Spider crab: century-old crayfish larger than a man are almost invincible (8 photos)

An adult spider crab has a leg span of 1.5 to 3.8 meters - it is the largest arthropod on the planet. That is, one crab can hug a crowd of people with its claws at once!





When you and a friend come from slightly different walks of life.

But few people want to cuddle with an arthropod. Much more often they want to eat it. This is understandable: the spider crab contains 19 kilos of delicious meat. But getting to it is almost impossible: in order to maintain such a mass, the crustacean has grown an extremely durable exoskeleton, which most aquatic predators are unable to break.



Come closer, I will hug you all!

Only octopuses, dolphins and large fish are capable of harming our hero. But in response, they risk running into extremely painful blows from the crab spider’s claw.





Man, don’t let me go for crab sticks, stop, think!

The crab itself is not picky about food: it feeds on any carrion, and in its absence, tears shellfish into pieces and devours algae. No shellfish either? It doesn’t matter, the arthropod lives on internal reserves for weeks!



This is someone who really has his feet to the ground.

A biology student is also capable of not eating or drinking for days before a session, but his life expectancy will be miserable and short. But the spider crab doesn’t need such extreme conditions: the arthropod monster is capable of living for centuries! Literally: the lifespan of the underwater giant is up to 100 years.



Bro, where did you get the plant on the seabed?

However, there is one nuance: I hope that I will immediately become an adult crab, because the mortality rate of larvae is simply terrifying. Even before the young are born, spider crabs expose themselves to increased danger. They gather in warm shallow water, the depth of which does not reach 50 meters. Despite the fact that their standard habitat is a depth of up to 600 meters. And if the males, after a date, immediately go into the pitch darkness of deep water, then the females will not see such happiness. For the next 10 days, they are forced to sit in the danger zone, because up to 1.5 million eggs are attached to each abdomen.



Like if you want to crawl under them.

The fact is that adult crabs feel great at a water temperature of 10-13 °C. But give the eggs a warmer climate; warm water increases the chances of successful hatching. And still, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of eggs will never hatch. But those babies that leave the eggs will have time to envy their unborn brothers and sisters more than once. They will spend the next 50-70 days as planktonic larvae, which are eaten by all and sundry. Later, life will not become any easier either: before each molt, baby crabs will lose from 30% to 70% of the population.



I was born! The hardest part is over! Right? Right?..

Only in 10-12 years will the crab spider turn from a trembling creature into an armor-piercing machine. Out of a clutch of more than a million eggs, only a dozen or two become adults. But those who survived have a decent chance of living to a ripe old age without any problems!



However, nothing can save people.