Post #14008

Kalappa: A crab in very heavy armor. And their fights are a real tournament of knights! No one will ever return to the Middle Ages. No more fair knights in fine armor. No tournaments and noble deeds with the name of the lady of the heart on your lips. This page of history has finally been turned for everyone. Except for crabs. Here they have complete order with chivalry! Especially in crabs from the Kalappa genus. In foreign articles he is regularly called the knight crab, and journalists, at first glance, have every reason for this. Just look at his armor, it's excellent even by the standards of other crabs! The thick and durable shell curves downwards from the sides and protects the legs, which themselves are perfectly armored, by the way. Thanks to this structure of the carapace, the crab can assume an excellent defensive posture. If he presses his claws and walking legs to himself, he will turn into a 15-centimeter oval armored cookie with almost no gaps in the armor! Why aren't you a knight? But to be a knight, armor alone is not enough. Nobody calls armadillos and pangolins knights, right? A noble warrior needs to behave accordingly. Therefore, males arrange beautiful fights for females. The battle for the lady of the heart occurs as follows. When a female craves attention and passion, she secretes pheromones, which attract 2 males at night. They have a beautiful, bloodless fight, during which one crab drives the other away. Then he gently embraces the female and carries her in his arms for several days. It is difficult to find something nobler, more beautiful and graceful in nature. If you forget about the nuances, of course. Nobility and beauty will instantly evaporate if more than 2 crabs come to smell the pheromones. In this case, a beautiful tournament will instantly turn into a classic public scuffle. Or even in pursuit of a crab thief who decided to steal the main prize on the sly. And the knights run surprisingly fast for their size. And the most unpleasant thing is that the female is perceived by the males only as a prize, not even as a living being. No one asks her opinion, and she herself is not able to resist. The fact is that the female releases pheromones 3-5 days before molting. At this time, she is greatly weakened and almost unable to move independently - the armor is heavy and difficult to remove. Well, males carry females in their arms, of course, not because of romantic impulses. This is how they protect their prey from other contenders and wait until the female begins molting. After all, the shell of these crabs is designed in such a way that the male can fertilize the eggs only during the molting of the females. So the knights are fussing about: stealing girls, organizing fights and little wars in the style of all-against-all. In general, with the crab knights everything is really like in the Middle Ages, only in the real, and not idealistic-romantic. Noble fights and beautiful armor coexist with