Creatures That Inspired Kahlaqrabs: Aegirocassis benmoulai

In Season 2 Episode 5 of my podcast, I talked a little about the inspiration for my fantasy creature, the kahlaqrab, which is featured in my high fantasy novel, The Pirates of Sissa. 

Last time, I wrote about the Acutiramus, an animal that inspired the kahlaqrab. This time, I'll be talking about the Aegirocassis benmoulai. It is the second creature in my list of awe-inspiring creatures.

Once again, all the images are linked in from the Wikimedia Commons. 

Aegirocassis benmoulai

The A. benmoulai is a creature I came across while researching arachnid creatures from the Cretaceous period. This creature, though, lived during the Paleozoic Era - during the Ordivician period to be more precise. Here's a rendition of what it probably looked like:

The segmented body shape is something that it seems to have in common with Acutiramus, but there's very little else that overlaps from what I can tell!

It's quite possible that at the time of its existence, this creature was the biggest animal in the world. That's pretty crazy to think about! It grew to about 2 meters in length, similar to the largest fossil found of the Acutiramus. 

Imagine swimming underwater with your mouth open and just basically feeding on whatever happens to be right there. That's what the A. benmoulai did. It's a filter-feeder, which means it just eats whatever happens to be in front of it, and then filters out anything that's not wanted. You can see the appendages attached to the front of its head - those are for filtering, it seems.

For a predatory fish, filter feeding might sound sort of counter-productive. Instead of just going out there and hunting a fish, they swim around and grab whatever they can find - bits and pieces here and there. Is it really optimal? Apparently, it might actually be much more optimal for larger fish to be filter feeders. The reason for this is simply that they can fit more food in their bodies when they finally do find a big meal, and can also apparently go longer without food than smaller fish. This is a really interesting fact, but it wasn't something that I could do much with for my kahlaqrabs.

The creature also seems to have an almost armor-like plate covering the top of its head and the front half of its body. I wonder if this is a defensive element. This felt a little more interesting for my kahlaqrabs. The idea of a tough protective shell, like the kind that crabs have, is something that seemed would blend well with the rest of the anatomical ideas I was putting together for the kahlaqrab. It may not be in the same shape or in the same place/position, but I knew that I wanted the kahlaqrabs to have really tough, durable shells that could keep them from almost all kinds of harm.

Here's a cool (though slightly complex) video from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History on Youtube about this creature:

Putting Together the Kahlaqrab

Several fascinating creatures come together to create one terrible Frankenstein's monster for The Pirates of Sissa, and this is just one of them. Fearsome, loathsome, and entirely evil, the kahlaqrab predates on horses, camels, humans, and even other kahlaqrabs! It camouflages into the dark sand and awaits unfortunate prey, and uses its legs to move swiftly over the sands. To learn more about this horrifying beast, you can listen to Season 2 Episode 5: Kahlaqrabs - A Deadly Scourge.

If you have any questions, or want to share your thoughts about any of these cool animals or my fantasy creatures, leave a comment down below!