They used to be really close. They hung out a lot in high school and swore they’d be best friends forever. But, you know, life comes along, and they just drifted apart - nothing major happened, no hard feelings, but they just began living different lives. They keep saying they should get back together and hang out. Maybe one day they will.
*For best effect, play Dawson’s Creek theme song while reading this.
Fun tangental fact: the giant isopod can live a long time without eating.
Your really should update the Urban Dictionary :
Lucy
speaking as someone who has eaten insects on purpose (grasshoppers and ants) lobsters and crabs are in Smelltastydae and Cockroaches and Japanese Beetles are in Smellnastydae. It’s a surprisingly important distinction.
Way too early in the morning … way too funny … excuse me whilst I clean the coffee splatter off my monitor …
But how are giant isopods when steamed and served with drawn butter? Inquiring minds want to know.
-MMM-
The tree lobster is cockroach-like.
The Japanese seem to enjoy them, as one might anticipate. However, I see no mention of garlic or butter.
Perhaps “I My Exhaustively Ignorant Opinion”? No offense meant but I hate these acronyms.
I think taxonomy wouldn’t help - the OP raises the question that I as I must admit have also thought about many times. Why is it that lobsters, shrimp etc. are sorted into “yummi”, in particular when served with a nice Cocktail Sauce, but cockroaches and other insects are sorted into “yuck” although both have lots of legs, a hard exoskeleton and an edible (at least on crustaceans) abdomen? My conclusion is that only my cultural background brings me to eat one and stomp on the other. That insight wouldn’t cause me to munch ants but hey, I have to live with it.
It no doubt helps that lobsters are a lot bigger. The chitinous shell is a lot less yummy than the soft innards, if it’s even edible at all, and it’s more work to remove a lot of teeny tiny shells to get to teeny tiny inner parts than it is to remove one big shell.
Genetic relatedness has nothing to do with occupation of similar ecological niches.
The similarities are in niche only, in the first example.
In the example of cockroach and lobster, I doubt there is even that similarity.
The OP is apparently sparked by a completely non-scientific and irrational aversion to smaller animals with a hard carapace that scuttle, wherever they may live.
Personally I find lobsters very tasty and cockroaches utterly loathsome but I keep my subjective reactions and my knowledge of current scientific nomenclature (such as it is), quite separate. Sort of like science and religion.
Coincidently, I was just debating having, in my NYC apartment, a crab and/or crayfish boil.
Otherwise I hate dealing with those fuckers, and get crayfish only to make crayfish butter for a pumped sauce Normand. (Old timey Normandy garnish, but, unaccountably, shown with shrimp instead of whole crayfish.)
Fleurons, truffles, whole crayfish, and mussels not served at Leo’s All You Can Eat.
I am with the OP. Not because cockroaches, but because of those huge underwater roly-polies they found. It just emphasized to me “Why yes, you are eating big bugs.” You know, these buggers: Sea Isopods
At the risk of repeating myself, lobster and and crab actually ARE yummy, and shrimp are a mild-flavored protein-rich food. Cockroaches actually smell horrible, and probably taste bad. I’ve eaten some of the more popularly eaten insects (ants and grasshoppers) and the reason we don’t eat those is “creepy crawlie!”, but I think we have more compelling reasons to avoid eating cockroaches. Most beetles taste nasty, too. (based on experiences of friends, family, and acquaintances who have eaten them both on purpose and by mistake.)
Cockroaches carry a range of bacteria that we, humans, are susceptible to, like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella. I don’t mean what can grow if they’re improperly prepared or stored, like seafood. I mean they are little festering disease pots. Nobody want to eat that. And yes, people who’ve tried say they do taste terrible.
Nice avatar/post combo.
One difference is a different strategy for hardening the exoskeleton.
This chemical difference in their outer coverings goes way back in the split between these subgroups.