Female Fiddler Crabs Trade Sex for Protection
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, especially when the girl in question is a fiddler crab. In order to protect herself, she hires a body guard with the only form of currency she’s got – sex.
A recent study from The Australian National University in Canberra has discovered that female fiddler crabs will have sex with their male neighbors, who in return defend them from intruders.
Researchers studied the behavior of fiddler crabs living in mud flats off the African country of Mozambique. Male fiddler crabs have giant claws to defend themselves, but the researchers wanted to see how female crabs — which only have two small feeding claws — protect their homes.
The study concludes that the male crabs preferred to keep females nearby, largely because they will almost always have sex with their male neighbors, and isn’t that always the case? We always suspected that booty calls usually had to do with proximity, but it’s nice to have a little research to back it up.
