i got to touch a horseshoe crab's mouth
so very many eyes, web fic recs, & an explanation of commercial shrimp peeling machines
we’ve discussed good ol’ legmouths before, but since I recently got to hold one i wanna say a few more things about them now
horseshoe crabs mostly mate around the new or full moon, during the evening high tide. how do they schedule this without gcal? by detecting the ultraviolet light of the moon, of course
(they have 10 EYES) (TEN!!!10!) (2 are for finding mates, 5 are for detecting uv light reflecting off the moon to determine lunar cycles to find mates, the photoreceptor array on the tail telson counts as 1 (and influences their circadian rhythm), and “Two ventral eyes are located near the mouth but their function is unknown.”)
tldr they got 7 eyes for hookups, 1 eye for day-and-night, and 2 eyes for /shrug
(oh and those eyes “have the largest rods and cones of any known animal”, about 100x those of humans)
horseshoe crab eggs not only look cool, they’re also an important food source for plovers, a type of bird I am attempting to love because i want a plover lover shirt & feel i don’t deserve one until I sufficiently love plovers in truth
(to eat tough stuff themselves, horseshoe crabs use “a pair of stout, cuspid gnathobases (informally known as ‘nutcrackers’) on the back of their sixth legs” - this is basically like if you chewed with your armpits)
and, coming up next month! June 20 is officially International Horseshoe Crab Day (see also: list of International Days happening today)
as we all already know, horseshoe crabs swim upside down. but as i only just learned today, blue dragon sea slugs also float upside down!
They cling to the top of the ocean using surface tension, and “have a gas bubble in their stomach that makes them easier to float” (why don’t I float more easily when i’m gassy? or maybe i do?)
(substack refuses to embed this sea slug reel but it’s super cute and short and worth a glance)
toothaches explained: the sensitive bit inside our teeth’s hard enamel candy shell “first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish” (source)
i finally got around to reading Friendship is Optimal (rationalist my little pony fanfic, obvs) - so, that was fun.
then I came across
’s post on The Web Fiction Canon, which “divides web fiction into four main subgenres: rational fiction, /newwave/, web serial fantasy, and interactive fiction.”(i’ve never even heard of newwave but ok.)
anyways, tons of recs there that I’m looking forward to exploring. any list that includes both Unsong (which, like horseshoe crabs, also has many eyes!) and Dungeon Crawler Carl feels worth perusing further
TW1 got me curious about commercial shrimp peeling machines
JM Lapeyre came up with the idea in church - “when I was supposed to be praying, I was thinking about how to get the shrimp out of the shell”
then he gets back to the factory where folks are still hand-peeling, and tests squeezing the shrimp outta the shell by stepping on the edge with his boot, and it works
then he gets his mother’s wringer washing machine to do the squeezing, and that works too
then:
“James ran with this idea and began augmenting his mother’s washing machine with rubber rollers. Using running water and mechanical pressure to feed shrimp into, he discovered the machine’s “inch and release” effect didn’t damage the shrimp, but cleanly separated the meat from them: the first prototype of the Lapeyre Shrimp Peeling Machine was born, and the rest is history.” - How the Lapeyre Shrimp Peeling Machine Revolutionized Shrimping
but of course, Lapeyre’s ain’t the only kinda commercial shrimp peeling machine around. I also came across the Jonsson peeler!
everything’s a tradeoff, though - the Lapeyre can peel shrimp as small as 200 count, while the Jonsson deveins in addition to peeling but can only go down as small as 71/90 count
(for the uninitiated - shrimp sizing is done by count, which means number of shrimp per pound. so higher # = smaller shrimp)
and as for non-commercial alternatives:
