The Lybia tessellata is known to a wider audience as the boxer crab (or pom-pom crab). The name comes from the fact that it carries a sea anemone in each of its claws, which makes its claws resemble boxing gloves. It uses the stinging cells of the anemones to threaten predators when attacked and to collect food particles.1)
Decapoda is an order with about 10,000 species that the largest crustaceans belong to. They include American lobster, which can reach a weight of 44 pounds, and the giant Japanese spider crab, which has legs that can span up to 12 feet. 2)
There were early 10,700,000 tons of edible crustaceans produced in 2007. Humans mostly consume decapod crustaceans: crabs, lobsters, shrimp, crawfish, and prawns. 3)
Crustaceans can live from a few days to several years. It has been proven that the lifespan of crayfish can be as long as 40 years. 4)
The most expensive crab in the world costs $46,000. 5)
There is a completely transparent crustacean in the world. It is the Cystisoma. 6)
Crustaceans are arthropods that include lobsters, crabs, crayfish, shrimp, krill, centipedes, and whiskers, among others. To date, about 67,000 species of these animals have been described. 7)
The first crustaceans appeared on Earth in the middle of Cambrian more than 500 million years ago. 8)
As the crustaceans grow they must moult, travel to a safe place where they shed their outer carapace, and quickly increase in size before the next carapace hardens. 9)
Crustaceans are characterized by two pairs of antennae, three pairs of mouth legs and all but the first pair of feelers are bipedal (they separate into exopodite and endopodite). 10)
Most crustaceans breathe using their gills, but some species have developed primitive lungs. 11)
The diet of different species of crustaceans varies greatly. Most of them are scavengers but some are predatory, some are herbivores, some are filter feeders or parasites. 12)
Most crustaceans reproduce sexually, but there are also hermaphrodites and species that change sex with age. 13)
After hatching from the egg, one of three types of development can occur, depending on the species. Some crustaceans hatch as adults and grow with successive moults (epimorphosis). Others hatch as larvae and with each moulting produce successive body segments (anamorphosis) and still others, similarly to insects, undergo a transformation that may consist of several larval stages (metamorphosis). 14)
The strangest of all parasitic crustaceans is Cymothoa exigua, which attacks fish and takes up residence in their mouth. 15)
The largest crustacean is the Japanese spider crab. Its leg span can reach 12.5-foot leg span, the cephalothorax is 40 centimeters long and the weight of an adult is about 42 pounds. 16)
The second-largest crab in the world is Coconut crab. They can lift objects with a weight of a 10-year-old child. 17)
The smallest crustacean in the world is Stygotantulus stocki. 18)
The pistol shrimp is a marine terror of small fish and invertebrates. It hunts its prey in a very unusual way. 19)