Dark Posted January 29, 2019 Posted January 29, 2019 "How do you get the face of a medieval warrior engraved in the shell of a crab?" Wondered Carl Sagan in an episode of his television series Cosmos. To know it, one must go back to April 25, 1185 and the naval battle of Dan-no-ura, which ended a war between samurai clans over the control of power in medieval Japan. The fleet of the clan of the Genji, led by Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and that of the Taira (or Heike) clashed in the straits of Dan-no-ura, in the inland sea of Japan. Favored by the winds and the tide, Minamoto forces crushed those of the Heike clan, among which the seven-year-old Emperor Antoku was traveling, along with his entire court. Upon sensing the defeat, Antoku's grandmother took the child in her arms and threw herself into the sea. The valiant warriors Heike and his leader Tomomori followed his example and jumped overboard their ships. They all drowned. Legend has it that the spirit of these warriors still lives in the depths of the sea, embodied in the Heikegani crab (Heikeopsis japonica), a kind of crustacean that only lives in Shimoneseki Bay, between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Kyushu. The curious phenomenon is due to centuries of natural selection: for generations, by superstition, fishermen in the area would have avoided catching those crabs whose carapace reminded them of a human face (a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia that causes the mind to tend to images recognizable from random forms), returning them to the sea.
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