Per the ancient lore, part 15

two tiny unidentified hermit crabs embracing
It’s been a while since we’ve seen any crustaceans – let’s feature some crabs today.

Okay, sorry, I’m not in a rut, this is just one of the earlier images that still held some interest. We’re once again back in the Aquatic folder, on Day Two of the loaner camera and once again shooting in the little saltwater aquarium that I maintained while in Florida. Two of the constant residents within were the transparent grass shrimp that could be found with effort, and the tiny hermit crabs that were virtually everywhere in the Indian River Lagoon. The pair seen here measured perhaps 20mm across the wide points of their scavenged shells, so much smaller than the example seen in The Girlfriend’s hand in that previous post. And I wish I could tell you what was going on here, but I don’t really know. All I can say is that the one in the back tried, for a minute or so, to pull across or roll over the one in the front, which was resisting, but whether this was a mating thing, a territorial dispute (which did not seem to be an issue at all for the multiple crabs I had in the aquarium,) or simply the search for a new empty shell, I can’t offer an opinion. It’s easy to see that the one in the back may not have had any view at all of the occupant of the shell in the front, given the length of the eyestalks, but that’s anthropocentric thinking; they have very long antennae and presumably could tell where one another was even in pitch darkness.

By the way, this is the macro mode of the Sony F717, which was not too shabby on its own. But I quickly tried the lens-stacking trick, putting an Olympus 50mm f1.4 reversed onto the end of the fixed zoom lens that the Sony possessed, and pulled off some wicked magnification – an example can be found here (one of the aforementioned grass shrimp.) I definitely had my fun with the camera.