Walking at the beach means walking in their territory! Crabs live on almost every warm beach. Usually you see them lightning-fast running into their burrow. The bigger the entrance, the bigger the crab. The busier the beach, the lesser the crabs. Whatever drops or dies at the beach will sooner or later be evaluated and possibly be eaten by the crabs. Check WORMS for info about them and many many other marine species, I just recently discovered that site. Amazing! So how do they live, how is the burrow designed? If you also asked yourself that, here you can find a paper from Benny Kwok Kan Chan, Karen Kit Yu Chan & Philip Cheuk Man Leung about the shape of their burrows! They worked this out in Hongkong and found different shapes of burrows depending on the crab’s age. If you were a crab, would you dig yourself a J, Y, tube or spiral shaped burrow?
Horned ghost crab (Ocypode ceratophthalma)
This crab was caught by a lady from the restaurant and immediately released after taking the picture! Horned crab-species can be found in many regions of the world…
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