so in biology today we had to dissect a cradad or a crayfish whatever u call it by and it was really gross but they are in the same phylum as hermit crabs and i found out that they have gills and 10 legs including their 2 pinchers and their exoskeleton is made of chitin and they have a mandible (jaw) like us and and the end of their tail thingy the tail looking thing not the curly part but the very end..thats call the telson and their really little legs (but they dont count as part of the 10) the ones in the back they are called swimmerets used for reproduction and the females have tons more than the males so they can carry eggs...aint that interesting...also their giant pincher is also called a Cheliped and their 2 littler antenna are called tenules and they are used for smelling and the 2 bigger ones are called antenna and are used for finding things...yay i feel smart!
eww ya it was so sad though i couldnt stand actually doing the cutting and stuff so i made my partner do that while i told her what to do and answered the questions
Wow... that actually answers some questions I had about hermit crab anatomy, esp. about those "legs" at the end of their bodies... it would be hard to dissect a crustacean--I never even eat lobster b/c of how they are boiled alive, or crab of any kind. My crabs do get Tetra BabyShrimp and then I feel bad for the shrimp somehow b/c on the big ones you can see their eyes sometimes... but maybe I'm too soft-hearted. I take insects outside rather than kill them... and I still feel awful about dissecting the worm in the 7th grade that they had us kill them ourselves. And that was over 20 years ago. The image just kind of replays in my mind sometimes and I hate to think I caused another living thing to suffer and die. We dissected frogs and fetal pigs in high school but of course those arrived already "pickled" and dead. They don't use formaldehyde anymore, I've heard, b/c it can cause cancer... at least in embalming for humans. I think they use something called formalin now??
ya we are dissecting a fetal pig next week and i have to do it since my partner did the worms and all that but they still use formaldahyde (sp) and it seems terrible in class and ur like me...when my cats catch a mouse i dont let them play with it i let it go and when theres a spider i catch it and let it out side unless its on my ceiling then i throw shoes at it but im a real softy when it comes to anything living thats why im gunna be a vet