Points and Snippers

Perhaps you meant pincers, or nippers? suggested Pliny the Elder. Not snippers, he added, pointedly.

I'm sure it said snippers in the Biodiversity Gallery, I insisted. However, they probably meant pincers. I'm sure they didn't mean us to think the crab used gardening snips. Where would a crab find those, for goodness sake?

My point exactly, said Pliny. At least we can understand how a sponge crab might lay its hands on a sponge.

Perhaps you mean pincers, or nippers, Pliny, I suggested. Not hands.

Point taken, said Pliny, with a watery smile.

I've been thinking about the sponge crab, I continued. Why does it need a sponge for protection ? It has a hard shell after all. What is a sponge good for? Soaking up water. Well, how useful is that to a crab?

Good question, said Pliny thoughtfully. What made you think of it?

I thought of it when I was walking home through the parklands afterwards and it began to rain. My hair was getting wet. I had a plastic shopping bag in my handbag, so I got it out, unfurled it and held it over my head. I remembered the sponge crab, then, with its bright yellow sponge on its head.

On its back, surely.

Yes alright, on its back. And I thought that a sponge would be a lot more useful to me than a plastic shopping bag, because the rain was dripping over the edges of the plastic bag onto my shoulders. And then I thought it wouldn't, once it had filled up.

So it would only have been better, up to a point?

Up to a point, yes. But if I'd been a crab, I might have had the opposite view.

How so?

Because the plastic shopping bag would have covered me completely.

Assuming that, as a crab, you would care.

Yes, assuming I would care.

Ahh, said Pliny. Natural history! It certainly makes you think.