Apple
I think this crab is cold. That would explain why it seems to be wearing mittens over its claws. 6 out of 10.
EmojiOne
Is this crab doing a shadow puppet play about warring sibling birds in the nest? The claws look like little bird beaks.The eyes seem way to big for its stalks. This is some sort of angsty, emo teenage crab with an art project. It might be nice when it grows out of its akward phase. 3 out of 10.
Sure, this social media giant is contributing the decline and probable fall of democracies in several nations, but damn! They got someone who was paying attention in invertebrate biology and respects the crustacean to draw their emoji. The claws look like they could do serious damage. The lines on the carapace show more attention to detail than anyone else. I feel like I could almost key it out to the genus. 10 out of 10.
The Google crab has seen your browser history and is shocked, shocked it says, by the websites you visit. It wants to push you away, which is why its claws are in some sort of weird backwards pose. 4 out of 10.
LG
An abyssal crab, judging from the teensy-weensy eyes. Kind of funky bulbous claws, but bonus points for its wickedly curved final pair of thoracopods. They look like kama. 7 out of 10.
Microsoft
I think this crab was produced by a game of telephone between artists. Someone once saw a crab, drew it, then showed their drawing to someone who copied the drawing, who showed it to another person who copied the drawing, and this went on maybe about ten to twenty times. As Magritte might say, “Ce n’est pas un crabe.” (This is not a crab.) 3 out of 10.
Samsung
Argh! Dude! What happened to your legs? And your claws can’t open! I’m so sorry. Is there a foundation we can donate for to support research into your condition? 1 out of 10.
Emojidex
Flashback to 1984 and the release of Romancing the Stone:
Gloria: [observing men in a bar]
Wimp. Wimp. Loser. Loser. Major loser. Too angry. Too vague. Too desperate. God, too happy.
This is the “God, too happy” crab. Seriously freaking me out how happy this guy is. I think this crab has had chemical stimulation. -2 out of 10.
Another poor unfortunate victim of some sort of leg disfigurement. Those claws cannot work, the leg tips look unsuitable for grasping any benthic substratum. And yet I can feel somethings besides pity for this crab. Something about the dots on the carapace say to me, “This is a crab that has not stopped living. This is a crab happy to get a tramp stamp and put it out there.” 6 out of 10.
Ooh, it’s a little baby crab! It’s so tiny! It looks like it lives in the water column, floating and hoping no fish eats it. It will be sad when it grows up and will turn into into the EmojiOne artsy emo teen crab. 8 out of 10.
What have we learned from all this? That all crabs in the Internet are red. Or orange-y red. Except for Samsung crab, whose brown colour is obviously some sort of symptom of whatever disease it has.
Inspiration from ant emoji ratings. Hat tip to Alex Wild and Melanie Ehrenkranz.
Come back for World Emoji Day 2019, when we’ll rate shrimp emoji!
External links
an entomologist rates ant emojis
Where did you find the high-resolution versions of all the crab emojis? I'd like to do the same for sauropods.
ReplyDeleteAh, never mind, I got it: https://emojipedia.org/crab/
ReplyDelete