Photo / Gilles Mehme, Daniel Gino
The full text was published in New Knowledge, No. 5, 2015
Human-faced Ramo Crab Lamoha perso
The carapace is 5 cm wide, living waters are 450 to 2000 m, and it is geographically distributed in Polynesia, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Kiribati. The human-faced Rama crab only received its Latin scientific name in 1981, but it is a "primitive crab" that dates back to the Cretaceous period 145.5 million years ago. Because it lives in the dark deep sea and is extremely difficult to capture, it is a rare treasure in many natural history museums. There are more ancient fossils of the human-faced Rama crab than can be seen today. The term "personata" is derived from the "human face mask", but many people think that its "face" is closer to the cat's face.
Four-toothed male crab Dorippe quadridens
Although it is called "Guan Gong", it actually belongs to the so-called "human face crab" or "ghost face crab" family. The carapace is 4 cm wide, living waters 30 to 100 meters, geographically distributed along the coast of China and the Indian Ocean - western Pacific, Latin scientific name since 1793. Different branches of the "ghost-faced crab" family will cause the carapace to show different "faces" due to the different distribution of bone and bone tissue, but there is a surprising identity in the same branch. In a Chinese legend circulating in the West, this crab is believed to shelter reincarnated souls under its carapace. The picture shows a "yellow" female crab.
The carapace of the four-toothed male crab is quite hard, but still prefers to hide under the shell and starfish, and often uses sponge as a cover. Many four-toothed male crabs carry anemones on their shoulders. The oldest fossils of the four-toothed crab date back to the Geological Tertiary Period, which is 65 million to 2.6 million years old.
Daldorfia sp.
Latin scientific name "sp." Meaning: although it has been prevalent in the naming system of European naturalists since 1758, the direct roots of this crab are still unknown, and it may be called "Mizong" in Chinese.
Also known as the "stone crab", the carapace is 12 cm wide, the living water is 30 to 120 meters, and it is geographically distributed in the Indian Ocean - Western Pacific Ocean and the northern waters of Australia. Although its origin is mysterious, it did not prevent it from multiplying widely, and it is still commonly found in the shadows of reefs and coral reefs. The giant claws react slowly, but the unusual hardness of the claws and carapace also makes them self-protecting. The unique keratin in the carapace of the Mizong eclipse crab even makes it a valuable industrial raw material, but its edible value is greatly reduced by a strong force in their bodies that has not yet been understood by humans: there are many records of poisoning by eating the Mizong crab in Asia, but tests show that the mizong crab itself is not poisonous, and the source of the poison comes from the poisonous corals and marine fish they swallow.
Red-faced steamed crab Calappa rubroguttata
The Latin scientific name "rubroguttata" means "red spots", and the "red face" that is recognized by everything comes from its habit of inhabiting: always protecting its eyes with huge claws. But this nickname makes it easy to overlook the strong side of the red-faced steamed crab under the so-called "shyness".
The carapace of the red-faced crab is 12 cm wide, living waters of 10 to 50 meters, and is geographically distributed in the sea between Senegal and Angola. The red-faced steamed crab walks between shallow sand and gravel every day, and its claws look like "shame", but in fact they play a role similar to the sand shielding of camel eyelashes: even if it is hidden under the sand, its eyes can still peek out from the gap between the claws and look around.
What should not be underestimated is its pair of big jaws. Their presence in the waves was once nicknamed "cock of the sea" for the red-faced bun crab in ancient Greek times. When people realized the power of the pair of claws to penetrate the shell armor for feeding, the "rooster" was upgraded to "canopener crab". As for the "steamed bun", it was originally described as a "box" when it was one and closed. As we all know, there is a weapon called "tank" that is also called "box" when it first appears on the battlefield.
Redstone crab Grapsus grapsus
The difference between redstone crabs and their predecessors can be easily seen in the distribution of some organs associated with reproduction. The carapace is 7 cm wide and lives on shoal shoals and is geographically distributed in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Maroco Angola, the Canary Islands and the Azores. Compared with the "primitive crab", the redstone crab is considered to be a "new generation" in terms of physiological structure, and the Latin name was registered in 1758. But in fact they are already recorded in ancient Roman literature, and it is emphasized that they "run very fast". From this point of view, when it comes to crabs, humans may really be a little lazy.
Trapezia rufopunctata
Like ants, the most difficult thing about crabs is the variety of species that they can recognize from their appearance. The carapace of the red-spotted trapezoidal crab is only 2 cm wide and is distributed on the coral reefs of New Caledonia and Chesterfield, South Africa. Its name comes from its trapezoidal dorsal carapace, which, if not "vegetarian," is based on only the substances secreted by corals; the shell is similar in color to parasitic corals, and it is almost impossible to see without careful discernment.
Hypocolpus abboti
The subhumily crab belongs to the family Xanthidae , and its family name derives from the ancient Greek word for " yellow " . The family Fan Crab is a large family of hundreds of branches, and the Subhumily liver crab was included in its Latin family in 1894, named after the original recorder W.L. Abbott）。
The carapace of the Subhumily crab is 7 cm wide and 15 m in living water, and is geographically distributed in the waters and coral reefs of the western Pacific Ocean and New Caledonia. Ancestral intricate chelate structures may have been one of the reasons for the prosperity of their descendants, and the interlocking arthropod associations above and below the carapace have made them a template for all kinds of mechanical manipulation by humans today.