March 2, 2008

Here's the boxing crab. It's a great example of symbiosis as well as mimicry. Those big red things are not it's real eyes yet are pretty intimidating. The crab belongs to the phylum Arthropod; note the jointed legs and exoskeleton. The boxing crab performs a boxing behavior with those anemones.
The anemones are of course, cnidarians. They serve to sting a possible predator or competitor perhaps. The anemones also capture plankton to feed on. Note the radial symmetry characteristic of this phylum.