If you say that the world's largest crab, I believe that many viewers will think of the king crab, the king crab not only has a leg span of nearly 2 meters, weighs more than 12 kilograms, and from the name is also a bit of a feeling of its own is it! But just as Tyrannosaurus rex is not necessarily the biggest dinosaur, king crabs are not the biggest crabs, there are two main problems: one is that king crabs are not real crabs, and there is a guy who is bigger than king crabs in real crabs.
That's our protagonist today, spider crab. Horseshoe crab, king crab, coconut crab although from the name of the crab are related to crabs, but unfortunately these are not actually crabs. In the biological classification, only amputees are soft-beetles, decapods, egg-hugging suborders, and suborder brachynchys.
Spider crabs belong to the spider crab family in the order Short-tailed, which is very justified. In particular, the overlord of the spider crab, the Gan-style giant crab, successfully suppressed the pseudo crab king crab in terms of size to become the largest crab in the world, defending the glory of the crab family.
1, Gan-style giant crab English name Macrocheira Kampfaeri
Because it is mainly distributed in the coastal areas of Japan, it is also called Japanese spider crab, because this guy's ten legs are really a bit weird, completely out of proportion to the body, the maximum span can exceed 4 meters there are twice as many king crabs, the size of the dorsal carapace is close to 40 centimeters, the total weight is up to 19 kilograms, and the weight is also 1.5 times that of the king crab, although it only loses to the 20 kilogram American arowant lobster with a slight weakness of 1 kilogram, and failed to become the heaviest amputee in the world.
However, in terms of body size, it is definitely the existence of the only gear. So in fact, the proportion of Japanese spider crabs in their youth is still quite normal, and the legs are indeed thin and long, but on the whole, they are not so weird, what is the problem? It's because after they become adults, we all know that amputees such as lobsters and crabs have to molt all the time if they want to grow up, and molting is such a process when the skin grows up. The Japanese spider crab is very strange after adulthood, the size of the back armor is fixed, no matter how it molts, it does not change, but the ten legs, including the large pincers, do not have this restriction, and the skin will become longer once it is molted and will never show leg length.
So the older the guy got, the more out of proportions he got, and finally he grew into a monster with a small body and big legs. Got the name spider crab, and there is an interesting phenomenon, that is, its pair of large pincers only males of the large pliers will grow far more than the length of the other eight legs, the female is not like this, like other crabs, the claws are much shorter than the walkers
As for why male aofoot needs to grow so long, there is no exact statement. What is a speculation? It is the male Japanese spider crab, when mating, will use the claw foot to stuff the tendon sac into the female crab, is it more convenient for the claw foot to be longer? Or a little more ritualistic, which is not easy to say, but even if it is developed to a meter or two long, it is a little too flashy. In 2009, Japanese fishermen caught a spider crab with a leg span of 3.7 meters and a weight of 14 kilograms.
Then this spider crab was exported to Europe for exhibition, and the Europeans gave it an image name called Crabzilla, which is obviously based on the famous Japanese sea monster Gozilla, and the Japanese spider crab is really like Gozilla, living in the deep sea, the water depth of two or three hundred meters is more, the deepest can reach 800 meters. For the ancients, this behemoth lurking in the deep sea has always been full of mystery, and it looks so strange, so it gives people an impression of fierceness and terror.
Even in Japanese folklore, there is a saying that spider crabs eat people, which is very suitable for scaring children. In fact, although the spider crabs look a little scary, they are not fierce predators, they are omnivorous on the seabed, and mainly play the role of a scavenger. Mainly eating animal carcasses and carrion, but also eating seaweed and algae, these plants, you want to wield the pair of more than 1 meter long and mighty pliers with a small piece of seaweed stuffed into the mouth, it is almost like guan gong qinglong crescent knife cutting potatoes. It is too big and too small to use, but fortunately, spider crabs will occasionally improve their diet and knock a few shells to relieve their hunger. That pair of large pliers finally has a little use, but overall, the spider crab's eating habits are still in great contrast with its fierce appearance.
Immortal genes
American chevron lobster it will never age, Japanese spider crab also has this characteristic, Japanese spider crab is believed to live to more than 100 years old, and even a 100-year-old body organs do not have the meaning of aging, after each molt not only the legs grow a little longer, and the broken legs will regenerate, the survival ability is very strong.
Of course, like lobsters, the older the spider crab, the more difficult it is to molt, and a large part of the old spider crab is exhausted and dies in the process of molting, so as long as the molting is successful, it can live for many years, similar to the concept of crossing. And ah, the older the spider crab, the longer the time between its molting, if it does not molt for many years, the old shell will be damaged more and more seriously, and the disease caused by the invasion of germs will also kill it, although the spider crab cannot theoretically achieve immortality because of the molting, but the life expectancy of more than 100 years is already quite remarkable in amputees. Considering that the ocean is so large and human exploration of the deep sea is very limited, it is actually difficult to say how old the world's oldest spider crab can live, how old it can grow, and the reproductive ability of Japanese spider crabs is very strong, female crabs can lay about 1.5 million eggs at a time, which is still very stable in terms of population. But there is another factor that has to be taken into account, that is, since you are a crab, you look like a lot of meat
Whether it can be eaten or not, whether it is delicious or not, becomes an unavoidable question. About 100 years ago, the American crayfish was still used to feed pigs. Japanese spider crabs are also very unpopular, and occasionally fishermen's trawlings are patched up with a few, and they are basically unpopular. At that time, people generally felt that the flesh of this spider crab was too loose, and the taste was a little light and watery. But now it is not the same, The Japanese spider crab has become a very popular ingredient, although the taste may not be as good as the king crab, but the price is much cheaper than the king crab, the pressure to eat is not much, as for the problem of light taste, foodies use a small bowl of delicious dipping sauce to solve, is not a thing, since the human recipe that what is not old gene reproduction ability is a floating cloud. Unsurprisingly, Japanese spider crabs have suffered from smaller and smaller overfished stocks, and the size of their catches is not as large as before, and the situation is not optimistic. What to do? Fortunately, there are now protective measures, just now we said that Japanese spider crabs generally live in the deep sea, when they are in the deep sea when the fishing difficulty will be very large, but every year from January to April spider crabs will come to the diving area of about 50 meters to mate and spawn, the reason why they want to come to the diving area to lay eggs is because the small spider crabs hatched in the future can not adapt to the temperature of the deep water area, and the diving area is warmer. This makes it much easier to catch, and the crabs that are ready to mate have a great impact on the population. So there are now laws prohibiting crabs from catching crabs during the months of January to April, ensuring that they complete mating and breeding. In addition, there is also a protective measure is artificial seedlings, just now we said that female crabs can lay 11.5 million eggs at a time, but only a very few will survive most of them are eaten as plankton, considering that spider crabs are very suitable for the artificial breeding environment, so there is a method of artificial breeding to let spider crabs hatch in a safe environment and wait for them to grow up, and then release them into the sea after a stronger viability, the effect of this method is still good, Let's hope that the number of this magical creature will stabilize again.