Hermit crabs face a uniquely competitive real estate market. They need bigger and bigger shells throughout their lives, but cant grow these homes themselves. So they rely on castoff snail shells, and are constantly on the lookout for better properties entering the market.
A study that will be published next month in the journal Physica A found that the distribution of these shells in one hermit crab population was surprisingly similar to the distribution of wealth in human societies.
That may make hermit crabs one of the first animals known to experience wealth inequality.
Ivan Chase, an emeritus professor at Stony Brook University in New York and the studys lead author, researches social systems in animals and described a phenomenon called the vacancy chain in hermit crabs in the 1980s.
When a snail dies on the beach, a crab that comes across the empty shell will inspect it closely, turning the shell over in its claws. If the crab decides this home is better than its current shell, it trades up. Another, usually smaller crab may soon find that crabs castoff and move in. Each vacancy lets about three crabs upgrade their shells, Dr. Chase said.
Dr. Chase had always wondered whether this system led to a kind of inequality among hermit crabs, with a few crustaceans hoarding the biggest homes. So in 2017, he and his co-authors started testing the idea. They gathered almost 300 hermit crabs from a Long Island beach and briefly removed the crabs from their shells. They weighed and measured each crab and its residence. Then they looked at how shells of different weights were distributed among the population.
The distribution curve they found peaked around medium-sized shells, then dropped as the shells got larger, before tapering off very gradually through the largest shells of all. This matches the shape of wealth distribution curves in many human societies.
The team used a number called the Gini coefficient to measure overall inequality among the crabs. It found a value similar to that in small human populations, though not as great as in todays large countries. The top 1 percent of hermit crabs owned only about 3 percent of the total shell weight, Dr. Chase and his co-authors noted: There are no Warren Buffetts or Jeff Bezoses. There is also no transfer of shells between crabs and their offspring.
What they discovered suggested that the distribution of shell sizes did not simply depend on crab biology. They did not find similar numbers of crabs in every size of shell, which would be expected if most crabs survive to old age (and if longevity determines shell distribution). Nor did they find that the smallest shells were most abundant, which might occur if crabs most often die young, or are preyed on at a steady rate throughout their life span.
Dr. Chase thinks the resemblance between crab and human inequality might come from similarities between crab vacancy chains and the ways people pass on wealth. While smaller crabs dont exactly inherit their wealth from bigger crabs, the largest shells are a scarce resource that only a few crabs are privileged enough to get their claws on.
Vacancy chains are just another way of transferring property, he said.
Although hes hesitant to draw any societal lessons from the crustaceans, he hopes hermit crabs can one day become a kind of model organism, like lab rats, for scientists studying wealth inequality.
The authors have nicely shown that the wealth distribution in crabs is humanlike, said Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, an anthropologist who studies human wealth inequality at the University of California, Davis. The pattern is very much like what researchers have found in small-scale human societies, both historic and contemporary, she said.
Although the transfer of wealth and property between people is an important contributor to inequality, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder said many other factors matter too, such as social connections and individual differences in skills and education. She doubts vacancy chains are the whole story in crab society, either.
The notion that crabs can teach us about human wealth distribution may be a little preposterous, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder added. But she said this kind of idea sharing between studies of humans and other animals is making social science, as a whole, richer.
Here is the original post:
Even Hermit Crabs Have Wealth Inequality - The New York Times
- How dogs are paving the way for human longevity drugs - Longevity.Technology - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Innovative Approaches to Improving Human Longevity - Securities.io - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Top 5 Companies Offering Solutions to Increased Human Longevity - Securities.io - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Morning Medical Update: Gut bacteria and longevity; People with ... - Medical Economics - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Artificial Intelligence and the Aging Process: A Match Made for ... - Down to Game - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Saint Bernard Lifespan: How Long Do Saint Bernards Live? - AZ Animals - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- 'Human Resources' Was Poised to Be Netflix's Longest-Running ... - PRIMETIMER - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Early Life Adversity Doesn't Affect Gorillas Like Other Species - The Good Men Project - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Wellness luminaries, experts to meet in KK - The Borneo Post - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- I grew up with hazardous smoke from forest fires in Asia. Here's what ... - Morningstar - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Workplace Networks Are More Important than Promotions to Engage ... - GlobeNewswire - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Accenture staff working at Google training AI move to unionise - The Australian Financial Review - June 12th, 2023 [June 12th, 2023]
- Hair Wigs and Extension Market Size to Grow by USD 5.26 billion from 2021 to 2026, Growth Driven by Technologi - Black Enterprise - April 10th, 2023 [April 10th, 2023]
- Want to age like a fine wine? Here are some tips for longevity and feeling younger - The Indian Express - February 18th, 2023 [February 18th, 2023]
- Human body | Organs, Systems, Structure, Diagram, & Facts - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- Human | Avatar Wiki | Fandom - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- Calorie Restriction and Fasting Diets: What Do We Know? - January 4th, 2023 [January 4th, 2023]
- Emma Thompson On Longevity Of Holiday Fave Love Actually But It Is SEX Actually That Is Earning Her Awards Buzz In Leo Grande - Deadline - December 26th, 2022 [December 26th, 2022]
- Heads or tails: What statistical models tell us about the probability of living beyond 110 - The Conversation - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- LinkedIn founder and VC Reid Hoffman says human amplification via A.I. will revolutionize large enterprises in the next five years - Fortune - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- Human hibernation is possible and could boost longevity | New Scientist - December 2nd, 2022 [December 2nd, 2022]
