Crab trapped inside plastic bottle after outgrowing its narrow opening, study finds

The crab and other contents of the bottle. PIC COURTESY/Hiroshima University

About 500 meters off Sesoko Island in Okinawa, Japan, a plastic bottle drifting at sea was found with a live crab inside whose body had grown far wider than the bottle's opening.

The crab was not sheltering, it was trapped. The bottle's mouth was only 24 mm across, but the crab measured 40.31 mm long and 88.23 mm wide and weighed 42.06 grams.

Researchers concluded that the crab had probably entered the bottle as a juvenile, when it was still small enough to pass through the opening. It then survived for about two months by feeding on young fish and algae before growing too large to leave.

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