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Speculative Skull Island bullshit: Trapdoor crab
If there is one Skull Island species that can turn a harmless sand beach into a minefield, it's the trapdoor crab. These large crustaceans dig pits into the sand where they lie in wait for hapless animals to pass by, further camouflaged by a layer of sand stabilized with their own saliva and attached to their carapace, only the antennae giving their presence away. Their claws have become asymmetrical for this lifestyle, with one being short and flattened for efficient digging, while the other is long, slender and has an edge at its front, to quickly extend out of the sand and grab their prey. Due to its adaptation to hold onto struggling animals, the dispatching and dismemberment of the prey for feeding is also taken over by the digging claw. The trapdoor crabs are gregarious, with animals that manage to escape the first attack often ending up in the trap of another. Because of this, successful crabs will have to defend their prey from the others, usually ending up with the prey being torn to pieces and consumed by several crabs.
A keen observer will notice that trapdoor crabs aren't true crabs (Brachyura), but porcelain crabs, a related but distinct group that convergently evolved a crab-like shape.
Before you ask "has hell frozen over, since when does Ramul do speculative Monsterverse bullshit again?", let's just say the Skull Island cartoon was very convincing by presenting a porcelain crab adapted to an ambush predator lifestyle, a concept which I very much enjoyed and sent me immediately into speculating on how such a crab could plausibly look. Guess my interest in redesigning creatures is less a Monsterverse thing and more a Skull Island thing, so no, I'm still not interested in doing any redesigns for the existing movies that followed K: SI and certainly not for the upcoming one.
Changelog:
-Asymmetric claws, so the crab can be efficient both at digging and at snapping
-Proper porcelain crab anatomy, especially regarding the mouth
The Disney character overlays are a measure to prevent art theft by corporations.
A keen observer will notice that trapdoor crabs aren't true crabs (Brachyura), but porcelain crabs, a related but distinct group that convergently evolved a crab-like shape.
Before you ask "has hell frozen over, since when does Ramul do speculative Monsterverse bullshit again?", let's just say the Skull Island cartoon was very convincing by presenting a porcelain crab adapted to an ambush predator lifestyle, a concept which I very much enjoyed and sent me immediately into speculating on how such a crab could plausibly look. Guess my interest in redesigning creatures is less a Monsterverse thing and more a Skull Island thing, so no, I'm still not interested in doing any redesigns for the existing movies that followed K: SI and certainly not for the upcoming one.
Changelog:
-Asymmetric claws, so the crab can be efficient both at digging and at snapping
-Proper porcelain crab anatomy, especially regarding the mouth
The Disney character overlays are a measure to prevent art theft by corporations.
Category All / All
Species Crab
Size 1419 x 1077px
File Size 1.23 MB
FA+

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