Sand Crabs are aggressive monsters that look like harmless sandy rocks while disguised, but attack when walked by. They are found along the southern coast in Great Kourend's Hosidius House.
Unlike most other enemies and NPCs, Sand crabs are not marked with yellow dots on the player's minimap; this is probably due to the crabs' appearance, which camouflages them as rocks. In addition, they are immune to the effects of the dwarf multicannon.
Sand crabs become unaggressive if the player has not left the surrounding area in a certain amount of time (roughly between ten and twenty-five minutes). To make the crabs aggressive again, exit the surrounding area (run near the Player Owned House portal to the North) and enter again.. As they are "dormant" until "awoken" by a passing player, sand crabs cannot be attacked until they are made aggressive once more.
They hit fairly low, but low level players should bring food. Sand crabs are excellent for training at all combat levels, due to their low Defence and high Hitpoints, which makes them easy to kill. Compared to rock crabs, they have 10 more hitpoints which makes them an even better choice for training than their rocky counterparts. However, this means they may be even more frequented than rock crabs.
The new sand crab counterpart, King Sand Crabs were released with the new Catacombs batch of updates under Great Kourend.
Fletching
It's possible to train ones fletching skill by using a chisel on the pearls obtained from opening the oysters the Sand Crabs commonly drop to make 6 pearl bolt tips.
Drops
Item Quantity Rarity GE market price 
Coins 4; 36 Common Not sold
Oyster 1–2 Common 86–172
Seaweed 1–5 Common 45–225
Oyster pearl 1 Common 108
Tin ore 3 Common 285
Iron ore 1 Common 173
Empty oyster 1 Common Not sold
Bronze pickaxe 1 Common 67
Bucket of sand 1 Uncommon (6/128) 47
Copper ore 3 Uncommon 285
Edible seaweed 2 Uncommon 34
Opal bolt tips 5 Uncommon 40
Fishing bait 10 Uncommon 40
Ashes 2 Uncommon 144
Iron pickaxe 1 Uncommon 24
Spinach roll 1 Uncommon Not sold
Casket 1 Rare 731
Clue scroll (easy) 1 Rare Not sold
Rare drop table
In addition to the drops above, this monster also has access to the rare drop table.
Show/hide rare drop table Item Quantity Rarity GE market price
Coins 3,000 Common Not sold
Loop half of key 1 Common 10,307
Tooth half of key 1 Common 10,840
Chaos talisman 1 Common 505
Uncut sapphire 1 Common 455
Uncut emerald 1 Uncommon 679
Uncut ruby 1 Uncommon 1,249
Nature talisman 1 Uncommon 744
Steel arrow 150 Uncommon 4,800
Rune arrow 42 Uncommon 2,940
Rune javelin 5 Uncommon 875
Adamant javelin 20 Uncommon 1,220
Runite bar 1 Uncommon 12,368
Nature rune 67 Uncommon 14,539
Law rune 45 Uncommon 7,470
Death rune 45 Uncommon 9,135
Rune battleaxe 1 Uncommon 24,487
Rune 2h sword 1 Uncommon 37,758
Rune sq shield 1 Uncommon 22,459
Silver ore 100 (noted) Uncommon 7,000
Dragonstone 1 Uncommon 11,932
Uncut diamond 1 Rare 2,627
Dragon med helm 1 Rare 58,488
Rune kiteshield 1 Rare 32,015
Rune spear 1 Rare 11,933
Shield left half 1 Rare 65,697
Dragon spear 1 Rare 37,226
Trivia
- Their design and mechanics are based on Rock Crabs.