The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014)
I ate oysters for the first time ever the other day. As it happens, this was also the first time I had knowingly eaten anything alive [1]. If you're worried about cruelty, don't be, it's absolutely fine, so they say: oysters have ganglia, or nerves, but the jury is still out on whether they can actually feel anything. They're also not exactly what you might call 'sentient', so much so that there are even some vegans who eat oysters. They are little more than a barely responsive muscle. But whether they can feel or think about anything at all doesn't entirely make the oysters complicit with being eaten.
Of course, there is the argument that if they didn't want to be eaten they should try being a little less delicious. Nothing's going to draw attention to yourself as quickly as being desirable. So, in reference to not being eaten, Molluscs (that's what oysters are) play a game of protection versus speed. Either they grow a calcium shell as protection, or they forego this and focus on being the speediest little guy in town [2]. Oysters have gone the former route. Their plan is to move around really really slowly, until they find a spot they like, and then they stay there for ever and ever and ever, protected by a hard shell. Does that sound a bit familiar?
Now I can tell you from experience that oysters have put a lot of energy into that shell. That thing is *tough*. If you've ever trod on a snail by accident then you'll know that snails put decidedly less time and effort into their shells. They are wafer thin [3]. But then snails are a great deal more able than oysters. What seems to be the case with molluscs is that the more simplistic a being you are, the more you protect yourself. Or, to put it another way, the softer and more exposed you are, the harder and tougher that shell needs to be. Does that sound a bit familiar?
Anyway, these guys are Molluscs, and Molluscs are not my area of expertise. My area of expertise is (as anyone who has been to my house will know) Arachnids [4]. Arachnids do something a little cooler than molluscs: they build their skeleton on the outside of their body [5]. But this doesn't play any kind of game with speed or being sedentary, all Arachnids are kind of fast as the skeleton is far more manageable than a shell. Hell, it's just like wearing a protective suit. But then you still need to grow, and having your skeleton on the outside makes this tricky. So what they do is shed their skeleton, find a warm safe place, and sit there, allow their body to grow, and then cover it in a new skeleton [6]. This isn't the way for *all* Arachnids though. If you choose to forego the skeleton shedding route, then you'll go through life as one thing, then pupate, and become a whole other thing [7]. And yes, as you might expect, Arachnids who either shed their skeleton or pupate are particularly unsociable during this period of time, because they are highly vulnerable during the regrowth period. Does that sound a bit familiar?
1. There are no clear numbers on how many living creatures the average person eats a year. The internet will tell you that you eat around 7 spiders a year. But seriously... the internet? Regardless, you do eat a bunch of living things every year.
2. Well, comparatively speedy in the Mollusc world anyway.
3. Yes. This is a reference to the Mr Creosote scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, 1983)
4. Or, what you might term 'bugs'. Arachnids include insects and spiders, basically. You know, bugs.
5. Unlike the Mollusc, Arachnids build their skeleton out of keratine, the same stuff that your hair and fingernails are made of. Think about that next time you see a bug.
6. Most of the dead Spiders that you've found in your life weren't dead Spiders at all. They were cast off skeletons. Arachnids go through a regrowth period seven times usually. Which means that in a Spider's life they'll make seven empty shell skeletons. The term for this 'in-between' phase of being soft and vulnerable is termed instar.
7. Sure, you're thinking about Butterflies and Moths here, but you can also think about Beetles, because that's what they do. Did you know that Beetles make up one third of all species on Earth? Well, you do now.