Marine Biologists and others of the "know things about sea critters" persuasion...

It's a sea scabie. If you touched it - you are infected.

Just kidding......

It's a sand crab. Lemme google it...

Weird little bugger. I grew up on the Texas Gulf coast, so it's new to me. I've never seen anything like it here in NorCal on the coast either. If it has legs, its probably some sort of 'crab' like critter??? Maybe you caught it between shells, while it was moving out of one, looking for another???

Or a species of one at least.

Yep, sand flea. Looks like it recently molted (hard to tell though). They are fun to watch and dig for. Normally they burrow really fast.

They are fun! When I was a kid we dug for them all the time. We'd put some sand in our hands or on our backs and and they would tickle us digging around.

I tried to hold one when my kids found some but it creeped me out. Huh. Must be getting old.

Sorta looks like RT to me.

Ask Neurofizz, he's a marine biologist.

thethinker42 said:

I will SO do that next time I find one. This one got away before we could do anything more than poke at it. Stupid waves.

Plus, we didn't know what it was, and given the fact that most creatures in Okinawa are poisonous in some fashion or another, we didn't want to take any chances (I mean, c'mon, we have poisonous SNAILS for crying out loud). We probably have vampire butterflies and poisonous birds too. Who knows? So, yeah, weren't going to let a mystery creature wander around on my skin.

But now that I know...

Click to expand...

Have you seen any of those gargantuan wasps? *shudder* I watched a special on them.

I'm never traveling to Japan.

Just saw this thread. Sorry.

You'd be best off googling "Sand Crab." These guys can get large in some parts of the world, but on the east coast here, they are about thumbnail size. I'm more familiar a west coast species because a colleague works on the neural control of digging behavior. If you want specifics on that species, google, Emerita analoga.

These guys live in sandy areas (mostly but not exclusively) in the surf-wash zone, and burrow down with their antennae and first few appendages sticking up from the sand. When the wash recedes, and food items contact the exposed parts, they grab and eat. In the higher regions of the wet zone, kids can dig down and frequently unearth the beasts. When put back in wet sand, it becomes apparent how specialized they are for digging into the sand. They're cute little buggers.