Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Flower Moon Crab

Matuta planipes

Description:

Small brown crab, with flattened legs like paddles for swimming.

Habitat:

This one, and many others were found at Tanjung Aru beach, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. They pop out of the sand as the tide comes in, swim a little way and then burrow back in the sand at the edge of the tide.

Notes:

This beach used to be quite dirty, being part of a small city, but there's been an effort to clean it up. I have not seen these crabs here before, so the clean up must be doing some good as there are lots of them!

1 Species ID Suggestions

Flower moon crab or Beach crab
Matuta planipes (Fabricius)


Sign in to suggest organism ID

3 Comments

AnuwatMooKramkeaw
AnuwatMooKramkeaw 11 years ago

:)

LizaFandino
LizaFandino 11 years ago

Hi AnuwatMooKramkeaw,

I think you are right, so I have updated the spotting. Thank you!

Liza

AnuwatMooKramkeaw
AnuwatMooKramkeaw 11 years ago

I think this is not swimmer crad

i think maybe is Flower moon crab or Beach crab
Scientific name is Matuta planipes (Fabricius)

LizaFandino
Spotted by
LizaFandino

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Spotted on May 16, 2012
Submitted on Jul 28, 2012

Related Spottings

Spotting Beach Crab flower moon crab

Nearby Spottings

Busy Lizzy 8-petaled Pink Rain Lily Unknown skink Unknown damselfly
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team