During the rainy days over the past month, Halloween crabs were active in the forested area just behind Playa Danta. If you walked near the Playa Danta's sign and the entrance to the nearby trails, they were hard not to spot, moving around as they were in full reproductive season.
But even now, during the Canícula (if you don’t know what that is, you can find out here), you can still walk through the quiet forest edge and spot them crawling in and out of the soil.
These shy and colorful friends are hard to miss. They have six thick, bright red legs, a black and blue shell, and big orange claws. These crabs spend most of their lives in the forest, but to reproduce, the females carry their eggs to the sea. The larvae are born in the ocean and later make their way to dry land, where they grow into crabs. As adults, they stay mostly in the forest. That means Playa Danta isn’t just the beach where we love to spend our time. It’s also the birthplace of our red-legged friends, or cangrejo de tierra de patas rojas, as they’re called in Spanish.
In theory, they live in the coastal forest strip that stretches about 600 meters inland from the shore. But during the past rainy months, they were even spotted in the Terraced Flats, all the way across Beach Town.
They inhabit the Pacific coast from Mexico to Colombia, and Las Catalinas is right in the middle of their range. These crabs dig impressive 1.5 meter deep burrows, which is quite remarkable when you consider their anatomy. Some people call them natural engineers.
They’re known as Halloween Crabs or, less commonly, Mouthless Crabs. But these ones we found near Playa Danta looked like they were smiling for our picture.
If you’re coming from the Public Parking and turn left, or from Plaza Danta and turn right, you’ll find a charming wooden bridge. This is a great example of their habitat. They feed on dry leaves and seedlings, which you can see near the water in the photo below. If you look closely, you might see some small holes in the soil, which are the crabs' homes. Stand still and they’ll begin to emerge, but be careful. They’re very shy and will disappear at the slightest movement.
We recommend you come take a look at these amazing crustaceans. Bring the kids and turn it into a game to see who can find the most crabs or take the best photo of them. Here is ours.