A long time ago, in the imagination of two French comics authors, there existed in Armorica, an area between the Seine and the Loire which coincides more or less with present-day Brittany, a small village inhabited by ‘irreducible Gauls’.
Assurancetourix music disturbed the Gauls
These Gauls persisted in resisting the Roman occupation, which represented the thorn in the side of Gaius Julius Caesar. Among the characters in the village was the bard Assurancetourix who saw himself as a great musician but who played and sang so badly and awkwardly that, whenever he attempted a performance, he was beaten up, tied up and, above all, gagged by his rude fellow villagers. According to him, however, they understood nothing of art in general and of his in particular.
But this is another story, one completely different from the one I’m about to tell. There are nevertheless similarities between the two stories: in both cases we have in fact an unnamed village that existed only in the imagination of those who described it and, in both cases, above all, we have a bard, an under-appreciated musician.
The legend behind the fiddler crab
In our village (not the one in Armorica) lived the beautiful Rosetta, as well as Uca, a violinist who never parted from his violin. He liked showing it, but most of all, sadly for his unfortunate casual listeners, he liked playing it. The point, to put it bluntly, was that, like our Assurancetourix, Uca really didn’t know how to play it. So, every time he tried to play one of what he called ‘sweet and adorable melodies’, everyone ran away to barricade themselves in their houses, with their ears plugged to save themselves from the shrill sounds that came out of Uca’s instrument. Naturally, many times it happened that people did not just run away: they may direct some verbal abuse to him, and it was not unusual to poor Uca to get a bucket of water thrown to him, with bucket and all!
Illustration of a legendary fiddler crab
Uca’s life, however, was marked by another serious drawback: love. For quite some time, in fact, the unfortunate violinist had fallen in love with the beautiful Rosetta. He liked to woo her, and so far nothing unusual, but he especially liked to play serenades to her. Those same melodies that put to flight the other inhabitants of the village had the same effect on the beautiful girl who, exasperated by such art, during one of the many escapes from Uca’s music, she desperately asked Jupiter for help.
The King of the Gods initially tried to block the violinist’s way by hurling lightnings at him, but to no avail. Uca continued to chase Rosetta, always playing his violin, until he reached a nearby beach. Finally Jupiter, fed up with lightnings and with the music that reached Mount Olympus and made Juno, who notoriously lacked in patience and tolerance, hysterical, decided to end the problem by striking Uca with a powerful curse.
Fiddler crabs mating in the mangroves roots
So it was that while Uca was running, his body began to harden. The violin, still clutched in one hand, began to merge with the hand itself, hardening too. His legs became paws and from the body, which was getting harder, smaller and rounder, eight more threadlike paws sprouted. Uca kept running with increasing difficulty, gradually more and more clumsy until he turned into a crab. One of his two claws was larger than the other, and it was shaped like a violin.
The fiddler crab
Mangrove forest in the South of Thailand where the fiddler crab lives
This is the legend, but violinist crabs really exist. They are small crabs that live in dens on the water’s edge and near the high tide line, in muddy areas such as the mangrove forests so present in the South of Thailand and in South East Asia.
The males have one claw more developed than the other, and this claw is rhythmically shaken up and down during social interactions and particularly in the mating season, in order to attract the female. In this period the male crab will lurk at the entrance to his den waving his most developed claw in an attempt to attract the female who, from a group of males, will choose the one with the largest claw, considering it the healthiest… it goes without saying: size matters!
The muddy area where fiddler crabs proliferate
This ‘violin’ claw is also needed for the protection of the crab’s territory. In fact, for the defence of the dens, territorial fights between males occur, which can even get to extreme situations in which one of the contenders suffers the complete rupture of the big claw. This is such a bad blow for the crab in question who, in one go, finds itself without defence and without a woman or, better said, without a lady crab. But in this case nature comes to its aid: the violinist crab, in fact, has the ability to regenerate the broken claw, being able to recreate the size but not the strength. The new claw will be weaker than the original, useful only to flaunt a virtual power.
In the West Indies the fiddler crab is also called ‘It’s my fault’ crab, from the Creole ‘Sé ma fò’. This is because the movement of its paw recalls that of the faithful beating their chest during prayer. And with this, I think I’ve spent enough time talking about the curiosities concerning this cute crustacean. Oops, I almost forgot: the fiddler crab descendant of Uca in love is, of course, a romantic type, and it mates only on full moon nights.
Here a comprehensive website dedicated to fiddle crabs.
