I have a few Seychelles crabs post left to post from my Seychelles trip. Arguably, the most radiant I encountered was the little blue fellow depicted below. I was crossing the mangroves pontoons of Curieuse island observing the wildlife when I noticed here and there a few blue spots on the wet sand. There were hundreds if not thousands of brown to red crabs in that habitat so I first thought that these blue dots were some stones or some kind of detritus.
I was very surprised when I realized that it was in fact one of the prettiest fiddler crabs ever. There are about one hundred species of fiddler crabs, all small crabs belonging to the genus Uca (Ocypodidae family). They are semi-terrestrial crabs that are related to the ghost crab of the genus Ocypode such as Ocypode ceratopthalmathat I observed at Baie Ternay Marine National Park.
This blue fiddler crab was much smaller and its population significantly reduced in comparison to those of the other species I found on the island like Carnisoma carnifex. I managed to photograph both males and females as you can see. In case you don't know, these crabs are well known for their sexually dimorphic claws: males have one major claw and one minor while females develop same-sized claws.
I lack literature on these creatures so am not able to provide a proper identification right now for this fiddler crab. Maybe in time I will and this present post will be edited accordingly of course. In the same mangrove, I also stumbled onto this other beautiful fiddler crab (I only saw a handful specimens of this one). I first wondered if it could be some juveniles but I am not sure youngsters would already exhibit the major claw so I believe this represents another species. I will try to find out as well. :-)
