Who wants hermit crab fun facts?!?
- The habit of living in a second hand shell is what gave rise to the popular name "hermit crab," which is a reference to the idea of a hermit living alone in a small cave. (Duh.)
- Hermit crabs live in the wild in colonies of 100 or more, and do not thrive in smaller numbers.
- A hermit crab with a shell which is too small cannot grow as fast as hermit crabs with well-fitting shells, and is more likely to be eaten.
- The reproductive organs of hermit crabs are located near and just below the crab’s heart and open to the outside at the base of the last pair of walking legs in the male.
- The life span of the hermit crab in the wild is up to 30 years.
7 comments:
linda...these latest pictures are really disturbing. the eel was gross, the possum (or is it opossum?) made my stomach turn -(those things are disgusting, we once saw an albino one dying in the street), and the cat - looks like it took a few too many knocks with a weed whacker and that it's about to jump on me and cut my jugular. but now im going to have some terrible dream of some shrively hermit crawling out of a shell and walking around naked. or an old guy with a squirrel on his ass.
there are worse things than public nudity.
i had a pet hermit crab when i was a kid. i kept him in a small glass bowl on the back of the toilet (don't ask me why). one day the hermit crab disappeared. just up and disappeared. did he dive into the toilet thinking that would bring him freedom? i don't know how a hermit crab could have climbed up the glass sides of the bowl. Or did he simply shrivel up and dematerialize, perhaps because he was all alone?
it is a mystery to this day.
That really makes me want to see hermit crabs "in the wild." Where does one seek them out besides a pet store?
we got madison a hermit crab a couple of years ago. it was a reward for her no longer peeing her bed at night (yay for mommy- no more laundry, well, except for cainen now- still!!!) anyway. we had it for maybe 4-5 months. but then it died. but i think it had been dead for a while, because i checked on it, same place. like, a month later maybe, it was still in the same goddamn place! so i think it had been dead for about a month before we realized it. they're just so boring! we buried it in the backyard, per madison's request.
Erik Pis0r had hermit crabs.
Also, a year or so ago, at the mall, I found a kiosk selling hermit crabs for like $5 a pop, only the shells had been painted with pop logos like the Batman logo, or NASCAR, or Metallica, or a big green dollar sign. Kids just buy 'em and swap 'em and collect 'em all, like Pokemons that live and feel pain and hunger when the kids forget to feed them and they die. Alas, woe is the life of a domesticated suburban hermit crab.
I had about 25 hermit crabs back in high school (about 13 yrs ago). I got most of them from my Lab Management teacher. There were so few resources for information on proper care of hermit crabs back then that I really didn't know what to do. I bought them some hermit crab food, and gave them tap water (maybe I treated it with aquarium water conditioner, I dunno), and they had aquarium gravel to walk on. The strongest one only lived about a year.... All these years later I gave it another go when a neighbor gave up caring for the one survivor they had (the other had recently died on them). So I took Coupe, and on the way home I bought him a couple friends. Coupe only lasted a few more weeks, as he was still stressed out from his previous home. The new ones, Beemer and "Hattie" (Hatchback) are doing well and even completed molts recently. I have so much more info on how to care for them, and they reward me with their odd behavior. I also get to watch my two cats react to them. :)
The pic of the old hermit in the shell is hilarious!
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