“In short, the root-head turns the crab into a Darwinian cipher, a feeding machine working entirely in the parasite's service. The castrated crab can make no contribution to its own evolutionary history; its "Darwinian fitness" has become flat zero. …But ever so carefully, for the parasite must maintain the crab in constant and perfect servitude - not draining the host enough to kill this golden goose, but not letting the crab do anything for its own Darwinian benefit.”

— Stephen Jay Gould, book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 369
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

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Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 368
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“The parasite has somehow evolved to turn off the host's defenses, presumably by disarming the crab's immune response with some chemical trickery that fools the host into accepting the parasite as part of itself. …The adult parasite castrates the host, not by directly eating the gonadal tissue, but by some unknown mechanism probably involving penetration of the interna's roots around and into the crab's nervous system.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 367
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 371
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“Hierocles: You will never make the crab walk straight.”

Aristophanés Peace

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Peace+1083 <br class="br">Peace, line 1083 <br class="br">Peace (421 BC)

“My girlfriend has crabs, I bought her fishnet stockings.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

“I always thought Steve Guttenberg had crabs.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (November 28, 2006)