Flame Streaked Box Crab

Sometimes species of the genus Calappa are known by the name of "shame-faced crabs" because the big, colorful, boxy species often are seen with their large claws, or chelae, folded across the front of their bodies as if hiding the face. Beyond that, here are other key features helping to recognize the flame box crab:

The general color is grayish with purplish-brown markings on top, and banding on the legs.

On the head area, the sockets containing the eyes, the "orbits," are not separated from the cavities on the underside of the head where the first pair of antennae are attached, the "antennular sockets."

Flame box crabs occur in the western Atlantic Ocean. It is found as far north as the Woods Hole region of Massachusetts, USA, and south through the Gulf of Mexico, plus the Bahamas and Bermuda. Older literature may report it as far south as Brazil. However, what earlier was regarded as Brazilian Calappa flammea now is accepted as Calappa ocellata. Apparently the southernmost limit is Suriname and French Guiana on South America's northeast coast.

Among other foods, flame box crabs feed on the gastropods known as whelks and cone shells, whose shells spiral in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions; they have right-handed and left-handed shells. Flame box crabs have a special "tool," apparently a spine on the claws, which they use like a can-opener to "peel" their prey and gain access to the flesh otherwise protected by the shell. This tool does not work well on whelks and cone shells with "left-handed shells," so flame box crabs mainly feed on mollusks with right-handed shells.