A rare creature not often seen in Korea is drawing attention because it is known through YouTube videos.
Viewers were shocked by a video posted on the famous biological YouTuber Jeunvre channel on the 13th. It became known that this is the first very large creature officially imported into the country, and that it also costs 3 million won per animal. The identity of this creature, which has both an amazing appearance and ecological value, is the “Asian pitching crab.”
Due to the urgent news that came during the holiday, Jeongbur headed straight to a theme park specializing in biology in Dongtan. What greeted him at the scene was a strange creature beyond imagination. The Asian pitch crab, which weighs only 4 to 5 kg and has a body diameter of over 30 cm, has a hard carapace and protruding spines, which is reminiscent of a creature from the movie “Alien.”
A field official said, “The object currently on display is relatively small,” and “the World Record class object grows to a whopping 9 kg.” The pitching crab introduced in the video is the first case imported to Korea after a whopping 3 to 4 years of quarantine and import procedures, and it is reported that there is currently no place other than this theme park where it can actually be seen.
In addition to Asian pitch crab, various species such as mangrove pitch crab, heating pitch crab, and Atlantic pitch crab (also known as health horse pitch crab) were also introduced in this video. In particular, in the latter half of the video, scenes of pitching crabs mating and young pitcher crabs that were actually hatched appeared, and viewers were deeply impressed by how young individuals 45 days after birth were actively moving in the tank.
The Asian pitch crab is a so-called “living fossil” that has hardly changed its shape from the Paleozoic Era about 400 million years ago to the present. It has a hard shell similar to a helmet and a long, pointed tail (telson), and is called a 'horseshoe crab' in English. However, unlike common crabs, taxonomically, they belong to the Oolegate subphylum, which is close to spiders and scorpions.
There are three types of pitch crabs distributed in Asia, and the Sega pitch crab lives in places such as Japan, Korea, and the coasts of China and boasts the largest size. When these creatures reach the spawning season, they come to the intertidal period to lay eggs, and their growth rate is very slow, taking about 14 years to become adults.
What's interesting is that it's pitched blood. Thrush has blue blood, and the substance called lysate (LAL) contained in it is used as an essential ingredient for detecting endotoxins in medical supplies such as vaccines and injections. Because of this, pitch crab is a creature with high commercial value, but its population has plummeted due to excessive harvesting and habitat destruction, and it is internationally protected as an endangered species (EN).