Beach-burrowing beasties may shovel more sand than any other animal on Earth

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Add as preferred source Beach hopper (Megalorchestia californiana). Credit: Peter Pearsall/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service At just an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, the sand hoppers skipping across California's Isla Vista Beach at dawn don't exactly look like a force of nature. But a new study reveals that these shrimp-like creatures might be doing more to shape the landscape in which they live than any other animal on Earth.

"The impact of animals on beaches is a really understudied area, especially considering how much work they're doing," said Tim Baxter, a physical geographer at the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum and the study's lead author.