Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Reader Leo Glenn sends a “spot the hermit crab” photo with these notes:
I’m sending you a Spot the Hermit Crab photo, taken at Playa Avellanas, Guancacaste Province, Costa Rica. I believe it is an Ecuadorian Hermit Crab (Coenobita compressus). I would rate it as “difficult”, and for readers who want a formidable challenge.
Click to enlarge, of course, and look carefully. Please do not tell people where it is when you comment; just say, “I found it” (if you did!)
Send in your photos. In an ideal steady state, I’d get one batch per day, but that’s not coming. Thanks!
Today’s batch, centered on Arkansas waterfalls, comes from reader Kevin Elskin. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Recently a contributor sent photos from the Kintyre Peninsula of Scotland. That brought back memories from a recent trip, and I wanted to add one photo of my own. At the very southern end of Kintyre lay a quaint golf course called Dunaverty. If this course were located in the middle of Iowa then no one would give it a second thought. But located on the ocean on the Mull of Kintyre, it rivals Pebble Beach for the views (and at a fraction of the cost). That is Ireland in the distance, over the ocean, off to the left.
But on to my main event, a short tour of some Arkansas waterfalls. I wish to assure you that I do not work for the Arkansas Department of Tourism, but when things are shut down you tour close to home.
You might be thinking, “Arkansas has waterfalls?”, but yes we do. In fact there is a book by Tim Ernst called Arkansas Waterfalls that documents over 200 different waterfalls. They are not spectacular falls like Niagara or Yosemite, but the sound of falling water, up close, is a tonic for the soul, a meditation that drowns out the noise our talented ape brains generate in such volume. If you that experience with a healthy hike through the woods, and let us say that your mind and body will thank you for the effort.
Arkansas waterfalls are temperamental. They come and go with the rains. This means the best waterfall days are days when the ground is wet and muddy, perhaps after weeks of spring rains or the hours just after a “gully washer” or “toad strangler” of a thunderstorm. Waterfalls in Arkansas come in many varieties. Some can be seen from the comfort of your car. Others might require a moderate hike down a clearly marked trail. The most fun are the ones that require significant bushwacking through the hills, with careful climbs down steep cliffs into deeply shadowed hollows. Your reward will be solitude, as few tend to venture there. And maybe a few ticks, so check yourself often.
With that preamble, let me begin with photos of Arkansas’ tallest waterfall, Hemmed-in-Hollow. At 209 feet high, this waterfall claims to be the tallest between the Appalachians and the Rockies. If you are canoeing on the Buffalo River, this fall is only a short hike from the river. We hiked in from the other direction, which involves a 1000 foot elevation change. Getting in was easy, getting out was a haul.
The first photo shows the falls from a distance as we were hiking in.
The second photo is from the base of the falls. For perspective, there are people in the shadows at the bottom of the photo.
The third photo was taken after a small climb up from the base. My nephew is visible in the photo.
Another fun waterfall that is a moderate but easy hike is call Glory Hole. Fourth grade jokes aside, the neat thing about Glory Hole is that water falls through a hole in the outcropped rock.
A fierce guardian we found near the falls:
And wherever you look, there is a pleasant cascade of water running to greet you.
Falling Water Falls can literally be viewed from the front seat of your car. It is not terribly high, but we managed to catch it on a very high flow day after heavy rains. A black and white and a color enhanced higher definition photo for your pleasure.
Last winter, my son and my brother hiked to Magnolia Falls. Again not overly impressive, but just a lovely spot to enjoy a cool winter day. You can see my son next to the falls in the second photo.
New Year’s Day 2022 I took a solo jaunt and visited Glory B falls. Another falls that can be viewed from your car. Or if you hike down you can see it from both sides.
And again, on a rainy day, there are many unnamed adjacent falls for your pleasure.
So come visit Arkansas sometime. Yeah, it is full of redneck Trump supporters. But it has its charms, too.
We’re running low on photos, folks, so if you have some good ones, you know what to do. .
Today’s batch comes from Brian Cox, an instructor at Assinboine Community College in Manitoba (see his earlier photos here). Brian’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
A crayfish claw jammed between dock boards in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. I don’t know the species of crayfish, but here are some possibilities.
Stilt sandpiper (Calidris himantopus) in my hometown of Brandon, Manitoba.
A neighbour threw his Christmas tree on a bonfire. I was able to capture the vibrant colours, but I can only guess at the tree species. Is it a white or black spruce? Perhaps a jack pine?
Capturing a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) in flight with a manual-focus zoom lens can sometimes come down to luck. My city is surrounded by farmer’s fields, prime hunting grounds from these hawks.
This red-tailed hawk was happily stripping pieces off a Northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) until I got too close. The image is a little out of focus…
And this gopher completely objects to the hawk’s lunch preferences.
I startled this North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), but waited for it to find the right safety-tree to climb up. I think it gave me a little smile.
Today’s photos come from reader Christopher McLaughlin, whose notes are indented. You can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
I’ll offer up this handful of wildflower/landscape photos, hopefully they are of interest. I don’t have fancy equipment, just an iPhone 11. They were taken last summer, July 17, 2021, in between storms at Jerry Smith Park (supposedly a remnant prairie) in south Kansas City.
