Tasmanian Giant Crab

[china_kitty]

I had just came across this article on Tumblr. Good lord!

Comments

[lishd]

...how does he weigh 15 pounds but produce 20lb meat? i presume they meant 150lb, but that's some interesting fractal crab right there

[bailzzararco]

Oh, I hadn't noticed that. Yeah, must be a typo.

[velum_cado]

It says, "Would have produced 20lbs of meat". Since those crabs can get to about 30 lbs, I assume they mean when it was fully grown.

[lishd]

it also says, "Claude is 100 times bigger than a standard UK shore crab." it's more reasonable to assume a typo instead of a weird subtext of adult size.

[velum_cado]

Well, it's The Daily Mail, so who knows what they're talking about. LOL But they definitely don't mean 150 lbs.

[lishd]

15kg then? who knows!

[velum_cado]

It appears the 20 lbs of meat thing is wrong. Tasmanian Giant Crabs are around 30 lbs, fully grown, the internets tell me. They also tell me crabs tend to yield 14% - 25% meat, so I was wrong. You're not getting 20 lbs from a 30 lb crab. But I don't think it was a typo. I think the Daily Mail is just... wrong. :P But, whatever. Melted butter, pls!

[madman101]

maybe a much larger crab may have less shell(etc.) relative to flesh, (esp. if it may be a unique subspecies)

[velum_cado]

That's what I wondered, too, but I couldn't find any information on that specific type of crab. I'd love to get my hands on one of them to find out, though!

[madman101]

i'd be careful w/ the hands ha ha -

i think alaska king crab gets pretty big - so maybe that's a lead...(?!)

i also thought: the larger the ball, (or whatever), the greater the volume-to-surface-area. ergo, for crabs, probably "less" shell. & unusually over-sized crabs may outgrow their natural predators and not need a relative thick shell so much anymore. it also might simply be a growth hormone thing. - or, of course, it may be a typo.

sorry i don't have a good crab link for you though!

[celarania]

I think it's some funky math. It would be hard to get 150 pounds into 15 inches.

[lishd]

there's a dick joke in there somewhere.

[celarania]

I'm serious.

If we take the crab to be a 15in x 10in x 5in box (with all his little legs folded underneath and I'm being generous), that's about 38 cm x 25 cm x 13 cm, or 12350 cm^3. Given that 2 pounds is about 1 kg, that would be 75 kg. To have 75 kg in 12350 cm^3 that would be a density of about 6 g/cm^3. Considering water and the human body have a density of about 1 g/cm^3, that's six times as dense as the human body, and you get metals having that density.

[lishd]

my response was not in doubt of your statement.

[anowyn]

He's made of dark matter!

[lishd]

crabs have both light & dark matter in them, & both matters should be prepared differently