I'm always surprised by crabs coming ashore. Here in San Diego, our crabs are rigorously aquatic. Crawling across lawns and up walls is simply unthinkable to them. Driving around Grand Cayman, we occasionally saw these fellows crossing the street and swerved to avoid them. The crab got a comment from someone in the car every time, too.
I left the image fairly large so it might be worth a click. The little arthropod has some interesting designs on the side of his head. Or is that body?
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| Where does the head stop and the body begin? |
What a pretty little feller! I guess some crustaceans are orange even before they get boiled.
ReplyDeleteAs for where the head stops and the body starts, apparently crabs (and other decapod crustaceans) are considered to have a "cephalothorax", with no actual distinction between head and body. Kind of like spiders (except that spiders fused 6 ancestral body segments to make their cephalothorax, while the decapods appear to have fused 10 segments for theirs).
Looking at him again, I get the feeling that crabs were the models H G Wells used for his tripods in "War of the Worlds."
ReplyDeleteOh and thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteLol! I knew Tim would have the correct terminology.
ReplyDeleteGood day to you, sirs!