Holy Crab!

I'm going to apologize right now for this completely random post. I have been crazy busy lately and this is really the last thing I have time to do but I've become obsessed! Look at this picture! I know it's hard to tell what it is but I'll explain.

This is our pet crab, Mr. Krabs. We've had him for about a month or so. His brother, Spongebob, died last week. So a couple of days ago, I noticed Mr. Krabs wasn't coming down from the filter. He looked like he was either dead or dying so I quit feeding him. He wasn't eating the food that was at the bottom of his tank so I thought I'd just let him be. After 3 days of hanging out on the filter, we took a pencil to him and got him off. He just floated down to the bottom. We thought for sure he was dead. Then last night, I was going to turn off his light and saw this!! Look closely at the picture. I thought "Mr. Krabs isn't dead, he's in labor!" There was another crab coming out of Mr. Krabs' back, like a flip-top convertible. His back was open and this other crab was trying to come out! It seriously freaked me out! We were watching in fascination as this crab was giving birth!

Or so I thought. Who knew that crabs actually shed their skin? This crab was actually "molting". A process in which the crab sheds the outer hard shell, the exoskeleton, in order to grow a larger shell! I never knew that! So the crab goes into isolation a few days before the molting occurs and actually looks like it could be dead, then sheds the shell, possibly loses a few legs in the process and grows new legs! Isn't that crazy? So poor Spongebob, our other crab, who we thought was dead was probably in the first stages of molting and we just threw him away! So now that I'm educated in the whole molting of crabs process, I'll continue to watch in fascination as this new, larger, soft crab feeds off his old shell - rich in calcium, and grows new legs out of the buds that are there. Fascinating!