There is a well known phenomenon with crabs. If you catch one, and put it in a bucket or barrel, it can easily escape and will. But once there are 2 or more crabs, you can throw that lid away…because no matter how close any one crab gets to escaping, its fellow prisoners will always do their Stockholm Syndrome-inspired duty and play no-nonsense warden, keeping your prisoner in the bucket for you. Today, I was thinking about this “crabs in a bucket” situation. Since I have never personally caught crabs myself, I began to ponder ways in which this whole thing could be one giant misunderstanding. I mean, it’s not like these little insect-like creatures have higher-level reasoning capabilities, right? Maybe they aren’t trying to keep their fellow prisoners captive along with them…MAYBE they are just trying to pull themselves UP, not thinking things through to the end. I even began conducting mini-experiments in my head of exactly how I could test this theory. I could try putting some type of net or something at the top of the barrel and see if the crabs try to latch on to it and pull themselves up. Or I could use a dummy crab attached to a cord, and when one of the other crabs latch on, I could keep pulling the dummy out, and see if the other crab rides to freedom. And then I found this video, and I knew I was playing myself. (more…)