Tilfred Garne, Jr., age 10, of Iiouston, Texas, for his question: !'

What does the horseshoe king crab eat?

He belongs to the sea and the sea provides no change of diet as he grows older. Experts tell us that he is not really a true crab, though he looks somewhat like one. In spite of his crusty shell, ho is not related to the crabby crustaceans and sore experts think that he should hive a special class of his own. After his ancestors thrived in the seas lops., ales before the crusty crabs care to live there.

The adult kin, . crab dines on worms, soft shelled clans and a large variety of other tender creatures that live in the muddy floor of the sea. he may be one foot long, plus another .foot of spilcy tail. He has eight walkin!~ leis, compound eyes and a snappy pair of pincers to use as a knife and fork. He stnins on his back but when he crawls around for food, his body is concealed under a harped shell.

The front section of the shell is curved around like a horseshoe. This explains why the tiny crab is called the horseshoe crab or the horsefoot crab. People who get jabbed by his spiky tail are likely to call her, the swordtail crab. In summer, we find him alone in the Atlantic shores from "nine, southward to the Gulf of Mexico and as far as Yucatan. Three of his cousins live near India and Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Come fall, our lung crabs nitrate far out to sea and all winter they dine on the various worms and soft creatures that live in the soggy rud belo1r deeper waters.

In spring, the adults troupe back to the shore. They arrive just before the highest high tide of the month. The males scramble to the edge of the foamy water. The females follocr and scoop shallow hollows to lay the eggs. The parents build several nests with a fecr hundred ears in each one. The frothy edfie of the tide covers ther with ,opjy silt, and the buried eggs repose until next month's highest high tide.

After two weeks, the egg shells split to let moisture seep through an inside skin. The top heavy embryos float inside center filled balloons, kiclcinp and developing. Rich egg yolks are scaled inside to provide all their nourishment for a long tine to come. After four weeks, the next month's highest tide floods over the rests. It breaks open the balloons and the infant king crabs are dunked into the water. They have small shells but no spiky tails.

For a while they frolic around, learning to swirl and crack. The rich yolks planted inside their tummies provide nourishing food to last until they molt their baby shells and, they have their tails and arc big enough to grub in the ooze mud for the tiniest worms.

In the summer they molt again. They molt once each summer for the next nine, ten or eleven years. Each time they grow bigger and need bigger bites of wormy food. Before each molt, they produce soft  skins under their tight fitting, shells. Then the old shells crack and are shed. The new skins stretch smooth and soon set hard to form newer, larger shells. At last the growing king crabs can catch and eat things as big as soft shelled crabs.