Mangrove Horseshoe Crab - Diet

Diet

Mangrove horseshoe crabs are selective benthic feeders, feeding mainly on insect larvae, small fish, oligochaetes, small crabs and thin-shelled bivalves. Lacking jaws, it grinds up the food with bristles on its legs and places it in its mouth using its chelicerae. The ingested food then enters the cuticle-lined oesophagus and then the proventriculus. The proventriculus is made up of a 'crop' and a 'gizzard'. The crop can expand to fit the ingested food, while the gizzard grinds the food into a 'pulp'. Studies have found that mangrove horseshoe crabs have a strong preference for insect larvae over the other organisms on which it also feeds.

Read more about this topic:  Mangrove Horseshoe Crab

Famous quotes containing the word diet:

    I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The pills are a mother, but better,
    every color and as good as sour balls.
    I’m on a diet from death.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty—the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)