These Acrobatic Beach Hoppers Shred All Night Long, Deep Look

As the sun sets, hordes of tiny crustaceans called beach hoppers also known as sand hoppers emerge from underground burrows to frolic and feast. They eat so much decaying seaweed and other beach wrack that by morning all thats left are ghostly outlines in the sand. Watch and Subscribe to PBS Terra: SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look DEEP LOOK is an ultraHD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. Night falls, and the beaches come alive with sand hoppers hungry, jumping shrimplike creatures that look a lot like giant translucent fleas. No, its not a horror movie, and these animals dont bite or suck your blood. Theyre much more than fleas, says Jenny Dugan of the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. Through her research on sandy beach ecology, Dugan has spent years developi