Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. We're going to talk about the crabs of Rome, everybody. We haven't recorded in a while. She's like, that's not going to change your experience of this.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: But forget that. Everything you never knew about. We're just going to talk about the crabs of Rome. That. That's it.
[00:00:26] Speaker C: This is everything you never knew about podcasting.
I feel like we've gotten sidetracked already.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: From the Potomon fluvia tele, which is a freshwater crab with a really great name.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: A freshwater crab. Crabs come in fresh water.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: I know. I was a little surprised too. But then I thought about the sharks that can survive in freshwater.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Like there are a handful of things where you have a freshwater and a saltwater version of a thing, and this is one of them. Excuse me. Water burp.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: That's okay. I burped. We're all good.
Classy. Okay.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So these little fellows live in southern Europe. And so it sounds like sort of the lovely warmer areas of Europe, like Italy and Malta, all those good areas. They are omnivores, as crabs are. So maybe these are the goats of the sea.
That's a T shirt right there.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: It is goats of the sea. Let me get a post it note.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: And they can kind of be aggressive, apparently competing with other local competitors like crayfish. They're in it to win it. They're burrowers and they have a lifespan generally of about 10 to 12 years. So your cat and your crab could have a similar life. Or your big dog maybe in your crab could be friends for life.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So do these guys look like the sideways walker? Are they more like the little sideways walkers. Okay.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Those cute little guys. Not the spidery ones, thank God. And so they are cute. They're average. About an adult is about 2 inches in size. Oh, so they are funny weenie.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: They're burrowing fun sized little freshwater crabs in those lovely warm places in southern Europe. So here's where things get fun and interesting. They are inhabiting the area underneath, particularly Trajan's Fountain. But the Colosseum in Rome is where you find these. And what this reminds me of. Have you seen the movie Under Paris? It's a French movie about sharks living under Paris.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: I have not.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: But I have heard it's wonderful. I absolutely enjoyed it. Most of the bad guys do get eaten by sharks and a lot of the good guys.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: And that's what I think of every time I read about this.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: I'm like, what if the crabs rise up and they eat the people of Rome. But it's going to be a really slow long because they're small.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: So the interesting thing is the Roman Colosseum is not on the waterfront. And these little guys are freshwater and they are called giant crabs. But as you will know, I just told you that the Average ones are 2 inches. So the Giants can be up to 4.7 inches.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Oh, oh, they're massive.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: So giants is very relative.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: So they are hanging out.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And people didn't really realize this was a thing until there was an excavation of Trajan's forum in 2005. And they're excavating this ancient sewer drain and like crabs everywhere, which is kind of weird, in the city in freshwater. That sewer drain had been built in. They're thinking like 1st century BC, 2nd century AD during the construction of the Forum is when they. A drain pipe called the Cloaca Maxima was built. And it's on the edge of the Tiber there, the Tiber River. And what was originally in Rome, before everything was built up, was this boggy, murky edge of the river. So it's fresh water, it's a swamp. And they built it up. And so it wasn't marshy valley anymore, it was the Colosseum. And so they land locked these guys in and people didn't really realize that they had been thriving under there ever since.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: What?
[00:04:31] Speaker B: So the excavating, they found a marble bust when they were excavating and he looks a little bit. The bust looks like Voldemort because some.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Of his features are flat.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: I. Hi.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: It's actually supposed to be a bust.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Of Constantine, but I think it's the first image of Voldemort.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: So this story has a lot of.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Layers, but all that to say that is where they live and how they got there originally. Their DNA seems to. To point to a Greek origin. And you do know the Greeks like to travel, take a little vacation. These ones never got back, these little Greek crabs.
So they've lived in Rome. So 3,000 years or more, these crabs have lived in the freshwaters under Rome.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Huh. I love the fact that they are 50% larger than normal, but they're still tiny. But they are gigantic.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. They're still the short side of a.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Five by seven card. But they're giants.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: But they're huge. Well, I mean, but I guess if I, if I found a ladybug that was three inches across, that would be remarkable, Right?
[00:05:45] Speaker B: So that's true. Or even one that was as wide As a grape. You'd be like, oh, my goodness.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: That would be shocking.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Okay, weird side story. I came in the house and thought my hair was tickling my ear and went into the bathroom and tickled the hair away from my ear, and a ladybug flew off. Oh, that has nothing to do with this episode, except that it was weird. And now that ladybug is trapped in my bathroom.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: Oh, no.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: You've got a letter to that after we podcast. We will. She's enjoying a little, like, a steam bath right now.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Did you know that in many cultures, it's considered lucky when a ladybug lands on you?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I will make sure to let that ladybug out.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: But back to our evolutionarily significant crowds.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, okay. Sorry.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: That is. That size is significant.
