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samurai crabs and artificial selection

I take the liberty of quoting some of pages from the great book "Cosmos" (1980) by Carl Sagan (pages 24, 25 and 26 of the Castilian edition of Metro in 1997, copied from http://www.bauleros. org / elcangrejoheikecarlsagan.html) no one could describe it better than the great popularizer of science:

"Let me tell you a story about a little phrase in the music of life on Earth. In 1185 the emperor of Japan was a boy aged seven called Antoku. was the nominal head of a samurai clan called Heike, who were engaged in a long and bloody war with another samurai clan, the Genji. Each clan claimed to possess superior ancestral rights to the throne. The decisive naval encounter with Emperor on board, occurred in Danno-ura in the Inland Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan on April 24, 1185. The Heike were outnumbered and tactics. Many were killed by the enemy. Survivors were launched in large numbers to the sea and drowned. The Lady Nii, grandmother of the emperor, decided that neither she nor Antoku had to fall into enemy hands. The Story of the Heike account of what happened next:

The emperor had met him seven years old but looked much older. It was so beautiful it seemed to cast a bright glow and long black hair hung loose down her back. With a look of surprise and anxiety in his face he asked the Lady Nii:

- Where will you take?

She looked at the young ruler as the tears rolled down her cheeks y. .. comforted him, tying his long hair in his dove-colored dress. Blinded by sovereign child tears gathered his beautiful hands. First got to say goodbye to the East side of the god of Ise and then face west to repeat the Nembutsu [a prayer to the Amida Buddha]. The Lady Nii took him tightly in his arms and as he said "in the deep ocean is our capitol," he finally sank beneath the waves. Heike
entire fleet was destroyed. Only forty-three women survived. These ladies of honor of the imperial court were forced to sell flowers and other favors to the fishermen near the scene of the battle. The Heike disappeared almost completely from history. But a group formed by the old mob of bridesmaids and their offspring among fishermen founded a festival to commemorate the battle. To this day is celebrated on 24 April each year.
Fishermen Heike descendants of hemp wear black headdress and march to the Akama shrine which contains the mausoleum of Emperor drowned. They attend a representation of events following the battle of Danno-ura. For centuries, people imagined he could distinguish ghostly samurai armies vainly striving to shorten the sea to wash the blood and remove his humiliation.
The fishermen say the Heike samurai wander still funds the Inland Sea, in the form of crabs. Can be found in this sea crabs Weird signs on their backs, and identifications that forms a striking resemblance to the face of a samurai. When fishing a crab of these is not eaten but is returned to the sea to commemorate the sad events of Danno-ura.
This process raises a lovely problem. How is that a warrior's face is engraved on the shell of a crab? The answer seems to be that it was men who made the face. The shadows in the shells of crabs are inherited. But among crabs, as among individuals, there are many different hereditary lines. Suppose that among the distant ancestors of this crab emerged one with a form that appears, even slightly, to a face human. Even before the battle of Danno-ura fishermen may have felt qualms about eating a crab as well. To return to the sea set in motion an evolutionary process: If you're a crab and your carapace is ordinary, men will eat you. You will leave few offspring lineage. If your shell is a bit like a face, I throw them back into the sea. You can leave more offspring. The crabs were of considerable value invested in the forms recorded in their shells. As the generations passed, both crabs and fishermen, the crabs whose shapes were more like a samurai face survived perfectly, until finally it got not only a human face not just a Japanese face, but the face of a fierce and angry samurai. All this has nothing to do with what the crabs want. Selection is imposed from the outside. The more one looks like a samurai better your chances of survival. At the end you get an abundance of crabs samurai.

A crab Heike the Inland Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan.

This process is called artificial selection. In the case of the Heike crab, made it more or less conscious fishermen, and of course without the crabs were meant seriously. But men have deliberately chosen over thousands of years, plants and animals that have to live and who deserve to die. From our childhood we are around animals, fruits, vegetables, trees and family, cultivated and domesticated. Where from? Did they live freely before the wild and then induced them to follow a less harsh way of life in the field? No, the reality is very different. Most of them we did. "