Why, Public School, Am I Just Now Finding Out About These?

As I was leaving my local preschool one day after a half hour lesson I do there every other week, I noticed a poster the school had made with these pictures on it:




I am now a little ashamed to admit I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THESE THINGS WERE. OR WHY SOMEONE WAS DRESSED UP AS ONE AT A PRESCHOOL. It took me a week and one Japanese-English electronic translator to discover it was just a horseshoe crab. I have heard the word a plenty of times but somehow never connected it to this:


Fun facts: they are more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs and the Japanese horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus) is found in the Seto Inland Sea, and is considered an endangered species because of loss of habitat.