pot of boiling water - took his first good look at it after picking it up and just flung it - to get it as far away from him or her as possible.

Even more difficult to understand was how primitive man cultivated almonds. Until quite recently, (relatively speaking) most almonds contained lethal quantities of cyanide. Somehow, someone figured out which almonds didn't cause people to drop dead and cultivated those trees. It sure was hard to conduct experimentation through tiral and error back then.

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[Death Metal Moe]

That's an interesting point HordeKing. I was just wondering that myself with Leaf veggies.

How did we discover that stuff like Spinach was great, and poision ivy wasn't a tasty snack?

If you were to plant weeds, spinach and lettuce all close together, I'd be lost. I'd end up eating bacon anyway, but that's besides the point.

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[TooCute]

MANY creatures that look similar are very far apart in terms of evolutionary development. Conversely many animals that look vastly different are close relatives (like the whale and deer)
Some people claim that the entire artiodactyl clade is paraphyletic and would like to put all cetaceans within that clade.

My theory is that the first person who decided to toss a lobster into a pot of boiling water - took his first good look at it after picking it up and just flung it - to get it as far away from him or her as possible.
I suspect that people were eating raw lobsters before they every started cooking or boiling it. But I'm not an anthropologist.

Even more difficult to understand was how primitive man cultivated almonds. Until quite recently, (relatively speaking) most almonds contained lethal quantities of cyanide. Somehow, someone figured out which almonds didn't cause people to drop dead and cultivated those trees. It sure was hard to conduct experimentation through tiral and error back then.

I seem to recall this being mentined in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", a book whose popularity I absolutely cannot understand. It is so poorly written that I had to put it aside several times. Jared Diamond might be a smart guy and he may raise some very good points, but he sure as hell can't write very well. In any case, I think he mentioned something (in a chapter called like "How to make an almond") to the effect that almonds only have one gene that affects their bitterness (ie their prussic acid = cyanide content) so they are very easy to domesticate.

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[HordeKing1]

They're very easy to domesticate - IF you happen to chance upon the non lethal variety. After the first person tried an almond and died, why would someone look for another almond that wasn't lethal?

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[TheMojoPin]

Unless they somehow stumbled upon a non-posionous one FIRST...

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[sr71blackbird]

Kinda reminds me of how mushrooms ever became something people would eat. Seems most of them are either poisonous or bad tasting. Im sure there was a few deaths and many sick people before they found the right ones. I often see them growing and think...I wonder if I could eat it? I guess it was all trial and error, but I bet there was a long perioid of experimentation that ended up quite badly. (The poison ivy salad comes to mind) I bet the brasil nut was discovered by somone REALLY hungry. Did you ever see the way chestnuts are encased in this prickly sheath that looks like it would be offensive to eat.

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[The Chairman]

Even more difficult to understand was how primitive man cultivated almonds. Until quite recently, (relatively speaking) most almonds contained lethal quantities of cyanide. Somehow, someone figured out which almonds didn't cause people to drop dead and cultivated those trees. It sure was hard to conduct experimentation through tiral and error back then.


Chapter 7
"How To Make An Almond"
Guns, Germs And Steel
Jared Diamond

This poorly written book won the Pulitzer Prize and was praised by none other than one of my heroes, Edward O. Wilson of Harvard.

Too Cute, your comments are right on. As our resident specialist in Evolutionary Biology I expected a trenchant answer to the question posted, but I find it interesting that this book is on one of our bookshelves (one of MY science books) and we never discussed our impressions of it, and we agree.

Diamond raised some interesting points and is precociously gifted in many ways, but science writing is not one of them. Even more so, when I attended one of his lectures at Rice his talk had a more soporific effect on me than an overdose of Halcion would have.

cK1


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[HordeKing1]

But weren't you enthralled with Yalli's question?

Excellent questions and issues, terrible discussion of same.


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[nate1000]

I don't know who this guy is, but he sure makes some convincing points.