I have always been fascinated by great talents demonstrated by all forms of life, including humans. Several extraordinary humans like Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein have inspired me to push myself to find more of my potential talents; nevertheless, many animals’ excellent survival tactics in nature awed me much more than human’s intellectual legacies.
During my trip to Maldives in December, 2017, my eyes were glued on hermit crabs and ghost crabs secretly crawling or running on the sand beach. I never encounter such bizzare-looking creatures before, nor did I imagine what kinds of talents they had.
A ghost crab can burrow giant holes in various sizes and shapes that would shleter him from the intense sunlight. If the ghost crab is an architect, the hermit crab is a professional recyclist. A hermit crab adopts an empty shell as his house if the shell satisfies several requirements including size, movability, cleaniness, etc. When his body outgrows the temporary house, he searches for another candidate shell for his next house. What a flexible plan he has!
By the way, I don’t like referring an animal using the pronoun “it.” When I don’t know the exact sex of the creature, I always use he/his/him cause I like male humans.
On the return flight from Malidves, I was animated all the time watching the photos and video of those crabs. I created the following graphic materials and a video (link) on the plane, using the Adobe Spark app. Later I opened a Youtube channel to upload the videos of my own creation. So I can call crabs were my Muses.
Ptak w Pohang 