Coconut crabs are chatty when they have sex, study says
By Melanie Gray, New York Post, February 29, 2020
Shutterstock image
Ooh, pinch me harder — pleeeease.
Humans aren’t the only creatures who talk when they have sex. Coconut crabs do, too.
The gigantic crustaceans — you’ve seen that photo of a mega-monster climbing a trashcan — chat each other up with vibrating clicks, a study in the journal Zoology shows.
Researchers had known the critters made “tapping-like sounds,” but they didn’t know how or why. Now, they do.
Using X-ray movies and digital audio, the Japanese scientists figured out the invertebrates “talk” to each other at every stage of mating — foreplay, orgasm and even the crabby equivalent of cuddling afterward.
The crustaceans moan by pulsating thin appendages known as scaphognathites, which draw air into their lungs. The appendages flap against hard plates in the crabs’ gill channels, creating sound. The rate of the vibrations lets the crab produce different noises at different speeds, according to the study.
Only two crustaceans make noise with their scaphognathites — the aquatic crayfish and the coconut crab. And the crab chitchat, the scientists think, is pretty sophisticated.
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