Marloes Sands, Saturday. I had assumed that here were the headless remains of a small sea creature with its “undercarriage” neatly stowed… WRONG!!! This is the tail of a female spider crab and, to quote the hugely knowledgeable Poseidon of Tiers, “They’re vestigial legs called pleopods which get adapted to various functions in different crustaceans. In lobsters they are the flattened paddle-like structures which help keep eggs in place and flap to oxygenate them. It seems they have a function in egg retention in spider crabs too.”
