The largest representative arthropods, the coconut crab!

Saw this amazing arthropod, every nervous flinch of horror and surprise — because no one in the world more interesting and, at the same time, worse than the coconut crab. Anyway, among the arthropods because it is considered to be the largest of their representative.

2. Coconut crab (lat. Birgus latro) really is not a crab, despite the striking similarity referred to in the title of arthropods relative. It is the land hermit crab belonging to the species of decapod.

3. In "childhood" birgus latro not too different from a hermit crab: it carries a his shell and almost all the time spent in the water. But once out of the larval state, and after leaving the water, he was not able to go back and some point and wearing a shell-house. Unlike brushes hermit crabs his abdomen is not the Achilles heel and gradually hardens, and the tail curls up under the body, protecting the body from cuts. Due to the special light he begins to breathe out of water.

4. Whereby cancers could equally exist comfortably in the water and on land? It turns out that the wise nature has provided them with two instruments breathing: light, ventilated air on the surface of the earth, and gills that allow breathing under water. But the second time the body loses its functions and palm pilferers have to completely switch to terrestrial life.

6. And though the version that its front claws cancer is able to split a coconut, failed miserably, his limbs, however, are sufficiently developed to quickly climb up the trunk of a palm tree, or bite off a human finger. And to coconut cancer really indifferent: nutritious pulp – the main dish in the menu, to which he owes his "coconut" name.

7. Sometimes the cancers diet is enriched with fruits of the Pandavas, and according to some sources, palm thieves happens to eating their own kind. Hungry cancer unerringly finds the closest "restaurant": inland navigation is an excellent sense of smell, which renders it a source of food, even if it is many kilometers away.

8. As for the "thieves' status," cancer, then the blame for his uncontrollable desire to pull in its burrow all sorts of things from the category that that is bad – edible and not.

9. The body of the coconut crab, like all decapod, is divided into a front part (cephalothorax), which has 10 legs, and the stomach. Front, the largest pair of legs has large claws (claws), and the left claw is much larger than the right. The next two pairs, as with other hermit crabs, are large, powerful with sharp ends, coconut crabs are used for travel on vertical or sloping surfaces. The fourth pair of legs much smaller than the first three, which allows young coconut crabs settle in mollusk shells or coconut shell, to protect. Adults use this pair for walking and climbing. The last pair is very small, which is usually hidden inside shell, used by females to care for the eggs and the males for mating.

10. With the exception of the larval stage, coconut crabs cannot swim and they will drown if you stay in the water for over an hour. For respiration, they use a special organ called the Gill lungs. This authority may be interpreted as a developmental stage between gills and lungs, and is one of the most significant adaptations of the coconut crab to the environment. Gill lungs contain tissue similar to that found in gills, but suited to absorb oxygen from air instead of water.

11. The coconut crab has a well developed sense of smell that it uses to find food. Like most crabs that live in water, they have specialized organs located on the antennae, which determine the concentration and the direction of the smell.

12. During the day, these arthropods are holed up in burrows or rocky crevices that are lined with coconut fiber or foliage to increase humidity in the home. While resting in its burrow, the coconut crab closes the entrance with one claw to preserve the moist microclimate in the burrow necessary for its breathing organs.

13. As its name suggests, this crab eats coconuts, and actually able to climb coconut palm, to a height of 6 meters, where the powerful claws pinch off coconuts, if they are not available on earth. If a fallen coconut does not break if dropped, a crab in a week or even two will Eviscerate it, until it gets to the juicy pulp of the nut. If this dreary boring job for the crab, it raises the coconut to a tree and throws it down, in order to facilitate his work. Descending back to earth, they sometimes fall, but without prejudice to health may suffer a fall from height 4, 5 meters. Will not give up coconut crab and other fruits, newborns turtles, and carrion. They were also observed catching and eating a Polynesian rat.

14. Another name palm thief, he got for the love of all things shiny. If the path of the crab caught the spoon, fork, or other shiny object, to be sure, he'll try to drag it into its burrow.

15. Since the beginning of June to end of August palm thieves starts the breeding period. The courtship process is long and tedious, but the pairing occurs pretty quickly. The fertilized eggs the female carries in a few months on the underside of the abdomen. When the eggs are ready for hatching, the female descends to the sea during high tide and releases the larvae into the water . Over the next three – four weeks floating in the water larvae go through several stages of development. After 25 – 30 days, already small crabs sink to the bottom, settle in shells of gastropods, and are preparing to migrate to earth. At this time, the kids sometimes visit the land, and gradually losing the ability to breathe underwater, finally moving into the main habitat. Coconut crabs reach sexual maturity around five years after hatching, but reach their maximum size only after 40 years.

16. Palm thieves live in the tropics, on the Islands of the Indian and Western Pacific oceans. Christmas island in the Indian ocean has the largest population density of coconut crabs in the world.

17. Swedish and Australian scientists have confirmed the veracity of stories about the coconut crabs. So, inhabitants of the Pacific Islands asserted that those a few kilometers can smell the odor, for example, of meat or ripe fruit. Indeed, the special bait planted by the researchers, immediately attracted the attention of the employers-thieves, who nevertheless disdained the usual pieces of bread, which are susceptible of ordinary crabs.

18. The function of the janitor is, of course, good and useful, however, since birgus latro being mostly nocturnal and not very friendly when they came upon it, the locals are not very enthusiastic about experiencing. The reduction of its population have forced local authorities to set a limit on the catch of birgus latro. In Papua New Guinea prohibited to include it in restaurant menus, on the island of Saipan is to catch crabs with a carapace less than 3.5 cm, and from June to September, during the breeding season.

19. On the inner surface of the walls of the Gill cavity of this descendant of the land hermit crabs develop protruding skin folds, which branch out the numerous blood vessels. It's real easy to allow oxygen fill the Gill cavity of air. Lungs are ventilated by movements of scaphognathite, and also due to the ability of animals from time to time to raise and lower the carapace, which are special muscles.

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