Did you, by chance, catch the full lunar eclipse on Wednesday night? Talk about an AMAZING natural phenomenon. It is so cool to me how planets and stars can align and just like that…you get an eclipse. Isn’t nature so cool!?
It’s also cool to think about how the sun and moon affect life here on earth. They say that a full moon brings out the werewolves and makes some people go a little crazy. High and low tides come in and out according to the gravitational pull of the moon and life, in general, is only possible with a little help from the sun.
One curious Contributor was interested to know how a lunar eclipse might affect not werewolves, but fiddler crabs. Luckily Jim was around to share his expertise. His knowledge is just so varied! We’re lucky we have him around!
To answer this question I did some on site research. I visited the Astronomy Marine Science Center in Chesapeake Bay, France. Dr. Francois Gerard gave me a fascinating tour of the facilities. I saw the zero gravity center where scientists put endangered marine life in a zero gravity oxygen-less, waterless environment to see what happens. To date their success is extraordinary.
After the gravity center I saw the breeding on the moon simulator. They have recreated the exact conditions of the surface of the moon, and they try to cross breed endangered marine life. Dr. Gerard said the experiments were going particularly well.
Finally, he showed me the lunar eclipse wing of the facility. At that moment they had just received a shipment of fiddler crabs. For those of you who don’t know a fiddler crab is the one with the one huge claw. This oversized claw is used to better play coral and other natural marine instruments. Hence the name fiddler.
Dr. Gerard oversaw putting the crabs in the eclipse tank. He than blocked the moon from the crabs consciousness and observed what happened. At first nothing happened, but after a few minutes the crabs became agitated. They started attacking one another. They formed differed ethnic groups based on the color of their claws. Soon they have developed advance crab weapons and were arranging battle formations. One group of crabs started a bombardment of heavy artillery fire, while a second group of crabs advanced upon the enemy crabs. The enemy crabs used their superior air power to cripple the artillery fire, but were unprepared for the commando crabs.
The commando crabs attacked with their crab weapons and took out the enemy crabs almost to the last one. Having prepared every detail of the attack they even arranged with a deal with some of France’s top seafood restaurants. Within minutes some chefs showed up to pick up the dead crabs which be used for tonight’s assortment of crab dishes.
Dr. Gerard told me the experiment was a qualified success and he was excited to the do the next eclipse experiment with endangered dolphins. He said he had secured a lucrative deal with Japanese sushi restaurants.
My plea to you my fine WikiAnswers friends is to donate to the Astronomy Marine Science Center. Their work is crucial for future breakthroughs in space/marine research, which we all know deeply affects on a day to day basis. Let’s all make a point to think more about space and dolphins in the same sentence this year. We’ll make a better world through this.
Thanks for enlightening us, Jim!
