- Fact 2: There are 44,000 different
species of Crustaceans, most of them live in the sea (marine)
but some are freshwater and others live on land
- Fact 3: The Woodlice is a
Crustacean despite living on land
- Fact 4: Crustaceans don’t have a
skeleton; their hard exoskeleton protects their body and
supports them
- Fact 5: Live lobsters can be
yellow, blue, orange and white but never red in color, they only
turn red when they have been cooked!
- Fact 6: The most popular
Crustaceans are from the Decapod group. Decapod means 'ten legs’
and species from this group include the Lobster, Prawn, Crabs
and Crayfish
- Fact 7: The Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira
kaempferi) is the largest crustacean in the world
- Fact 8: The Stygotantulus stock is
the smallest Crustacean in the world, measuring less than 0.1mm
in length!
- Fact 9: Soft Shell Crabs are simply
crabs who have moulted their exoskeleton in order to grown and
their new shell hasn’t hardened yet.
- Fact 10: A lobsters teeth are in
its stomach, an area called the ‘gastric mill’
- Fact 11: Shrimps move by walking
slowly across the sea floor but when fleeing from a predator,
they swim backwards quickly by curling and uncurling their
abdomen. This is known as the caridoid escape reaction.
- Fact 12: Male fiddler crabs have
one large claw, which they wave in the air to impress females
when trying to find a mate and intimidate other males and
predators. The waving of their claw is thought to resemble
playing the Fiddle!
- Fact 13: The Arrow Crab looks more
like a spider than a crab, the only way to tell the difference
is to count its legs (spiders have 8 legs whereas crabs have 10
legs)
- Fact 14: Lobsters have the ability
to regenerate body (autotomy) parts that they loose, for example
in order to escape a predator they can shed a claw, leg or
antennae
- Fact 15: Copepods are small
crustaceans, between 0.5mm and 5mm in length, one is even named
Cyclops after the one-eyed giant of mythology
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