Last Sunday afternoon while resting at Pandan Island beach within Honda Bay in Palawan, I spotted this mysterious sea creature being examined by tourists and used for photo ops. I think I have seen it on NatGeo or Discovery Channel before, but I don't know its name. Considered as a living fossil, its one of those sea creatures which have survived since the post-Jurassic period, and had barely evolved after more than 250 million years. It was quite surprising that its fairly common to see on Palawan islands, but not on the rest of the country.
It has almost the same carapace or shell of a crab, feet also like a crab, but without the claws. The tail is similar with a stingray's, but with more "molluscan" covering and less flexible.
The local fishermen who caught the creature calls it as one species of king crab, but I don't believe them. It looks creepy and dangerous, but proved to be harmless when I held the bigger one of the two creatures. They just swam away from the shore when the tourists grew tired of admiring and holding them (its quite heavy!).
Thanks for blog reader Levi for identifying that its a horseshoe crab.
Hey Noel, that looks like a horse shoe crab. It's blood is harvested by pharma companies in the US because they can help detect harmful bacteria. Saw it on Animal Planet I think. :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I saw your blog from a Google search of BPI credit car promos. Thanks for sharing the info to the rest of us. How is it that you seem to know about the promos in advance?
- Levi
Thanks Levi for the info on the horseshoe crab.
ReplyDeleteBPI usually sends me SMS message on the first day of the promo. Either I give them a call or send them an email inquiring about the promo details.