1. Everybody knows that crabs are BFFs with mermaids and have Jamaican accents, but there might be even MORE to them than that.
2. Despite their exposure through animation, little is actually known about these mysterious crustaceans.
3. But we do know a few things, like how crabs learn from their mistakes.
4. And they’re notorious neat freaks.
5. Crabs can be all different colors―from bright red to bright blue.
6. They can also be all different sizes―from 1 centimeter to 13 feet.
7. Bromeliad crab mothers are some of the most caring around―even placing old snail shells in the water around their babies to boost calcium intake.
8. Crabs can be right-handed, left-handed, or ambidextrous.
Hint: He’s a righty.
9. If a male Australian fiddler crab’s burrow is being invaded by an intruder looking to take over the burrow, his male neighbor will leave his own burrow to help fight off the intruder.
10. Two neighboring crabs will never fight each other.
“Thanks, neighbor!”
11. Sadly, every year fishers in the United States kill hundreds of millions of crabs.
12. Fishers use several methods to catch them, including setting traps in shallow water and dragging huge nets along the ocean floor.
13. These methods also capture birds, fish, and other marine animals who are thrown back into the water often after they are already dead or dying.
14. Crabs, who are naturally territorial, are crowded together in holding containers while they await their fate.
15. Those crabs unlucky enough to reach the slaughterhouse alive are sometimes dismembered while completely conscious, like at Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster.
16. There, crabs’ exposed internal organs are scrubbed off by spinning brushes.
17. Then they are lowered into boiling water. When they hit the water, they are still alive.
Don’t let slaughterhouses like Linda Bean’s keep dismembering these intelligent animals alive. Take action now: