Creature of the Week #2: the Decorator Crab
Well, it isn't Friday, so I sneak this one in just under the radar of being a creature-of-the-week this time. This should in no way detract from the awesomeness that is the Decorator Crab.
I love these little guys for so many reasons. 1) They're from Australia. Weird, scary, wonderful things come from Australia. 2) They're masters of disguise. 3) They embody everything there is to know about online games and human nature.
These tiny crabs (Naxia Tumida if you want to get specific) are part of a whole family of roughly one-inch "true" crabs (trufax: a hermit crab, although admittedly awesome, is not a true crab) that wander around their shallow sea habitats sticking things to themselves. Their carapaces have developed small hooks for this purpose, and most of them decorate with seaweed to better blend in with their surroundings. They produce a kind of natural glue that they use to fix their selected items to their bodies, and it hardens over time.
What results is a truly astonishing variety of crab appearances, and an interesting insight about self identity and expression. We are all decorator crabs, moving around our habitats and attaching things to ourselves. These things we attach -- shoe brands, political ideals, all art -- express to observers who we are, or at least how we want to be perceived. A writer's style to me takes much from the decorator crab, developed generally via copious reading, cultural absorption, and internal mining. The final picture -- if something that is constantly evolving over time can ever be said to be final -- is at once an amalgamation of our influences and something totally unique to our individual selves.
Up next: yes, we'll get out of the ocean, at least for a little while. ;)
I love these little guys for so many reasons. 1) They're from Australia. Weird, scary, wonderful things come from Australia. 2) They're masters of disguise. 3) They embody everything there is to know about online games and human nature.
These tiny crabs (Naxia Tumida if you want to get specific) are part of a whole family of roughly one-inch "true" crabs (trufax: a hermit crab, although admittedly awesome, is not a true crab) that wander around their shallow sea habitats sticking things to themselves. Their carapaces have developed small hooks for this purpose, and most of them decorate with seaweed to better blend in with their surroundings. They produce a kind of natural glue that they use to fix their selected items to their bodies, and it hardens over time.
What results is a truly astonishing variety of crab appearances, and an interesting insight about self identity and expression. We are all decorator crabs, moving around our habitats and attaching things to ourselves. These things we attach -- shoe brands, political ideals, all art -- express to observers who we are, or at least how we want to be perceived. A writer's style to me takes much from the decorator crab, developed generally via copious reading, cultural absorption, and internal mining. The final picture -- if something that is constantly evolving over time can ever be said to be final -- is at once an amalgamation of our influences and something totally unique to our individual selves.
Up next: yes, we'll get out of the ocean, at least for a little while. ;)