Goliath Crab
Walking Ocean Floor
Giant enemy crab that hit the weak spot of your ship? Yeah, seems alright. It sure did massive damage to the hull...
The Goliath Crab is a giant species of crustacean found across the Crescent Sea, if not one of the largest species of crabs found across Fabulae. Infamous for the gigantic size and tanky builds, they crawl across the ocean floor like walking tectonic plates.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Goliath Crabs are massive crabs that stand several stories high when reaching adulthood, with the average specimen reaching two stories with ease. Their carapace is relatively flat with an indentation allowing it to trap things from the ocean floor for natural camouflage.
Their posture is low to the ground, with short legs that only give them a little bit of clearing. Their hind legs evolved to become paddle-like swimmerets, allowing for short forms of swimming through ocean currents. Meanwhile, their claws are small for their size, able to be tucked under their shell to protect their eyes and frontal abdomen from any threats.
Most Goliath Crabs are a sandy gray colour to hide as rocks or protrusions on the ocean floor.
Dietary Needs
Omnivorous in nature, these crustaceans have drastically different diets depending on what stage they are in life. During infancy, they rely on everything the ocean floor can provide: seaweed, algea, anything they can get their claws on, including fellow Goliath Crabs.
As they get larger, their diet shifts to larger predators eating species like sharks, squids and even some sapient aquatic races. Records show they even dare to tackle megafauna living on the ocean floor like giant sea stars, clams or even Krakens. At some point their size gets too big and their shell too thick that they show little fear hunting anything on the ocean floor.
Intelligence
Goliath Crabs are quite intelligent, showing quite the intellect amongst crustaceans. Noticeable is their complex language of noises and clicking claws to express themselves, though they can adapt to understand the language of other species, including sapient races.
They also know how to use their environment to hunt, letting certain prey species nestle onto their shells to lure in predators they can eat. Others meanwhile let certain species help clean off parasites or deter predators from attacking vulnerable spots, such as planting poisonous coral around their bodies. Some even use it as a mere aesthetic to blend in better.
Reproduction & Development
Goliath Crabs only mate once in their lifetime, with two finding one another in a ritual to fertilise the other. Its abdomen gets covered with billions upon billions of crab eggs, to which it proceeds to settle down somewhere on the ocean floor, refusing to eat at all. Few survive the progress, offering their own body up as upcoming food for their offspring.
By the time one hatches, they are no bigger than a grain of sand, beginning a fight for survival. If they are not competing with the hundred thousands of siblings tearing one another apart, scavengers and predators are prone to eat the infantile creatures while scavenging their mother's remains. Only a small percentage ever makes it out alive every time, scuttling away to safety.
Once safe, it is a long journey to grow, going through multiple phases of finding new feeding grounds and molting their shell. Something like this can take hundreds of molts to reach maturity, which in turn can take centuries to do so.
Only after their final molt do find a mate, beginning the cycle anew.
Beached Crab
Few Goliath Crabs move inland that much, staying miles away from any coastline. However, conditions like dwindling food supplies or getting forced out their territory can drive them to go on land. Usually this ends up with them emerging from the ocean, threatening beaches and coast-side settlements with their presence.
On very rare occasions they however may become aware of fishing villages, starting to attack them and the ships for fish they do no longer have to hunt. They do not give up easily either once they find a good spot either, only being deterred once enough firepower or force keeps them from marching in. But with their tough exterior and sheer size, it takes a small army to keep one away from a quick snack.
Primordial Descendent
Theories suggest that the Goliath Crab may have their ancestry come from the Plane of Water, coming from a species that once arrived here through interdimensional means. With no major predators, they were allowed to prosper. However, different pressures and composition of the water may hinder their ability to grow to truly gigantic sizes like back in the elemental plane of water.
Giant enemy crab !!! I love this, they seem both formidable and beautiful.