Saturday Critters - Atlantic Ghost Crabs

  


Saturday Critters - Atlantic Ghost Crab

If you spend a few hours on a secluded Atlantic coast beach, you might run into several Ghost Crabs.


Atlantic Ghost Crabs are terrestrial but must return to the water to wet their gills. We have seen small parades of them at the beach in Strathmere, NJ. We wonder if there is safety in numbers. They make burrows in the sand above the strandline. According to Wikipedia, the burrows can be up to 4 feet deep.


Their compound eyes are on stalks and can swivel 360 degrees. They feed on other small animals, clams, insects, and even turtle eggs.


 

I found several of their entrances decorated, or more likely disguised, with beach debris. The feather is tamped down with a load of sand to stay in place. Smart Crab!


They are very shy and can run faster than you can! I've never seen anyone capture one. Thank you to Viewing Nature with Eileen for hosting Saturday Critters. 

Comments

  1. Great captures of the Ghost Crabs! I have seen them on the beaches in Maryland and Virginia.
    Thank you for linking up and sharing your post. Take care, have a great weekend.

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  2. These are great photos of the crabs. We don't really see a lot of crabs over here in Scotland. That are great looking creatures I think :-D

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  3. Replies
    1. Thanks we enjoy spotting them when we sit on the beach.

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  4. There are so many interesting things on the beach. I walk slow....so I see a lot!

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    Replies
    1. My happiest times are walking on the beach, searching for treasures...shells, sea glass, driftwood.

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  5. How interesting, and great photos.

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    Replies
    1. It's fun and interesting to watch them. They are very lively...and smart.

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  6. "Ghost Crabs" by Ted Hughes
    At nightfall, as the sea darkens,
    A depth darkness thickens, mustering from the gulfs and the submarine badlands,
    To the seas edge. To begin with
    It looks like rocks uncovering, mangling their pallor.
    Gradually the laboring of the tide
    Falls back from its productions,
    Its power slips back from glistening nacelles, and they are crabs.
    Giant crabs, under flat skulls, staring inland
    Like a packed trench of helmets.
    Ghosts, they are ghost-crabs.
    They emerge
    An invisible disgorging of the seas cold
    Over the man who strolls along the sands.
    They spill inland, into the smoking purple
    Of our woods and towns--a bristling surge
    Of tall and staggering specters
    Gliding like shocks through water.
    Our walls, our bodies, are no problem to them.
    Their hungers are homing elsewhere.
    We cannot see them or turn our minds from them.
    Their bubbling mouths, their eyes
    In a slow mineral fury
    Press through our nothingness where we sprawl on beds,
    Or sit in rooms. Our dreams are ruffled maybe.
    Or we jerk awake to the world of possessions
    With a gasp, in sweat burst, brains jamming blind
    Into the bulb-light. Sometimes, for minutes, a sliding
    Staring
    Thickness of silence
    Presses between us. These crabs own this world.
    All night, around us or through us,
    They stalk each other, they fasten onto each other,
    They mount each other, they tear each other to pieces,
    They utterly exhaust each other.
    They are the powers of this world.
    We are their bacteria,
    Dying their lives and living their deaths.
    At dawn, they sidle back under the seas edge.
    They are the moil of history, the convulsion
    In the roots of blood, in the cycles of concurrence.
    To them, our cluttered countries are empty battleground.
    All day they recuperate under the sea.
    Their singing is like a thin seawind flexing in the rocks of a headland,
    Where only crabs listen.

    They are Gods only toys.

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    Replies
    1. Great poem. Thanks for commenting and visiting my blog.

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