Cracking Crab

Can you break a pencil?

You probably can - it's easy enough. Now give it a try using one hand - it's much bigger and harder to do. (Be careful, pencils can be sharp!)

But do you think you could break a pencil between your thumb and forefinger?
It's probably impossible for humans.

But there is a creature which lives in the coastal waters of Great Britain that has that ability to do it, and that's common edible crab.

This is Charlie, from the Portsmouth Sea Life centre.
Charlie is huge!

He has two enormous, powerful claws, which are slightly different in size.

The smaller one is used for prising, grabbing and cutting things, while the bigger one is the crusher!
To show you just how powerful that crushing claw is, we're going to put Charlie to the test.

But instead of breaking a pencil, we're using toughened acrylic tubing - it's very strong and much harder to break than a pencil.
To demonstrate the test clearly, Gail lifted Charlie out of the water.

Stephen gave him the acrylic tube and immediately the crushing claw grabbed it firmly.
And within seconds, that strong acrylic tubing cracked and then shattered under Charlie's amazingly tight grip.

You can see him in action on our clips page!
This has to be one of our most impressive tests yet.

What a powerful crab!

© The Foundation TV Productions Ltd 2001



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roductions Ltd 2001



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