Самурай беті бар қабылдақ шаян (Samuray beti bar qabyldaq şayan)

Species of crab

Heikegani (平家蟹, ヘイケガニ ) is a species of crab native to Japan, with a shell that bears a pattern resembling a human face an example of the phenomenon of pareidolia which is interpreted to be the face of an angry samurai, hence the nickname samurai crab. The crabs are named after the once powerful Taira clan which dominated medieval Japan, commonly known as the Heike. It is believed that these crabs are reincarnations of the Heike warriors defeated at the naval Battle of Dan no ura as told in The Tale of the Heike. While the crabs are edible, they are not eaten by most Japanese.

Heikegani were used by Carl Sagan in his popular science television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage as an example of unintentional artificial selection, an interpretation originally published by Julian Huxley in 1952. According to this hypothesis, the crabs with shells resembling samurai were thrown back to the sea by fishermen out of respect for the Heike warriors, while those not resembling samurai were eaten, giving the former a greater chance of reproducing. Therefore, the more closely the crabs resembled a samurai face, the more likely they would be spared and thrown back. On the 24th of April 1185 AD, two powerful Samurai clans fought to the death on the Dan no ura bay of Japan's Inland Sea. The ruling Taira clan (Heike) was led by their child Emperor, Antoku, and his grandmother, Taira no Tokiko. The Heike had ruled Japan for many decades, but now, massively outnumbered, they faced defeat at the hands of the Minamoto. In the 1964 Japanese anthology film Kwaidan, based on Hearn's stories, "Hoichi the Earless" recounts the story of the Battle of Dan no ura, which becomes the basis of "Hoichi the Earless." The narrator explains the myth, illustrated with prominent footage of the crabs. At the end of the "Hoichi the Earless" segment, Hoichi is seen playing the lute, with heikegani on his shoulders. In his 1980 science series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Carl Sagan used heikegani to illustrate artificial selection. British biologist Richard Dawkins discussed the same idea in his 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Heike crabs appear as an important part of the plot in one of the comic book stories of Usagi Yojimbo, a rabbit samurai character created by Stan Sakai. The "Grass cutter" story published in volume 2 of the Usagi saga tells the legend of how a sacred sword kusanagi was lost and then found with help from samurai crabs.