Horned Ghost Crab

The horned ghost crab is an elusive, fast-running shore crab named for the long points that extend past its eyes, and it is usually only seen at night when it comes out to feed.

By day it hides in large burrows on boulder and stone beaches, tidal creeks, mangrove forests, mudflats and intertidal sandbars. It lives across the Indo-Pacific apart from the Red Sea, from East Africa to the Philippines and Japan to the Great Barrier Reef, and out through the Pacific Islands.

The horns give this crab its name. Each eyestalk runs on past the eye into a long point, a feature that is longest in adults and shorter, or even missing, in juveniles. The body is box-shaped, with a darker H-shaped mark towards the rear of the shell, and in larger crabs the outer edges of the eye sheaths form sharp, broad triangles that point sideways.

These crabs often use their claws to scrape flies from the undersides of leaves.

Like all crabs, it sheds its shell to grow, and a leg or claw lost along the way can be replaced at the next moult. Newly moulted crabs are soft and vulnerable, so they stay hidden until the new shell has hardened.