Crab Development

Use your mouse to magnify this crab megalopa. Crabs are indirect developers, meaning they go through a larval stage before becoming the crab you are familiar eating. Crabs develop inside eggs attached to their mother’s abdomen (mom is sometimes called a “sponge crab” because the eggs look like a sponge). The larvae hatch from these eggs and are zooplankton for several weeks or more, before settling to the bottom as megalopae and then metamorphosing into a juvenile crab looking much like the adult.