Are Lobsters Ambidextrous? (3 page)

Are
lobsters ambidextrous?

Have you ever noticed, while digging into a lobster, that one claw is significantly larger than the other, as if one claw was pumping iron and taking steroids, while the other claw was used only for riffling the pages of library books? The large claw is called the “crusher” and the smaller one the “cutter” (terms that sound like the members of a new tag team in the World Wrestling Federation). The crusher has broader and bigger teeth but moves relatively slowly. The cutter has tiny, serrated teeth and moves swiftly.

The two claws do not start out distinctly different. Lobsters shed their shells more often than Cher has plastic surgery—they undergo three molts in the larval stage alone. When lobsters are first hatched, the two claws look identical, but with each successive stage in their development, the differences become more pronounced. It isn’t until their fifth molt, and second postlarval molt, that the two claws are truly differentiated.

As you may have guessed, the crusher claw is important for the defense of lobsters against predators, and the cutter particularly useful in eating. Claws of lobsters are often torn off in accidents and in fights. Although there are some differences among species of lobsters, most lobsters will regenerate severed claws.

Most bizarre of all, if the remaining claw of an injured lobster is a cutter, many species with “plastic dimorphism” will change the function of that claw from cutter to crusher, presumably because the crusher is more essential for survival. The next regenerated claw of that lobster is capable itself of shifting to the cutter function, so that the positions of the two claws are reversed.

According to Darryl Felder, chairman of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, biology department, lobsters are not always right-or left-“handed.” The crusher may be on the right or left side of a lobster.

The ultimate answer to this Imponderable depends upon how you define ambidextrous. Certainly, lobsters can use either cheliped (the scientific name for claw) with equal ease. Although their regenerative powers give lobsters a certain flexibility, the versatility of each claw is not as great as that of a switch hitter in baseball, who can swing the bat equally well from both sides, or the pickpocket who can pilfer skillfully with either hand.

 

Submitted by Danny Kotok of New York, New York
.

 

Why
is there no Betty Rubble character in Flintstones Multivitamins?

For reasons too unfathomable for even us to delve into, we are thrown this question periodically on radio phone-in shows but have never received it in a letter. Perhaps no one wants to take credit for asking this Imponderable. One radio host said that he
had investigated the matter, and found that for technical reasons, it was difficult to manufacture a realistic Betty facsimile.

Ah, we wish that were true, but the real story is far sadder, far darker. We heard from William D. Turpin, director of consumer relations for Multivitamins’ manufacturer, Miles, Inc.:

 

The current group of Flintstones characters was selected based upon research of the popularity of each character with children. As a result of this research, it was determined that Betty Rubble is not as popular with the majority of the children as the other characters.

 

Thus, if you investigate the contents of a Flintstones Multivitamins jar carefully, you’ll find seven different “characters.” As expected, Wilma, Fred, and a lonely Barney are included. Bamm-Bamm, Pebbles, and Dino are there, too, to help round out the nuclear family. But the Flintmobile? Is a car really more popular with children than a fine specimen of womanhood? You’d better believe it.

Truth be told, Betty was never our favorite character either. In fact, we don’t think she deserved a great catch like Barney. Nevertheless, her lack of charisma is hardly reason enough to break up the family units that helped make the Flintstones a television and multivitamin supplement institution.

What
in the heck is a tumbleweed? Why does it tumble? And how can it reproduce if it doesn’t stay in one place?

Three Imponderables for the price of one. The first part is easy. The most common form of tumbleweed, the one you see wreaking havoc in movie westerns, is the Russian thistle. But actually the term is applied to any plant that rolls with the wind, drops its seed as it tumbles, and possesses panicles (branched flower clusters) that break off.

Usually, the stems of tumbleweed dry up and snap away
from their roots in late fall, when the seeds are ripe and the leaves dying. Although tumbleweeds cannot walk or fly on their own, they are configured to move with the wind. The above-ground portion of the thistle is shaped like flattened globe, so it can roll more easily than other plants.

In his March 1991
Scientific American
article “Tumbleweed,” James Young points out how tumbleweed has adapted to the arid conditions of the Great Plains. One Russian thistle plant can contain a quarter of a million seeds. Even these impressive amounts of seeds will not reproduce efficiently if dumped all at once. But the flowers, which bloom in the summer, are wedged in the axil between the leaves and the stem, so that their seeds don’t fall out as soon as they are subjected to their first tumbles. In effect, the seeds are dispersed sparingly by the natural equivalent of time-release capsules, assuring wide dissemination.

Young points out that tumbleweed actually thrives on solitude. If tumbleweed bumps into another plant, or thick, tall grass, it becomes lodged there, and birds and small animals find and eat the seeds:

 

Hence, successful germination, establishment of seedlings, and flowering depend on dispersal to sites where competition is minimal: Russian thistle would rather tumble than fight.

