Every year, thousands of giant spider crabs (Leptomithrax gaimardii) aggregate in Port Phillip Bay, an enormous inlet on the south coast of Victoria in Australia. It’s the largest known gathering of these crabs in the world.<\/p>\n
The reason for the mass gathering is still a bit of a mystery. The leading theory is that the crabs<\/a> come together as a form of protection while moulting their hard shells<\/a> (which allows them to grow). While shedding, and during the few hours after, the crabs’ soft bodies make them vulnerable to predators \u2013 the more there are of them in one place, the better chance they have of survival. <\/p>\n The sight of these large crabs marauding across the seafloor and clambering all over each other is breathtaking, as this footage recorded in 2021 shows.<\/p>\n Underwater footage shows thousands of giant spider crabs gathering in Port Phillip Bay, Australia (recorded in 2021). The shells of these large crabs can measure up to 16cm across. Credit: Joel Sharpe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Image and video credit: Joel Sharpe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, thousands of giant spider crabs (Leptomithrax gaimardii) aggregate in Port Phillip Bay, an enormous inlet on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-373115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}