From mountains to flowers, the world is full of natural beauty. And with an estimated 8 million animal species on the planet, it’s not surprising that the world is full of animals as stunning as peacocks or tropical fish.
But dresser crabs take the beauty of the animal kingdom to a whole new level. These creative crustaceans have developed an ingenious way to protect themselves from predators, and look fierce in the process. Like a swarm of Americans hunting for bargains on Black Friday, the dresser crabs scour the ocean floor to find the best material to use as camouflage. Usually, this would be things like sponges or seaweed, maybe topped off with a fancy shell. But given the chance, dresser crabs will happily fashion their outfit from man-made materials. In the case of this BBC video, they are given fabric and pearls. The results are, of course, hilarious, with one crab even stopping to take a look in a mirror.
As the video explains, dresser crabs fray the edges of their chosen fabric and attach it to velcro-like hooks all over their body. The reason for this is the same reason that animals like cats often have funny patterns on their fur:it helps make the edges of their bodies more ill-defined, and thus makes them harder to see. Using this ingenious tactic, dresser crabs can essentially completely vanish into their surroundings.
Check out the video to see these crabs in action.