The Crab Lab

Oh my goodness! What could be so horrifying that our brave microbiologist can’t bear to look?
The skeleton of a mouse–a wild mouse, one of many that get in from the woods and scamper throughout our building. This hapless rodent must have fallen into the tank of fiddler crabs. The crabs made short work of it, picking the last bit of meat off the bones.

Later, the skeleton was discovered by mild-mannered physiology professor Chris Gillen. In Professor Gillen’s animal physiology lab class, here at Kenyon College, students study crabs–how they respond to environmental change, such as salt stress.

This one is actually a spider crab, a larger relative of the vertebrate-consuming fiddlers. One time, though, a smaller crab was found defending itself from the large one; Professor Gillen came to the rescue in time.

There goes nature’s food chain, in the tank as in the ocean. All in a day’s work, for crab lab.