Monday, May 02, 2005

I was at a beach about 30 mins outside of Taichung the other day and encoutered these amazing symetrical patterns that the local crabs make around their holes. Not quite sure why they go to all the effort of rolling perfect little sand balls and arranging them so well. Any enlightening comments would be appreciated :)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, here is Cameron. The little sand balls is leftover from crabs' food. When flood, there are so many little things such as fish's eggs or small worms go to the beach. And when ebb, crabs go to beach to enjoy their big meal. They eat what they want and throw what they don't want which is sand.
Then why they make sand to balls? Because their mouth shape is a circle.
Hope you understand my bad grammar;)

Anonymous said...

By the way, I love this picture. And one more thing, it's not JUST 30 mins outside of Taichung...but I love that beach anyway.

RoG said...

Hey thanks Cameron! Wow, you sleep late :)

So glad I now know the answer, and yes I can understand your English perfectly!

RoG said...

Thanks anonymous.

Jaa, it took us a little longer, but I figured by car it would be about that long. Maybe not though...

Anonymous said...

i happen to have a few pictures of this as well. from the beaches of hsinchu. my sister and I came to the conclusion that they dug trenches in the sand, and had to bring out the little balls of sand. Being sperical it should be the easiest to carry, otherwise the sand-ball would fall apart. We also noticed different styles and patterns ( cult religion? ) in the ball placings. Sometimes they were placed in nearly perfectly straight lines away from the central hole, resulting in a star shaped pattern, sometimes they just piled them up outside the hole like an anthill. an there is NO grey area, it was one or the other, as if there were seperate cults. We even noticed their behavior was regional. one region of crabs did the anthill thing, the others do the star shaped thing. They spend all of the low tide digging a hole and eating so they dont get washed away when the high tide comes, and then they come out and start the digging process all over again.

RoG said...

Now this is why I love the Internet! I can learn so much from such interesting people. Thanks a lot, Gene! Very interesting.

Anonymous said...

i have only seen those little creatures on tv, and they are fascinating! what a simple yet compelling image. lovely detail.