Hemi-Demi-Semi-Truths vol.1 Crabs Eat Rocks

Hemi-Demi-Semi-Truths is a brand new, occasionally infrequent column I’m launching at andrewdmeyer.com. Here, I will explain some of the more esoteric things that I have learned in my travels. As someone who has been filling the internet with nonsense, professionally, for a few years now, I have decided that it’s time I give back and explain some truths that I have found to be self-evident. One of the greatest joys of traveling is encountering the unexpected and learning things that you could never find in a book or a lecture hall. These are all things you will not find in books.

Hemi-Demi-Semi-Truths vol.1 Crabs Eat Rocks

Have you ever wondered why crabs are able to stay on the bottom of the ocean and not float off all willy-nilly into the sea? It would be a real problem for them if they did…they’re traditionally not the best swimmers. If you haven’t considered this, maybe you should look inward. Perhaps you haven’t spent enough time at the sea floor, or maybe you’re not very adventurous when it comes to seafood. Or…maybe you’re just not a very inquisitive person! At any rate, it’s an important topic and that’s why it’s the very first Hemi-Demi-Semi-Truth to be presented here.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Crabs sink because they eat rocks. We all know that rocks sink, ergo, with a belly full of rocks, crabs are able to stay effortlessly on the bottom of the sea.

Let’s consider the evidence:

1. Crabs manage to stay on the bottom of the ocean without holding on or doing some sort of awkward upward-flipper-pushing motion.

2. Dead crabs can be found floating around in the surf.

3. This subject has been neglected by marine biologists for years and is therefor open to explanation by me.

Rocks are a big part of a typical crab’s diet, however, many people are surprised to learn that pebbles are only a small portion of what crabs eat in order to nourish themselves. While rocks do contain a wealth of minerals and other micronutrients, they lack the riboflavins and carbohydrates necessary to sustain sea life.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, I’ve eaten crabs, why are there never rocks inside them when I crack them open? At this point I should point out that we are venturing into pure speculation. While everything up to this point can be verified by simple logic, I am simply guessing at the reason why we don’t find rocks inside of crabs.

I believe that crabs use an internal process to turn rocks into their shells. Think about it. Rocks are hard…crab shells are hard. Duh. It seems unlikely that crabs would be able to make hard shells out of seaweed and other sea floor detritus. Think about it. Seaweed is soft! Also, how would they ever get it dry enough to harden? Again, this is only speculation at this point.

Let’s get back to the real, hard evidence. Have you ever seen a crab actively trying to stay on the bottom of the sea? No! Of course not! They do it effortlessly because they are full of rocks. If they didn’t eat rocks they would just float all over the place like fish, squid, and alike. They don’t have flippers for swimming; they have pinchers for scooping rocks into their weird little mouths.

What does one do when trying to sink a body in a lake? You attach rocks to it, fill the pockets, tie a rope to a cinderblock, use horseshoes, scrap metal, engine blocks, free weights, kettle bells, dumb bells, bar bells, church bells; basically anything heavy. Anthropologists have probably long speculated that early humans learned this technique from observing crabs digesting rocks.

Evidence #2: Dead crabs can be found floating around in the surf. What happens when you die? You stop eating. And if you eat rocks to keep you on the bottom of the sea, when you die, you begin to float because you are no longer eating rocks to keep you on the bottom of the sea.

Evidence #3: There has been no logical explanation of the crab buoyancy conundrum from the oceanographic community. Think about it: the word ‘buoyancy’ has the word ‘buoy’ in it, and we all know what that means. In this case I believe that the absence of evidence is in fact the evidence of absence in terms of a robust scientific theory.

(Note: this buoy does not contain rocks, nor is it made of crabs. Thus it floats.)

In summary, crabs eat rocks to help them sink to the sea floor. This has been shown through a profound lack of flippers for swimming, a prevalence of pinchers for scooping rocks into their mouths, the death-float paradigm, and the lack of a solid working theory from the so-called legitimate scientific community.