Tiny ghost crabs on a Mexican beach (pics)

[ECooper]

These neat little ghost crabs (Ocypode sp.) were common on the beach outside my hotel in Los Cabos, Mexico. A big one would have a carapace that wasn’t much more than six or seven millimetres across. They were amazingly fast and as you can see from these photos, they were extremely well camouflaged against the sand. They dig burrows in the sand to hide in. But if their burrow wasn’t close enough when they felt threatened they would dash away and then suddenly freeze and seemingly disappear.

I spent a great couple of hours squirming across the sand on my belly trying to get close enough to take some good photos. It was really too much fun!

I posted these photos and a number of others on my blog today.

Cheers,
EC
www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

ghost crab 12 copyright Ernie Cooper 2012_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr
ghost crab 5 copyright Ernie Cooper 2012 closer_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

[TL1000RSquid]

Pretty cool, I like crabs just sucks most aren't safe and the few that are can be rather cryptic and hardly seen in anything bigger then a pico.