Can Crabs Think? Can Lobsters Feel?
Because crustaceans have shells, we may tend to think of them as like machines. Yet crustaceans, along with octopuses, show some surprising abilities and complexities. Take crabs,for example:  A new Swansea University study has revealed how common shore crabs can navigate their way around a complex maze and can even remember the route in order to find food   Spatial learning is quite complicated, so figuring out how it works in crustaceans gives us a better understanding of how widespread this ability, and learning in general, is in the animal kingdom.  The researchers tested 12 crabs over four weeks, placing food at the end of the maze each time. The route to the end of the maze required five changes in direction, and included three dead ends. Over the four-week period, the team saw the crabs show a steady improvement in both the time taken to find the food at the end of the maze and, crucially, in the number of wrong turns taken. Even more surprisingly, when returned to the maze two weeks later but without any food on offer at the end, they all reached the end of the maze in under eight minutes  a clear sign that they had remembered the route. New crabs which had had not been in the maze before took far longer to reach the end, and some did not make it to the end of the maze at all during the one-hour study period.