Do Crayfish Have Personalities?
Monday, December 18, 2006
| Personalities..... I have them.. you have them..but do animals have them? Fear. Fear is an emotion. If we open this up to everyone, we will be overwhelmed with animal personality stories. Just to share with everyone..I have two cats. One is light colored, while the other is black. Now, this black cat likes to sleep on a very dark colored rug...and here is where you can identify the problem. In the recent past, two very unfortunate incidents have occurred (for the cat). But to remedy this problem..she has taken to the act of jumping as fast as physiology will allow and proceeds to plaster herself against the nearest wall. It's hard to imagine that she's only doing this to make me feel guilty (which is successful). Is it possible this is a learned behavior based on experience in which she is expressing fear? I do believe that this is more the case than the first proposed reason. We all have these types of stories, but we often consider pets to be more human-like. What if it were something we consider less human... Well being a science researcher...I also have crayfish. Now those of you that are the most skeptical..this is where you start rolling your eyes. My crayfish have very distinct personalities. You may ask anyone that has had the pleasure of feeding or just watching these interesting little creatures. First and foremost, there is crayfish #2 which we will call Fat S. Now..Fat S. loves to eat. He will eat as much and as fast as you can feed him of the fish pellets or blood worms (mosquito larvae). However...his one true love is not the food in which you are feeding him, but the forceps in which he will remove the food from. Oh..he will take the food, but if and only if it comes with the forceps. For those of you that aren't crazy over crayfish anatomy..they have the front big claws (chelipeds) and 4 other pairs of walking legs. They are able to use the first pair of walking legs for grasping, etc. Fat S. will grab the food with one pair of legs, while the big claws are ferociously fighting you for the forceps. This tug-of-war continues until he is successful. If he feels that he is losing his one true love, then he is willing to sacrifice the food. I can only assume that my amazing crayfish has figured out that the food appears in the forceps...therefore, it would be better to have the food supplier instead of the food. It's like stealing the cow instead of taking the bucket of milk...they're not so stupid after all. Now we move onto crayfish #1..we will call her F.W. She is very different from Fat S. in that she is very polite about the food she receives. She will calmly step forward, remove the food and step back to eat it slowly. And after she is done...she will again step forward as if to say, "Thank you for the food...can I have a hug now?". How can you not fall in love with these crayfish. I must give an honorable mention to my crayfish #3 which we will call T. He is the most improved crayfish of them all. His first few days in the new environment were very traumatic for him. He spent his whole day walking around backwards and whenever he hit a wall (which happens very frequently), he would freak himself out and swim backwards at a faster rate only to to speed up this very traumatizing process over and over again (you see it is a square container..hence the inevitable). I am happy to report that T. has made remarkable improvement and rarely goes through this self-inflicted trauma much anymore. But on a sad note..this is not the case for G. She is hopeless and will remain forever retarded. She is freaked out by her own movements and will therefore be removed from this part of the research. Better luck next time G. |
posted by Sonya @ 12/18/2006 03:07:00 PM,
4 Comments:
-
At December 18, 2006 at 4:10 PM,
Sakshi said...
-
Haha. It is amazing that the crayfish match the humans they are named after.
So G is going to electroculated, huh? -
At December 19, 2006 at 11:20 AM,
said...
-
hahaha...love ur style of writing. And how crayfish personalities are compared to human.
-
At December 20, 2006 at 5:59 PM,
said...
-
Can I have the honor of doing the electrocution?
-
At February 19, 2013 at 8:30 AM,
said...
-
[url=http://aluejxfttk.com]kwRVGzcwes[/url] , DmkPvzWadTrLUzk , http://pyfnknfrtw.com