 

Although songs have romanticized the tumbleweed, do not forget that the last word in “tumbleweed” is “weed.” In fact, if the Russian thistle had been discovered in our country in the 1950s rather than in the 1870s, it probably would have been branded a communist plot. Thistle was a major problem for the cowboys and farmers who first encountered it. Although tumbleweed looks “bushy,” its leaves are spiny and extremely sharp. Horses were often lacerated by running into tumbleweed in fields and pastures, and the leaves punctured the gloves and pants worn by cowboys.

Tumbleweed has also been a bane to farmers, which explains how tumbleweed spread so fast from the Dakotas down to the Southwest. The seeds of tumbleweed are about the same
size as most cereal grains. Farmers had no easy way to separate the thistle seeds from their grains; as “grain” moved through the marketplace, thistle was transported to new “tumbling ground.”

Today, tumbleweed’s favorite victims are automobiles and the passengers in them. We get into accidents trying to avoid it, trying to outrace it, and from stupid driving mistakes when simply trying to watch tumbleweed tumble.

 

Submitted by Plácido García of Albuquerque, New Mexico
.

 

When
a body is laid out at a funeral home, why is the head always on the left side from the viewer’s vantage point?

Why are so many readers obsessed with this Imponderable? And why are so many of them from Pennsylvania?

We found no evidence that any religion cares one iota about the direction in which a body is laid out at a viewing. Discussions with many funeral directors confirmed that the arrangement has become a custom not because of religious tradition but because of manufacturing practice.

Caskets can be divided into two types: half-couches, which have two separate lids, either or both of which can be opened; and full couches, whose lids are one, long unit. Full couches are designed to display the entire body at the viewing; half-couches are intended to show the head and upper torso of the deceased, with the option that, if the second lid is opened, the full body can be displayed.

The hinges of all caskets allow the lids to be opened only in one direction. When the lids are lifted, they move first up and then back away from the viewers, to allow an unobstructed view for the bereaved. In many viewing rooms, the raised lids rest against a wall during viewing, dictating the direction the casket will be placed in a viewing room.

According to Howard C. Raether, former executive director and now consultant to the National Funeral Directors Association, the half-couch caskets made in the United States are all manufactured so that “only the left side has an interior and pillow for positioning and viewing the body.” The two sides of the half-couch are also not symmetrical and thus not totally interchangeable. The left side of the half-couch is shorter than the “leg side,” and because it is not normally opened, the bottom of the right side of the casket is usually unfinished. The interiors of full-couch caskets are also designed for the head to be placed on the left side.

Occasionally, however, a funeral director may need to put the head on the right side of the casket, usually when an injury or disease has disfigured the “wrong” side of the deceased’s face. Since American-made caskets are rarely tapered, it is easy to rearrange the pillows inside the casket and put the deceased in the opposite direction.

One of our sources, who has worked in the industry for over fifty years and has sense enough to want to remain anonymous, told
Imponderables
that more families are asking for full-body viewings these days. He singled out
Pennsylvania
(along with southern New Jersey and parts of Florida and Ohio) for special mention in their preference for full-couch caskets—everywhere else, half-couches predominate.

What’s with these Pennsylvanians?

 

Submitted by Barbara Peters of Norwood, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Bridget Hahn of Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania; Carol Haten of Monroeville, Pennsylvania; Earle Heffley of Springfield, Illinois; Sandy Zak of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Jason Humble of Starks, Louisiana
.

 

Has
anyone ever seen a live Cornish game hen?

We’ve seen a few dead Cornish game hens in our time, usually on a plate in front of us—and always when we are ravenously hungry at a formal dinner, surrounded by folks we don’t know. So we feel we have to eat the bird with a knife and fork. Without picking up the dead hen and eating it with our fingers, we are capable of extracting a good two or three mouthfuls’ worth of edible meat before we give up on meeting our protein requirements for the day.

As you can see, we have more than a little hostility toward these little bitty particles of poultry, so we are going to expose a nasty scandal about Cornish game hens (aka Rock Cornish game hens): They are nothing more than chickens—preadolescent chickens, in fact.

That’s right. Cornish game hens, despite their highfalutin moniker, are nothing more than immature versions of the same broilers or fryers you buy in the supermarket. A Rock Cornish game hen could theoretically grow up to be a Chicken McNugget. (At least a Chicken McNugget gets eaten.) We have
all
seen a live “Cornish game hen.”

Federal regulations define a Rock Cornish game hen or Cornish game hen as

 

a young immature chicken (usually 5 to 6 weeks of age) weighting not more than 2 pounds ready-to-cook weight, which was prepared from a Cornish chicken or the progeny of a Cornish chicken crossed with another breed of chicken.