40/^ 



Commercial fishermen often refer to larger indi- 

 viduals as prawns and smaller ones as shrimps, but 

 some of these men have learned to distinguish be- 

 tween the true prawn Palaemonetes vulgaris ( Plate 

 92 ). in which the second pair of legs bear the largest 

 pincers, and Crago, whose first pair of legs are the 

 biggest and have a transversely closing finger, and 

 Peneus, in which the third pair of legs bear the 

 prominent grasping organs. 



Tide pools and coral reefs are home to pistol 

 shrimps, the "gunmen" of coastal waters. In these 

 burrowing members of the genus Crangon (= Al- 

 pliei(s). the pincer on one of the front pair of legs is 

 enormously enlarged, although borne on a slender 

 limb. The movable claw near the end of the large 

 handlike part is the hammer of the "pistol," cocked 

 by the animal to jut out at an angle of about 90 de- 

 grees. The shrimp fires its pistol by snapping the 

 hammer joint against the palm portion with amaz- 

 ing force, producing a sound audible all over a large 

 room if one of these animals is in an aquarium. 



The pistol shrimps use their weapons both to de- 

 fend themselves and to obtain prey. The shock pro- 

 duced in the water is enough to stun a passing fish of 

 usable size. In the South Pacific, returning fishermen 

 are said to be able to learn the direction to the fring- 

 ing reef around a coral island by hanging over the 

 side of the boat and thrusting the head into the water. 

 The crackling sound of pistol shrimps can then be 

 heard all the way from the reef crevices. 



The lobsters of North Atlantic coasts are members 

 of Homanis, a genus whose name is derived from 

 the old Scandinavian word for the animals. Epicures 

 delight in the delicate flavor of the muscles in the 

 large pincers and abdomen ("tail"). In conse- 

 quence, more research work has been done on Ho- 

 manis (and the similarly delectable oyster) than on 

 any other invertebrate food harvested from the sea. 



South of the Bay of Biscay in Europe, the lobster 

 of Atlantic and Mediterranean waters is the spiny 

 Palinurus, named for Aeneas' helmsman who fell 

 asleep at the wheel and tumbled overboard. Pami- 

 hiris is the spiny lobster of the Pacific and of Atlantic 

 waters extending from North Carolina to Brazil. 

 Spiny lobsters lack pincers altogether, and use their 

 long and extremely strong antennae as whips to ward 

 off enemies and to discourage competitors while 

 feeding. As in Hoinanis and the various kinds of 

 crayfishes, the tail meat of spiny lobsters is mostly 

 muscles used to flex the abdomen, to drive the body 

 backward through the water at each flick of the 

 spread tail fan. 



Throughout the spiny lobsters' range — as far south 

 as the Cape of Good Hope — this tail meat is sought 

 by native peoples and commercial fishermen alike. 

 At the docks in Capetown, South Africa, the abdo- 

 mens of millions of living spiny lobsters are ripped 



From curled-under tail to the tip of antennae, the 

 giant beachhopper Orchcutoidea caUforniana may be 

 2V2 inches long. It lives in a burrow beyond reach of 

 the highest waves, and emerges at night to feed. 

 (Oregon. Ralph Buchsbaum ) 



ofT annually by hand to be quick-frozen and shipped 

 to markets in the United States. The still-struggling 

 bodies are pushed into the sea as waste. Those who 

 regard this practice as cruel have been met with a 

 ruling by the local Society for the Prevention of 

 Cruelty to Animals: by definition, only a vertebrate 

 animal can feel pain. 



All true lobsters, whether with pincers or spines, 

 are scavengers. Yet they often engage in cannibal- 

 ism. Apparently this is due to a chronic need for 

 more lime than the environment provides, since the 

 habit disappears when broken shells of moUusks or 

 sand dollars are distributed on the bottom. Most of 

 the weight of a lobster's exoskeleton is the lime that 

 impregnates it and gives it rigidity. Yet at intervals 

 each lobster sacrifices its hoard by molting the old 

 covering, growing about 15 per cent in weight inside 

 each new covering before it too must be shed. A 

 thirty-four-pound, 23% -inch Homarus is a record 

 catch. Palinurus sometimes grows almost as large. 



Crayfishes (Plates 93, 94) have much the same 



[237 