I am not certain on the species, or even the genus of this crayfish, possibly Orconectes virilis, the rather common Northern Crayfish. This was taken on a rainy spring morning at Gama Grass Conservation Area, Vernon county MO.
Otherwise not an exciting find, as crayfish are quite common, but finding her loaded with babies was a treat. Pardon the dirty hands and fingernails.
Silphium perfoliatum[cup plant]from my back yard. Silphium being my favorite genus, I have four of the five species that grow in Missouri in my yard, with seeds of the fifth species on the way. They are excellent for attracting pollinators, including hummingbirds, and the seeds are eaten by several birds.
What apparently had happened is that somebody at a news service (see below) googled “crab spider” instead of “spider crab”, and concluded that spider crabs were venomous. Then the Guardian simply cut and pasted the false assertions about the spider crab—no crabs are venomous though some are toxic to eat—to create a clickbait story.
Pity, pity, because since the crabs aren’t venomous, the story loses a lot of its click-y allure. A number of people pointed out to the Guardian that this story wasn’t exactly true (the swarming part was). Matthew also informed one of his friends who works at the Guardian (see below). Regardless, the complaints worked, and now there’s a new story sans venomous crabs. Click below to see the latest story, lacking the word “venomous”.
And kudos to the Guardian for noting that they changed the story. At the bottom of the new page you can read this:
This article was amended on 8 August 2022. An earlier version incorrectly stated in the headline and text that the spider crabs massing at Cornish beaches were “venomous”; no species of crab is venomous. Also, their Latin species name is Maja brachydactyla, not “Hyas araneus” as we said.
Someone else must have corrected the species name. I took the paper at its word, for Hyas araneus is the “great spider crab”. Now we learn that these un-venomous crabs are actually Maja brachydactyla, in a completely different family. Now how did they screw that one up? By copying from another source?
Well, all’s well that ends well, except, perhaps, for the would-be bathers who avoided the waters off Cornwall.
Virtually all of these stories – including that in the Guardian – claimed the crabs ‘have a venomous bite that is poisonous to their prey but harmless to humans’.
This is not true. No crab is venomous. Indeed, out of over 7.000 species of crustacean, only one is known to be venomous, and it is not a crab.
This error – which the Guardian has still not uncorrected, despite repeated alerts on social media – appears to have originated in some journalist googling ‘spider crab’ and not noticing that the pages they got back referred to ‘crab spider’. It was then simply copied by other journalists, including your own.
It is hard to know which is more disheartening: the original error, or your thoughtless repeating of it. This example does not particularly matter, but confidence in the press is a fragile thing.
Matthew Cobb
The Guardian responded by saying that the false claims about venom and species name were provided by a news agency based in south-west England, and noted that they’d changed the text and added a footnote.
After Matthew corrected this story via Twitter, it’s still up prominently on the Guardian website (at least as of 6:30 this morning Chicago time). Click to read:
The relevant bit from the story is this:
Thousands of venomous crabs converged on the beaches of Cornwall due to rising sea temperatures caused by the climate crisis. The migratory creatures swarmed in the shallow water in St Ives, shedding their shells before returning to depths of up to 300ft.
The crustaceans are instantly recognisable for their long legs and pincers and have a venomous bite that is poisonous to their prey but harmless to humans.
Oy! What clickbait: guaranteed to drive the swimmers out of the Cornwall seas! And it did!
Their presence at Porthgwidden Beach was enough to put many bathers off entering the sea.
However, Kate Lowe, a marine photographer captured the event just days after a snorkeler was bitten by a blue shark during an excursion off Penzance.
Remember, this has happened “just days after a snorkeler was bitten by a blue shark” – like that has anything to do with anything except alarming people!
Furthermore, it’s wrong: this species, Hyas araneus, the giant spider crab, is not venomous. As far as I know, while some crabs are poisonous (their bodies contain toxins that could kill you), no crabs are venomous, i.e., injecting venom into their prey.
These crabs are innocuous unless they nip you. But how did the Guardian get it wrong? Matthew explains:
The article is about spider crabs, which are indeed crabs. They are coming into shallow, warm waters in Cornwall to moult together. About two days ago, the tabloids here had the story, and said these crabs were venomous but this was harmless to humans. The Guardian freelancer basically cut and pasted the story, including this phrase, which comes from a Google hit for “crab spider” (which is a spider, and is obviously venomous). They also headlined it “Venomous visitors”. There is only one known venomous crustacean, it is a remipedian (more closely related to a fly than to a crab).
Matthew even tweeted to the Guardian to get them to correct this (we petulant biologists dislike these errors, especially if they can panic the public):
Like the rest of the UK press, @guardian writes a crappy clickbait article using near-identical terms claiming these crabs are “venemous”. THIS IS NOT TRUE and is the result of google hits for “crab spiders”! Stop it! Pls RT https://t.co/pgoj5Wy2Tl
