Members: 65 million red land crabs. Objective: postponement of eggs in coastal waters.
The dangers on the road: road traffic, the enemy, heat. Race, which pushes the parties to the record, worthy of admiration.
Over 22 kilometers of highway surrounded by barriers, here and there placed billboards with warnings to drivers, are protected even private swimming pools and garden ponds. Marathon can begin. The most massive in the world. The most ancient. And the most dangerous. On the island, which covers an area somewhat larger town of Vladimir, or 8 times lower than in Moscow - at the Australian Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean at the launch comes 65 million runners. Portraits of athletes adorned postage stamps and postmarks, t-shirts, backpacks, cups: a wide body in a red shiny chitinous tights, attentive compound eyes, two strong claws, eight shapely legs.
"They always start with the beginning of the rainy season", - says zoopsychologists Steve Morris of the University of Bristol. For 20 years, he never misses a marathon. Eight kilometers from the island's interior to the coast - this is a distance race. Nowhere in the world of crabs is not overcome such distances. An interesting feature: at the start time determined in advance, but the arrival time to the finish. The last phase - spawning females in the sea - is completed in strict accordance with the lunar calendar, just before the new moon, ie, at a time when the difference between the slack is minimal and, consequently, wave-cut zone is less dangerous. Additional subjects: extreme vertical Overcoming obstacles, martial arts, dig burrows, and mating - only for ladies - lifting weights: During a marathon runner bring with them to 100 thousand eggs each. "It's as if the man had 35 kilometers to drag a five-kilogram bag of potatoes" - explains Morris.
While international observers races still inspect the sky for the first clouds, - forest soil suddenly begins to move. Withered foliage begins to whisper, while in the air or wind. Under the leaves rustling pubescent legs, strong claws help to get out of minks out - the back of their inhabitants are shining in the morning sun. And so begins a gentle, smooth rustle - though finally began to rain. It sounds a thousand legs and claws, hurrying across the carpet of leaves. Last night the humidity increased to 94%. This should be enough, because the runners smell: if they do not start now, then soon as possible to the spawning her fruits, and the program will have to be postponed for a month. For greater speed athletes crabs move his wide body sideways. Thus each of the ten limbs, including a pair of claws, thanks to its seven segments can move in all directions. So on plains marathon runners reach speeds of up to six meters per minute, but the cliffs they were not a barrier. Pantsir crab - a miracle of technology: they do not need knights took - their eyes are removed in the adapted themselves to the indentation.
The now close external skeletons are reset, and valuable substances from which they are composed, are utilized: rich in calcium chitinous shell is included in the diet of its recent owners. Courageous single for a few hours get in close flocks, in which all sides rush to the coast, overcoming difficult terrain - steep rocks, roots and piles of razor-sharp fragments of limestone. Specializes in crab marathon Steve Morris suggests: every year the group sent to the shore crabs in the same way - not necessarily the shortest, but is surprisingly straightforward. How are they at the same focus, - this, even Morris could really imagine that. They may repeat the path along which the first time at the end of the larval stage emerged from the sea to land. Another question he asks himself: how much they still have to go? In the years when the postponement until eggs are a lot of time, males gadabout, slicing Forests lap. For on Christmas Island nobody wants to be a goal ahead of time. But this time they are in a hurry: Eight days later the time comes for mating. Therefore, and eat on the run, saving time and effort.
Nine o'clock in the morning, the sun was already high. Hundreds of crabs run out of the woods. The air trembles. The first runners lose power. Hide their eyes, pick up feet, to the extent possible to reduce the surface of the body accessible to the sun. However, their impenetrable armor no less than the toad skin. After easily loses water and essential salts. Open spaces, many are dying. But the woods runners can move only in the afternoon rain. In clear weather they are forced to make stops: from 9 to 17 hours they outwaits heat in the foliage, in the rocky recesses, hollow trees and under the roots. Wishing to relax so much that sometimes they cover the parking space in several layers. And the next morning on the road East-West-Baseline-Road is a heavy traffic accident. At a speed of 100 km / h in a stream of running crab cut into 80-ton vosimosny combination. Some try to take a run, while others threaten throw back their claws. Then there came a sound as if someone stretched out on the road, paved with fresh eggs. Cut off limbs fighting on the pavement, covered with a paste made of crushed crabs.
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