When the swallows come to Xinshe, the pear blossoms lag behind the Qingming Festival. Zheng Xuan, a native of the Han Dynasty, mentioned in his annotation of "The Shame of Sacrifice" in "The Rites of Zhou: The Cooking Man" that "if there are fish and delicacies in Jingzhou, and crabs in Qingzhou, it is also filial piety." It means: What delicious food do you use to offer sacrifices? For example, Jingzhou's pickled fish and Qingzhou's crab dumplings are good.

Qingzhou is today’s Shandong Peninsula, and crab sauce is crab sauce. Although some research suggests that the crab sauce here may be rice crab, but judging from the geographical location described, I am more inclined to use sea crab, that is, swimming crab. The most common swimming crab is today’s protagonist, the swimming crab three-tuberculosis.

Portunus crab stir-fried vermicelli

Portunus crab that is good at swimming

Trituberculatus swimming crab belongs to the genus Portunus in the family Portunidae of the order Decapoda, and is commonly known as swimming crab, gun crab, and white crab. The cephalothorax is broad and fusiform, with long spines on both sides. There are three obvious warts on the back of the stomach and heart area, so they are named after them. Their claws are long and developed, and their body color will change with the surrounding environment, usually dark purple. Or blue-green, with bluish-white cloud spots.

The picture below shows the Portunus trituberculatus

The Portunus trituberculatus is mainly distributed in Japan, Korea, the Malay Islands, the Red Sea and the coastal waters of China. It is active at night and is an omnivorous crab. , likes to eat shellfish, small fish, shrimp and algae.

Usually inhabiting the sandy seabed 10-30 meters near the coast, it is an important crab breeding species along the coast of my country. It is produced in large quantities in Shandong Peninsula, Liaodong Peninsula, and Bohai Bay. This is why it is so common and People-friendly reasons.

Stir-fried swimming crab

As a kind of sea crab, the biggest feature of swimming crab is that it can swim! Well, it’s true that not all crabs have this talent...

The swimming crab relies on its highly specialized walking legs. The fourth pair of walking legs of the swimming crabs has evolved into The shape of the metacarpal joints and knuckles of swimming legs is like a paddle. They usually use the fingertips of the first three pairs of walking legs to crawl on the seabed, and use the last pair of swimming legs to paddle and migrate, avoid natural enemies or dig in the sand to hide themselves. So swimming crabs They are called swimming crabs and crossing crabs.

Xunzi wrote in "Encouragement to Learning" that "a crab with six knees and two claws is not the cave of a snake and eel. Those who have no sustenance are impatient." In fact, the so-called crabs all belong to the order Decapoda, so they should It is "eight kneels and two claws". If it were not for the mistakes in later generations' transcriptions and writings, the crab mentioned in Xunzi's article is most likely the swimming crab - he excluded the pair of swimming legs of the swimming crab.

Male crabs with pointed navels and female crabs with round navels

As previously introduced in the article on Penaeus monodon, female individuals of the suborder Gastroderma to which crabs belong will stick their fertilized eggs to Place it under the "belly" until it hatches, which is commonly known as "holding the eggs". Like most crabs, swimming crabs belong to the brachyurinary order under the suborder Gastroderma

Crabs have tails when they are young. After the crab eggs hatch, they go through the stages of water flea larvae, flea-like larvae, and big-eyed larvae. In larvae, the tail is clearly visible in these stages. As it grows into an adult, the tail gradually disappears, and finally turns into pieces of plastron on the abdomen of the crab, which is what we often call the crab navel. The long and narrow part of the male crab is called the pointed navel. , the round and wide shape of the female crab is called the umbilicus. If you open the crab umbilicus and look at the color of the base, you can roughly judge whether a crab is covered with yellow fat.

Blue crabs that hold eggs

The swimming crab in mating, the ecstatic missionary position

The swimming crab named after the river god and the sea monster

The swimming crab genus (Portunus) in the family Portunidae, its Latin scientific name comes from Rome The cultural god of river ports - Portunus. Interestingly, Scylla, another genus of blue crab that we are very familiar with under the family Portunidae, has its Latin scientific name from the Greek Σκ?λλα, which means to tear or tear.

Scylla is a famous female siren in Greek mythology. She has six heads, twelve legs, and barks like a puppy. She lives in Messina between the Italian Peninsula and Sicily. On the other side of the strait is the famous whirlpool Charybdis. When ships pass through the strait, they can only choose to pass through the Charybdis whirlpool or her territory. Every time a ship passes by, she will eat the six sailors on board. Therefore, there is a saying in English "Between Scylla And Charybdis", which means a dilemma.

Some species of the family Portunidae.

Almost all the swimming crabs we usually eat come from the genus Portunus, Trichoderma and Blue Crab.

Trituberculous swimming crab

Oceanic swimming crab

Oceanic swimming crab is also commonly known as orchid crab and flower-legged crab. Its main feature is the dense white cloud pattern on the surface of the head and breastplate. The chelipeds are dark blue or dark purple with white spots, and the taste is slightly worse than that of Portunus trituberculatus.

Red Star Swimming Crab

The Red Star Swimming Crab is also commonly known as the three-spotted crab and the red-spotted swimming crab. Its shell is gray-green. The most striking feature is that there are three eye spots under the head and breastplate. Slightly smaller than the swimming crabs of the same family, the taste is mediocre compared to the above two swimming crabs, and the price is cheaper.