Talk:Heikegani
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I took the Taxonomy info from http://ctd.mdibl.org/voc.go;jsessionid=E9B27A44C1BAC5F0F12D32BB80C19982?voc=taxon&browser=r&termUI=255319#hierarchies hope its correct.
Close enough; I've tweaked it, and it's right now (although there are some doubts about Heterotremata as a group, but there's nothing we can do about that). --Stemonitis 10:07, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Can whoever edited the part about Carl Sagan (being wrong about the artificial selection) please have the source cited? Right now it's not very clear where this comes from. If you mention "other crabs" can you give examples? Also for taxonomy info there is a handy site called the tree of life web project found at http://tolweb.org/tree/ for all those interested. LaPalida
- Hi. I didn't add that part, but I think I found the original source, so I put a reference in the article. -- 18.252.6.246 06:27, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea to reorganize the article, putting Carl Sagan and the Heike Crab's role in the Playstation 3 video game Genji: Days of the Blade into a trivia section. Post E3 2006, the "giant enemy crab" demoed in the game became a major internet phenomenon, largely because there was little understanding of why they were in a game based on history. I want to make sure its alright with the rest of you before I make any changes. I also found an image of the crab at http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Image:HeikeaJaponica.jpg, which supposedly originated from Wikipedia.
- Please don't post video game trivia in this article and confine it to the article about the game itself.--Eloquence* 18:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Example of selection pressure by humans or not?
I found the primary source for this article “Martin, J. W. (1993), The Samurai Crab” somewhat exasperating.
1. It is not enough to say that the ridges on the carapace serve a “functional purpose” for muscle attachment, (and by implication are not as they are through human interference) because there are many different patterns in which those muscles may be attached, as can be seen from the different designs of carapace for the many extant crab species. Therefore, there is no necessity that such ridges MUST be as they are for purely mechanical reasons.
2. It is not enough to go and on with how OTHER crab species have human images on their carapace without stating CLEARLY that humans do not and never have hunted these species, something that Martin never quite does.
3. It is not enough to point out that some crabs have only dim images of human faces on their carapaces without saying why this could not the result of fishermen being a little half-hearted about tossing such specimens back.
3. It is not enough to say that fossils of Samurai Crabs have been found which pre-date human settlement, without CLEARLY saying that THESE fossils also have comparable human images on their carapaces, something that Martin seems averse to do.
I don’t know why the author seems to skirt around these concerns, dealing with them only tangentially. I suspect it is not because he has any covert agenda, more like he does not really understand what is at stake, and has a poor grasp of methodology.
Nevertheless, from what I have read, it seems on the balance of the evidence, that this is not the trump card for evolutionary processes that Carl Sagan thought it was. Ironically, exponents of Intelligent Design could, had they the wits, argue that such adaptation are perfect examples of Intelligent Design, with the fishermen taking the god like role of “creating” an image which conforms to a pre-existing “form” which exist in their mind, an interesting form of Platonism, and also of ideas such as involution which posit strongly teleological features in evolutionary processes.
For myself, I can understand how fishermen throwing back those crabs with human image carapaces could lead to such crabs becoming the norm in wild populations. What I find more difficult is the question of how such adaptation maintains its momentum until the image becomes not just that of a vaguely human visage but that of a Samurai Warrior’s. Surely, if the fishermen throw ANY crab with a face-like image back, the selection pressure to make the Samurai Warrior face the group norm becomes weaker and weaker. Myles325a (talk) 05:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
