AMAZING ANIMALS: HERMIT CRABS

By Josea Descheemaeker age 11

Hermit crabs combing the beach in French Polynesia

You probably see these creatures on every beach you go to and every time you go snorkeling.ย  Hermitย  crabs can live in the water and on land due to the fact that they breath through gills.

Hermit crabs names are very deceiving for several reasons:

  1. As opposed to being hermits that prefer to always be alone, hermit crabs are vary social with other hermit crabs.ย  Hermit crabs live and walk easily among their kind, over and under their kind, eating shell to shell in groups sometimes.
  2. They are more shy than hermit like.ย  They are quick to hide in their shell when as little as a shadow passes over them.
  3. Hermit crabs are more closely related to spiders and scorpions than crabs,

The reason people put Hermit in their name is because they carry their homes

everywhere they go . Hermit crabs are vary picky about what shells they live in and they switch shells when they grow too big for the one they are living in.ย  Sadly, now some Hermit crabs use plastic bottle caps and other Plasticย  things as homes.

This hermit crab is using a plastic bottle cap as a ‘shell’

Many Hermit crabs love to decorate their shells.ย  Hermit crabs can lift things 10 times their weight . Despite a hermit crab’s size they Typically live up to 30 years in the wild and some liveย  up toย  60 years. There are about 500 Species of hermit crabs all over the world And with a lot of colors blues reds whites And oranges And sometimes all of those colors on one hermit crab.ย  Some colors can be very bright.

Hermit crabs have many predators too such as big crabs, birds, and fish that keep the hermit crab population down.ย  Hermit cards eat pretty much anything they can fined and from my experience they love coconut.

These Hermit crabs are in Mexico eating side by side until the coconut meat was completely gone.

Believe it or not hermit crabs and coconut crabs are closely related.ย  While hermit crabs live in shells their entire life, coconut crabs only live in shells when they are young.

My Experience

Hermit crabs are very shy animals.ย  When you get to close to them they retreat into their shells.ย  When I put a hermit crab on my hand most will be very eager to run off and get away from me.ย  It is a rare hermit crabs, typically the bigger ones, that will try to pinch me.ย  Do not be deceived by their small size, they have very large claws and it hurts a lot when they pinch you.ย  If you are hiking off the beach and when youโ€™re still close to the beach, you can sometimes find hermit crabs clinging to the tree.ย  If youโ€™re taking a shell from the beach look very closely and make sure thereโ€™s not a hermit crab in it.ย  At 1st glance some shells look like they donโ€™t have any hermit crabs in them but the small hermit crab sometimes get inย  shells way too big for them and itโ€™s very hard to see them so look very closely.ย  This has happened to me sometimes and I have accidentally brought aย  hermit crab in their shells back to the boat. If there’s a shy hermit crab that you want out of the shell you can cup it in your hands and breathe onto them. This typically coaxes them out because of the warmth of your breath but there are some that are just too scared and they won’t come out.

A great way to find hermit crabs is to get down close to the sand at the beach and just start looking. This is something my family and I do a lot.ย  We definitely found hermit crabs here in Costa Rica.

SY WHIRLWIND ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ Maurisa, Mike, Russell & Josea โ€“ Alajuela 48โ€™

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