You might still be fretting about what to wear this Halloween, but the dresser crab has it covered. It has a gift for fashioning a costume out of just about whatever’s within claw’s reach, as this fun clip from the BBC reveals.
Collectively known as decorator crabs, sponge crabs, or dresser crabs, the crustaceans play dress-up to fool would-be predators. In their natural habitat, these fashionistas of the sea would don a little seaweed, a few sponges, or maybe a colorful anemone for embellishment—but they can also improvise in a pinch.
Watch this crab carefully fray and deftly place a cloak of black fabric that it then accessorizes with lustrous pearls. Special Velcro-like hooks on its shell and legs help keep it all in place. Perfectly camouflaged against a seabed of baubles, the crab dupes a prowling puffer fish. These crabs are inherently green, too, since they carefully collect decorations from their shell once they have molted and reuse them on a new shell when it hardens.
Dresser crabs aren’t the only creatures that have a talent for styling their surroundings. Check out what this bird can do.
Australia’s satin bowerbird is named for the elaborate bowers—shady staging areas made of sticks—where the males put all their wares on display in hopes of wooing a mate. These guys clear a circular area on the rain forest floor where they then build a bower made of twigs, then they get down to decorating. They’re particularly fond of yellow and blue—especially blue, as you will see in this video. Male satin bowerbirds collect feathers and berries for adornments, but they are also fond of pilfering blue odds and ends that humans might leave unattended—everything from baby binkies and pens to bottle caps and toy cars.
Female satin bowerbirds judge the male’s skill for furnishing his bachelor pad, touring multiple males’ bowers until she finds one to her liking. When a female visits, the male puts on a dramatic display to further impress her, pulling feathers, flapping wings, and running around on the ground while buzzing and wheezing to express his adoration.
After mating, a female will not leave her eggs to hatch in her mate’s blue bachelor pad; She flies off to build a nest. But the male’s work isn’t done; He will pitch in with incubating and raising the young.