Thinking about the immortality of the crab (Spanish: Pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo) is a Spanish idiom about daydreaming. The phrase is usually a humorous way of saying that one was not sitting idly, but engaged constructively in contemplation or letting one's mind wander.
Crabs and lobsters have an unusual longevity for arthropods, their mortality rate does not increase with age, and this is attributed to DNA repair by the enzyme telomerase.
The phrase is usually used to express that an individual was daydreaming, "When I have nothing to do I think about the immortality of the crab" (Cuando no tengo nada que hacer pienso en la inmortalidad del cangrejo). It is also used to wake someone from a daydream; "are you thinking about the immortality of the crab?" ("¿Estás pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo?")
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Famous quotes containing the words thinking, immortality and/or crab:
“But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody’s assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must therefore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature,
always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)