- Home - Human Longevity Institute - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity - Mayo Clinic - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Life expectancy - Wikipedia - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Life Expectancy - Our World in Data - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The Longevity Investors Conference Gstaad brought together longevity experts and deep-pocketed investors - Cointelegraph - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The Search for a Pill That Can Help Dogsand HumansLive Longer - WIRED - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Aging of the Heart Correlates With a Poor Gut Microbiome - Lifespan.io News - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Aditxt, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTX) Announces Development and Publication of a Mathematical Model for Predicting Longevity and Variations of Immune Response... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- FOXO Technologies Announces First Distribution Partner and Begins Product Rollout in California; Expands Executive Team With Insurance Industry Talent... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- A conversation with Holocaust scholar Dr. Irving Berkowitz - South Florida Sun Sentinel - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Nine postdoctoral fellowships in aging research awarded by the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and AFAR - EurekAlert - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The 5 Wellness Habits That Slow Down Aging, Science Reveals Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Winning Federal Contracts on the Top 20 Contract Vehicles - Bloomberg Government - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Lawrence Austin promoted to rank of colonel - Winona Times - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The longevity dividend: Work in an era of 100-year lives - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Retirement Savings Calculator - Northwestern Mutual - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Clues to Human Longevity Unearthed in Largescale Mouse Genetic Study - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Can we find ways to live beyond 100? Millionaires are betting on it. - MIT Technology Review - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Restrict Calories to Boost Immune Function - The Epoch Times - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Black Progress Index: Examining the social factors that influence Black well-being - Brookings Institution - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Kevin Williamson on Scream 6 and Franchise Longevity - Bleeding Cool News - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- 507-Year-Old Clam May Be the World's Oldest Living Being - History of Yesterday - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- I should look forward to early retirement, but I think I'm dreading it - CBC.ca - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- International Coffee Day 2022: How The Beloved Brew Helps Fight Cancer, Kidney Disease And Depression - ABP Live - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Corey Feldman And Jamison Newlander Talk The Lost Boys And The Birth Of The Two Coreys - Forbes - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Proven Levels of Human Longevity | NextBigFuture.com - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Prolonging healthspan by delaying ageing -- NUHS opens Singapore's first Centre for Healthy Longevity to increase healthy lifespan of Singapore... - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- What is the Secret to Longevity in Real Estate? - CandysDirt.com - Candy's Dirt - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Jeff Stukey & Jay Olshansky, Ph.D with Wealthspan Advisors, Interviewed on the Influential Entrepreneurs Podcast Discussing How Aging Science... - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- The Queen of the World - The Atlantic - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- THR Icon: At 100, Norman Lear Looks Back (And Ahead) at Whats Changed Since the Maude Abortion Episode - Hollywood Reporter - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- TIFF 2022: The Colour of Ink Review - ThatShelf.com - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Should Age Be on the Ballot? - Next Avenue - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Was The Spring Water At Balmoral Castle The Secret To Elizabeth II's Longevity? - Nation World News - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- A complete guide to the health benefits of nuts europeantimes.news - The European Times - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Debut Launches its Bio2Consumer Platform to Become the Leader in Vertically Integrated Synthetic Biology - PR Web - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Rapamycin Drug Used in Cancer Therapy Found to Increase Human Lifespan [Study] - Nature World News - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Eating Healthy: Why Eating Grapes Would Increase Lifespan | The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News Guardian Life The Guardian Nigeria... - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Beauty Bets on Longevity WWD - WWD - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Analysis of the impact of success on three dimensions of sustainability in 173 countries | Scientific Reports - Nature.com - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- You might have glowing skin in no time by making few easy changes to your skincare routine - TDPel Media - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Nucleai Appoints New Head of Pathology to Support Expansion in Biopharmaceutical and Clinical Markets - Business Wire - August 8th, 2022 [August 8th, 2022]
- Daily AI Roundup: Biggest Machine Learning, Robotic And Automation Updates - AiThority - August 8th, 2022 [August 8th, 2022]
- Prolonged and intense heatwave affecting parts of western and northern Europe breaks temperature records; globally, July 2022 was one of three warmest... - August 8th, 2022 [August 8th, 2022]
- YLEM: Augmenting sustainable futures through material exploration and testing - STIRworld - August 8th, 2022 [August 8th, 2022]
- Do you want to live forever? Big Tech and the quest for eternal youth - The New Statesman - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting - MIT Technology Review - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Renewal Bio Acquires Breakthrough Stem Cell Technology With Applications in Infertility and Longevity - Benzinga - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Get married or get a degree to live longer says study, debunking theories of womens longevity over men - Times Now - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Nucleai Appoints New Head of Pathology to Support Expansion in Biopharmaceutical and Clinical Markets - StreetInsider.com - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Some species are immortal but dying of old age is humanity's secret weapon - The Telegraph - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Opinion: Changing When and How Much We Eat May Extend Health Span - The Scientist - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Vieroots uses genome testing to win over a growing tribe of wellness enthusiasts - YourStory - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Herbs radiate and give you youthful skin - The Hans India - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- How Pop Culture, Politics, Science, and Business Got So Old - The Atlantic - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- John Hood: How to read this column | Columnists | journalnow.com - Winston-Salem Journal - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- How Long Is The Human Lifespan? Here's What Studies Have Found | mindbodygreen - mindbodygreen - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]
- Employees are livingand workinglonger. CEOs are introducing initiatives like phased retirements to harness the longevity economy - Fortune - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]
- Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed? - Quanta Magazine - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]