Happy Halloween to all Mangrove Action Squad readers! Spooky old mangrove trees says Hi to you!
And nope, we are not celebrating Halloween with a cheap B-movie thriller titled ‘Mangrove Slasher 2′ (below)!
Mangroves are definitely not the ideal place to go ‘trick-or-treat’ but obvious reasons (being muddy and dangerous) unless you have ‘friends’ staying within the mangroves.
Nevertheless, there are some mangrove dwellers that are some hardcore Halloween followers that put on their ‘costumes’ for their entire life-span. One of them would be that of Halloween Crab (Gecarcinus quadratus).
I think you can appreciate why this species of crab is named as such. Its striking but yet fearsome colours could function as an aposematic function i.e warning colouration its predators. Other names include red land crab,whitespot crab moon crab, mouthless crab and harlequin land crab. This terrestial land crab can found in mangroves, lowland tropical forest and sand dunes in the New World (the Americas) except Northern America. Too bad it is not found in Singapore.
Another interesting characteristic, would be its reproduction life history. It lives in the forest at least some of its adult life, but needs to return to the ocean to breed. This situation is similiar to reproductive life history of a catadromous fish i.e. a fish that spend most of their lives in fresh water and migrate to the sea to breed. For example, most eels are catadromous.
Well, so the Halloween crab is a cool creature. Perhaps this maybe a good idea to wear a crab costume for Halloween? How about a cool Craboween costume for your dog?
Happy Halloween! =)
