Rice Crabs

The founding of the Isle of Endowment was not unique among the Free Islands for being rife with chaos, as most of the islands were settled by refugees or escaped political prisoners with very little in the way of supplies or foreknowledge in the construction of an independent settlement. No, the Isle of Endowment is unique in that none of her* original settlers were above the age of 13. In fact, it is widely believed that the 44 children, who, 270 years ago, stole an incomplete frigate from the shipyard in Tarlock and sailed it away to an uninhabited island, would surely all have been killed by exposure or starvation, were it not for the chance discovery of the humble Rice Crab.
Offshoots of the garden variety Hermit Crab, Rice Crabs are small, herbivorous crustaceans that have thus far only been found in the shallow tide pools of the Isle of Endowment. They differ from their Ikaran cousins in that they have long, flexible arms with small pincers at their ends, as well as a shell of soft chitin wrapping around their abdomen, shaped like a long basket. These two specific adaptations have allowed the crabs to corner the market on an otherwise unobtainable food source, Kytaran Rice, which grows in small crops on the insides of hollow pumice stones, also only found in the tide pools around the Isle of Endowment.
At some unknown point in the first few weeks of settlement of the Isle, as children rarely make satisfactory book keepers, the unnamed leader of the band was said to have observed the crabs collecting rice, and first tried to break the stones to take the rice for himself. This would have caused the roots within the stone to bleed copious amounts of an acrid, black sap, spoiling the grains of rice. After much trial and error, the settlers eventually learned how to tame and domesticate the rice crabs, and even today, the small unassuming crustacean is revered as not only the progenitor of the Endowment way of life, but also as hero's, for saving the lives of 44 children.