Arthropods as Food News

Friday night, Calhoun College had its annual "Trolley Night" dance, which is supposed to be a New Orleans and Mardi-Gras-style celebration. Why we do it in October and not in March when Mardis Gras comes around? I have no clue.

Anyway, it's a New Orleans celebration, so our pre-Trolley Night dinner appropriately involved New Orleans-themed cuisine. They say that crawfish is a big deal down there, appearing in étouffé and gumbos and oftentimes just plain broiled form. We had the broiled form that night:

Appetizing? See, normally this would have tasted fantastically, appealing to my tastes for rare dining hall food forms (we never get to taste Decapoda meat!), delicacy, and crustaceans. However, something was just off. My "disgust" senses were set off when I touched the crayfish with my tongs. I did not want to eat them! I was so skeeved out after having dissected the preserved crayfish in lab a week and a half ago. Does this happen when you dissect arthropods/anything in general? I was so sad to not be able to experience the delectability that I know crayfish has to offer. 

But, I suppose this novel disgust reaction is probably a good thing. In other arthopods-as-food related news, apparently a 32-year-old man Edward Archbold  just died in a bug-eating contest to win a $850 python in Deerfield Beach, Florida. He collapsed after eating 30 roaches, 30 worms, and 100 millipedes, and then he died later in the hospital. (Source 1, 2). No one is sure of the exact causes of his death, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he consumed an unhumanly amount of bugs. Just maybe.

Though I should add that it is, apparently, safe to eat roaches. There were another 20-30 participants in the competition, all of whom were totally fine (though, he had consumed the most bugs out of all of them). Thus far, no autopsy results on Archbold have revealed the cause of death, and there is only speculation surrounding the tragedy. It has been supposed that he "hit tolerance level for cockroach toxins" (CBS News). The fact that he was the only person to be affected by the roaches suggests that something was up with his physiology. Severe reactions to consuming roaches is rare.

If you want to see the video of this epic battle to the death, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QbAmDujNXjs#!. 

There were some pretty insightful YouTube comments. I will draw your attention to one potential zoologist who noted the arthropodal connection between lobsters and roaches:

Others are using this video as an excuse to make sweeping generalizations about countries and their people (notice the two "thumbs up"),

And still others are taking a moment to make tasteless puns.

So, as you can see, this video has inspired rich discussions about a range of topics, from socio-cultural phenomena to terrestrial arthropods, all laced with some killer bug puns when they are most appropriate.

Yours in always delivering only the most tangentially relevant information,

Chelsea