That in an urban environment, they are thriving and have taken a different evolutionary course where they have doubled in size compared to their peers, and their longevity is greater. They can live up to 15 years. So that's not as much. That's like 15, 20% more. But I mean, still, if we live 15 or 20% more than our peers, that would feel like a long time.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Now they're. They're under this thing. Nobody knew they were there.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Until they start excavating.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: They're just getting fresh water from, like, old.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: Yeah, there's still water under the city and the Tiber. And.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Okay, that ancient sewer drain. Let's find its name. It has a whole name, and so it deserves to be called out by name.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: I call the name of the ancient sewer drain.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Call forth. Yeah, the Cloaca maxima has been there. Is it for.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Can you spell the first word?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: C L, O, A C. A cloaca.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Like the butthole of a bird.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: I choose to say cloaca trace, but it would be ironic because it's a.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Drain pipe, and, you know, it goes through certain drain pipes.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: That's perfection.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: So that's been there since the ancient times when they built all of this up, and it is still in use.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: So they have. It's like the. You see stories of animals that don't belong in urban areas that suddenly find a way to thrive, and that's what's happened here is these crabs. They're cool. It's working out. They've been there for thousands of years, and they're still hanging in. They. They have recently. They used to be able to get back to the Tiber because it would funnel in. But now, as you know, cities improve or maintain. They have done construction and the waterway out, I believe has been cut off. So they're kind of landlocked now. There's still water, but it just doesn't. There's not a back and forth anymore. They can't go all the way back out.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Can you imagine you're sitting there at a little cafe, you're having your morning coffee and a crab crawls out of the drain.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Yeah. You're having an evening stroll after your really late Italian dinner and because I don't think they're out in the daytime.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: But they do scout a lot of.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Oh they do. Oh my God.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: And like it doesn't bum them out.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: That there's like buses and cars and lights and wild amount of tourists.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: It's fine.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: The thing that is potentially a problem is other urban animals like feral cats and pigeons and rats see them as a food source, but the crabs see the other predators a food source too, so they can't attack them. But they will definitely eat them if they find them.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Wow.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: So this is a plucky survivor story. They've adapted well to living under the coliseum. The only fly in the ointment for this story story is that global warming things are just getting warmer and that makes it more difficult for them to survive in those rising temperatures. And so they are less observed now because they're going in deeper and coming out less. Or we're not, see, we're just not seeing them as much now because they're getting deeper and deeper to where it's cooler and maybe the population is decreasing. So further study and there's suggestions from the conservationists of like, if we put up signs and we put up grates so that predators couldn't get in because of course construction changes the structure of a thing and so predators have more access to certain areas and so that also threatens the population. And so nobody has filed a grant for this and is doing big work to tell us exactly what's happening. Also, I think it could be kind of difficult to get where they are. So.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: I feel like we need to pitch a movie. You know, it'd be the sequel to the Paris one, except this is in Rome.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah, right, agreed.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: And then not having giant crabs, I think it should still be they should be called the giant crabs and that'll be the real surprise when they come out and people are like, haha, they're so small and then like a whole swarm of them attack a person.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yes. Sort of like that really bad Piranha movie from the 70s or 80s.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. Except now it's with crabs, which are almost as creepy as spiders when they walk sideways. So I think we're going to make a million.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. It could be like, the little babies come out, and you're like, ha. And then the mama comes out, sort of like the Alien movies. You're like, oh, that's not bad. We can deal with that.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: And then suddenly, someone pinches your sandal, but you're too close to the drain.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, the tourists are taking pictures of the cute baby crabs. And then the water puddle starts rumbling.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to have to workshop this. Mama comes out, but, yeah, it's going to be good. Wow.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: So that's the crabs of Rome.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: You know what I realized that I don't have in my notes? Here is the outro. One moment.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Well, everybody, you could go look at the merch store while you're waiting for Trace to find her stuff. There's good stuff. There I am right now wearing my brain junk T shirt, which makes me very happy.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: That is good.
Hold on here.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: You could queue up another episode on your smart speaker.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: You can. You can totally do that.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: You could Google some pictures of Roman crabs.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, because they don't. And they're not. They're not very brightly colored. Right. They're just kind of a. Nope.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: They're kind of drab. They kind of blend in. They've got some urban camouflage. They really are good at living in the middle of Rome.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Ah. Okay, I found it. Yay.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: They're kind of snooty about their wine.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Oh, well, you know, I've heard that crabs, they can be like that. Oops. That is the wrong window. I don't need that window. All right, well, that was. That was a beautiful outro. I'll just wind it up and say, amy and I will catch you next time where we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
