Brown Land Crab

Description:

A medium to large brown terrestrial crab found on the shores of brackish water. My first encounter with this crab was a series of holes on the shore of a man made water system and feature of the hotel I was staying at. The second and third pictures show holes of varying sizes and with fresh excaveted earth and rather curious tracks. Distictive"dot and line" impressions. So i took up a spot and waited and after around 15 minuets i was greeted by a resident of one of the medium sized holes. The crab was around 5cm in diametre and brown with blue eyes. The Land Crab is a common site in mangroves around african shores and its islands. Not a lot is known about it but i did find some intersting articles on its young and various studies witch i have included in the notes. Generally they live in excavated burrows that extend diagonally downwards to the water table. Some have side branches and chambers depending on the size of the crab. They forage for leaves and are very adaptable and consume the leaves of vegitation around them but generaly the eat the leaves of the mangrove tree Avicennia marina. The Fourth picture shows some leaves of a small plant picked at by the small crab in the hole beneath.

Habitat:

Sandy Shore lines and Manrove forests

Notes:

https://academic.oup.com/jcb/article/23/... https://peerj.com/preprints/2660.pdf