Don’t Look at This Horde of Fiddler Crabs in Wareham

Whatever you do, do not watch the above videos, which show a terrifying horde of crabs scurrying as one across Little Harbor Beach Estuary in Wareham.

The clip, shared yesterday on the Facebook page of the Wareham Department of Natural Resources, is of way more fiddler crabs than any non-predator would ever want to witness in one place.

“Fiddler crab army marching on Little Harbor Beach Estuary!” the post about the videos reads.

In one, shot from eye level, hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of the little crustaceans can be seen rushing along the sand through some reeds like a hostile force rushing into battle, and not unlike an aerial shot of a fantastical war scene. The other is up close, and it looks as if the ground has been replaced with a carpet of sprinting, quivering shells.

You can’t un-see these videos. Don’t watch them.

Sort of reminds us of this mysterious video of an unsettling underwater cloud of crabs discovered by Woods Hole scientists near Panama—which, if you choose to view, is totally on you.

Fiddler crab, by the way, is actually not one kind of crab but a designation given to more than 100 different species, which are characterized by having one huge claw and one much smaller one. According to a site packed with info about fiddler crabs, the marsh-dwelling scavengers got their name because “the movement of the small claw from the ground to its mouth resembles the motion of a someone moving a bow across a fiddle (the large claw).”

It’s not uncommon for them to travel in massive groups.

Thousands of exoskeletal fiddles, as far as the eye can see. Oh God.