Crustaceans
Calcified chitin armor, multi-jointed appendages, and sonic cavitation claw strikes.
Crustacea
Crustaceans are the armored heavy machinery of oceans and shores. Encased in biomineralized chitin exoskeletons reinforced with calcium carbonate, they sport segmented limbs specialized for crushing, swimming, filtering, and striking with the force of bullets.
Key Evolutionary Adaptations
Mantis shrimp spring-loaded dactyl clubs accelerate at 10,000 g, vaporizing water bubbles to create 4,500-degree cavitation heat.
Pistol shrimp snap asymmetrical claws shut to fire sound shockwaves exceeding 210 decibels that stun passing fish.
Coconut crabs generate claw pinching forces exceeding 3,300 newtons, cracking open hard tropical coconuts with ease.
All Crustaceans
American Lobster
A seafloor crustacean with a crusher claw and a ripper claw. Scientists believe some may live to be 100 years old.
Antarctic Krill
A crustacean about 6 centimeters long, so abundant it can turn the sea reddish-brown, that most larger Antarctic animals depend on, directly or indirectly.
Atlantic Blue Crab
A paddle-legged swimmer with bright blue claws that sheds its hard shell as it grows.
Calanus Copepod
A small North Atlantic copepod whose oil sac fuels a winter sleep in deep water.
Coconut Crab
Land arthropod of up to 4 kilograms, with coconut-cracking claws and a leg span of up to a meter.
Common Hermit Crab
A scavenger that lives in an empty sea snail shell and raps on rivals' shells to try to take over better ones.
Common Pill Bug
A land-living crustacean that rolls into a ball, and in which bacterial DNA has become a new sex chromosome.
Giant Isopod
Deep-sea cousin of the pill bug, with about 3,500 lenses in each eye, that has been reported to survive eight weeks between meals in an aquarium.
Goose Barnacle
A crustacean that glues itself to driftwood, buoys and turtles and rides them across the open ocean.
Japanese Spider Crab
The Pacific's leggiest scavenger: a giant crab known to grow up to twelve feet across, picking over the seafloor off Japan.
Peacock Mantis Shrimp
The brightly colored reef hunter whose club strike hits twice: once with the limb, then again with collapsing bubbles.
Red King Crab
A spiny crab that can reach 24 pounds and a 5-foot leg span, and can only grow by shedding its shell.
Signal Crayfish
A plague-resistant crayfish brought to Europe to supplement stocks the plague decimated, and a carrier of the disease itself.
Tiger Pistol Shrimp
One oversized claw fires a high-speed water jet whose collapsing bubble, in a related shrimp, hits at least 5,000 kelvin and flashes with light.
Water Flea
A mostly see-through pond crustacean whose 200-megabase genome holds at least 30,907 genes.