Prador

The first alien contact between the Polity and another intelligent race is with the crab-like carnivorous race named Prador, who first appear in Neal Asher's Prador Moon.

This signals the start of the devastating war between both races. The Prador not only consider rotting human flesh a delicacy, they also enslave them by coring out brains and thralling them with spider-like units linked to a controlling Prador adult thus making humans into mindless blanks and easy for them to control.

Etymology
"Prador" is a name applied to the species by humans before first contact. It is a corruption of the word "predator," applied to the Prador because of their exclusively carnivorous diet.

Anatomy & Physiology
Prador resemble extremely large crabs. The body is covered by a flattened, pear-shaped shell with scalloped rims. The wide front end of the body bears several pairs of small red eyes, including one pair on movable stalks. They walk on six insectoid legs, each ending in a large spike. Adult Prador shed the hindmost pair of legs and lose the ability to regrow lost limbs. Hanging from the underside of the body are four small manipulator arms ending in clusters of fingers and hooks serving as hands. Positioned above these are huge crab-like working claws, used mainly for combat and heavy labor. Prador mouths are sets of grasping, shearing mandibles suited for eating meat.

Diet
Prador are obligate carnivores. They feed mainly on raw, decaying meat harvested from giant mudskippers on the planets they inhabit. However, they have a taste for human flesh and often harvest humans for precisely this purpose. Humans eaten in this way have their limbs cut off and eaten first so that they survive the process as long as possible. Prador are also prone to cannibalism, and older Prador routinely kill and eat younger ones.

Reproduction and Life Cycle
Prador give birth to vast numbers of larvae, few of which survive to become children. Children move through the stages of third-, second-, and first-children before finally becoming adults. Very few Prador ever become adults, as their parents try to keep them from becoming potential threats or competitors. Adult Prador exude pheromones and drug their offspring's food to keep them in their adolescent stages, but generally end up eating them as a permanent solution. It is not uncommon for the adult to harvest the child's tissues for transplants to replace their own failing or damaged body parts (the Golgothan takes this to an extreme) and the brains are often preserved and used as the computer cores of Prador war drones. Adult Prador increase in size and lose limbs as they grow older. The largest and oldest Prador are colossal, millennia-old creatures who have lost all their limbs and use anti-gravity technology to move.

Spatterjay Virus
Prador can be infected with the Spatterjay Virus and like human infectees gain the powers of regeneration and become for all purposes immortal. Unlike a human though a Prador will undergo substantial physical changes as well and resemble an entirely different species. The third dynasty Prador King and his children became infected with the virus sometime before overthrowing the second dynasty king and kept this a secret from the rest of their species and humanity for centuries, the King never appearing publicly and his children always in encased in armored suits to hide their appearance.