{"id":161378,"date":"2025-11-30T22:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161378\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T22:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:32:09","slug":"this-creature-has-one-of-the-mightiest-most-lethal-weapons-in-the-animal-kingdom-and-he-uses-it-to-impress-the-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161378\/","title":{"rendered":"This creature has one of the mightiest, most lethal weapons in the animal kingdom \u2013\u00a0and he uses it to impress the girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consider elephant tusks, elk antlers, rhino horns or the curved canines of the extinct sabre-toothed cat<\/a>\u2026 these weapons may be enormous, but, proportionally, it\u2019s the male fiddler crab that owns the mightiest weapon on record. <\/p>\n

The male\u2019s larger claw can be half of its total body mass \u2013 the equivalent of carrying your entire bodyweight as one of your arms, everywhere you go. Never has the expression \u2018red in tooth and claw\u2019 seemed more apt. But it\u2019s not so simple: these crabs are not violent.<\/p>\n

There are over 100 species of fiddler crab living in the tropics around the globe. Males defend burrows in the tidal zone from rivals, and passing females choose those they want to mate with, favouring the biggest claws and prime burrows. <\/p>\n

The massive claws require so much energetic investment that only the fittest individuals brandish the most impressive examples. So for the females, brawn is best.<\/p>\n

A male crab\u2019s muscle-packed claw can pinch with a force four times stronger than that needed to puncture an opponent\u2019s shell \u2013 with such a destructive weapon, you might expect to see beaches and mudflats strewn with carcasses from battles. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the case. In fact, most species of fiddler crab rarely fight, but they wave their claws thousands of times a day, as a signal of strength to nearby crabs.<\/p>\n

Opponents assess one another by the size of their adversary\u2019s claw and the frequency with which they wave it.<\/p>\n

Smaller clawed crabs invariably back down: the best-endowed crustacean nearly always wins without a fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here you\u2019ve got animals with lethal weapons and yet they\u2019re never using them to kill,\u201d says Professor Doug Emlen, a biologist at the University of Montana and author of Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt leads to this paradox that the species with the biggest weapons of all are often the most peaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA colossal crab the size of a car tyre was pushing against my door\u201d<\/a>
\u201cThey\u2019re all eating each other right now… it’s the craziest I’ve ever seen them.” Divers film surreal tuna crab swarm in California<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consider elephant tusks, elk antlers, rhino horns or the curved canines of the extinct sabre-toothed cat\u2026 these weapons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-161378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}