Spanner crab
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The spanner crab cannot fold its abdomen all the way in.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Spanner crab
- Scientific name
- Ranina ranina
- Japanese name
- アサヒガニ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Malacostraca
- Order
- Decapoda
- Family
- Raninidae
- Genus
- Ranina
It lives on sandy seabeds from Sagami Bay to Okinawa in Japan, along the east coast of Africa, in Australia and elsewhere.
How the Spanner crab lives
Spade-shaped tips on their legs help them burrow quickly into sand. They usually stay buried in sand with just their eyes sticking out. They do not use all of their walking legs to walk.
沖縄美ら海水族館Basic data
- Range
- Sagami Bay to Kyushu, Okinawa, Hachijojima, east Africa, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia
Where the Spanner crab has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- アサヒガニ
- 简体中文
- 旭蟹
- 繁體中文
- 真蛙蟹
- 한국어
- 닭게
- Français
- Crabe grenouille
- Português (Brasil)
- Caranguejo-rã-vermelho
- العربية
- رانين مسنن
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Kepiting katak merah
- Tiếng Việt
- Cua Huỳnh đế
- ไทย
- ปูจักจั่น
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — アサヒガニChecked: 2026-11-04
- 沖縄美ら海水族館 — アサヒガニChecked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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