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Crab vs. Pipe

zakur

Illuminator
Z
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
Messages
3,264
This is a video taken in 6000 feet of water. An undersea robot is sawing a 3mm wide slit (1/10th of an inch ... remember that width) in a pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psig, while the pressure outside is 2700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch. Then a crab comes along....

Click here for video MPG (1.8 MB)
(From the Crustacea Lab at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.)
 
CRUNNNNNNCH!!



What happens is, Crabbie-Poo comes strolling along, gets sucked into the crack WHAM!, hangs there for a half a second, and then crunch crunch crunch, he vanishes into the crack the rest of the way and is gone, gone, gone...

I saw that same special effect on the Evil Dead, or maybe it was Nightmare on Elm Street, or maybe it was Stephen King, anyway it was a teenager instead of a crab...

Very creepy, and looks EXACTLY like the movies.

Edited to add: and It's a teeny little crack, no way is that crab going to fit in there, but it does. That's why it's creepy. Sam Raimi, eat your heart out.



Took me a few minutes to download it with a 56K modem.
 
I don't know what is sicker: that video or the fact that I actually feel a little sympathy for a bottom feeding sea-bug. Ugh.
 
You're not alone Mark. I was initially quite shocked at the image - I had been expecting something else - and I felt quite sad to have seen the poor thing end that way.

I did wonder at first if I should ask for a warning to be edited into the original post.

I did realise I should have guessed what was going to happen - pressure differentials, high speed saws, relatively fragile crustacean. I also realised creatures die every day from a variety of ways and it is a crab with limited intelligence and sensory interpretation. I mean, I've even eaten them!

It's also a fascinating demonstration of the forces at work at the time, as opposed to the usual Hollywood versions of such things.

But I do feel bad about it and I think I won't watch it a second time.

:)
 
It didn't shock me. Was it a worse death than being slowly chewed up by something bigger? Was it worse than being thrown in a pot of boiling water? Probably not. It looked pretty quick.

In nature, most animals die by being eaten. Think of it as if the crab got eaten by a pipe.
 
I did think of it that way - I know it could have been killed lots of nasty ways and was unlikely to die of old age, tucked up in his little hole with a blanket over his knees.

But what can I say? If someone said, follow this link to see a crab being eaten by a shark or getting smashed with a hammer, I wouldn't watch it. It was my own fault for not seeing the clues to the crab's fate in the original post and I was expecting something, well, humourous I guess.

You know: "Crab achieves in 1 second with right claw what a man-made saw took 5 minutes to do" or "Crab eats saw", or, I don't know.

Anyway, I'm over it now. :D
 
Goshawk said:
I saw that same special effect on the Evil Dead, or maybe it was Nightmare on Elm Street, or maybe it was Stephen King, anyway it was a teenager instead of a crab...
Click to expand...
Just a sidelight: Stephen King used to offer a substantial reward if anyone could produce an original copy of his story, "The Float." King sold it to a men's magazine when he was a struggling writer, and lost all copies of his original story. But he re-wrote the story as "The Raft," which is included in the short stories in "Skeleton Crew." I believe that this short story was also dramatized in one of the "Creepshow" movies.
 
The Raft in Skeleton Crew is one of the scariest stories I've ever read. I didn't see the film version, but what I saw in my mind was bad enough for me. The way he described the guy being dragged down through the planks of the pontoon was far worse than seeing that crab get eaten by the pipe. There was a lot of blood for a start - I think the word 'gouts' may have been used.

I keep reading King for that reason - his writing provokes very strong, memorable images but all imaginary only. I love it.
 
if you think that was scary,I've heard that if a window on an airplane flying at high altitude would hapen to crack and break the
person siting near it would be sucked out into the sky,
not sure if its true,though.
still,I like to sit as far away from the window,when flying.
:D
 
Would it be sorta like Alien (4) where the humanoid white alien gets sucked out a wee bit at a time? *shudder*

I normally take the window seat, too!! :( Not any more!
 
Or what about..

getting sucked out into open space?

Apparently, you live for a while (some guy at NASA was accidentally exposed to a vacuum for a few seconds, but survived), but your bodily fluids instantly start to boil.

Not a nice way to go.
 
So the site is down.

Any mirrors?

Or if somebody has the mpeg, I'll host it.

It doesn't seem to be a matter of copyright, but since the orginal site is shot, it's hard to say.
 
Andonyx said:
So the site is down.

Any mirrors?

Or if somebody has the mpeg, I'll host it.

It doesn't seem to be a matter of copyright, but since the orginal site is shot, it's hard to say.
Click to expand...

I posted the same thing in JREF Banter, I think the link is still working.

click here
 
So the pressure differential of one side of the poor bugger's shell is enough to cause dramatic structural failure, which leads to the erm, gooey bits inside being sucked in as though it were in a straw. I noticed a bit of shell gets stuck in the gap. 1/10 of an inch! Sir, we have found a new method of hamburger production!
 
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