Hermit Crab
By: Kenyatta Robinson Period 1
What does it eat?
- Veggies like corn and carrots
- Decaying wood
- leaf litter
- Plants
- Fallen fruits
- grass
How does it move?
It uses its legs and claws to move around.
What eats it?
- Octopus
- birds
- seagulls
- other crabs
- sometimes turtles mammals
How does it eat?
It uses the smallest pincher claw to transfer food into their mouth.
Challenge to obtain in the Intertidal Zone
- Food
- Sunlight
Unusual Facts
- Hermit crabs eliminate in their shells and the last two pairs of back legs also known as shell legs push the excrement out, these two sets of legs also hold the hermit inside it's shell.
- Hermit crabs spend most of the time preparing for the molt or recovering from molting only to start to prepare for molting process again.
- The Hermit crabs first two months are spent as free swimming before settling down on the seafloor to search for its first of many shell homes
- Hermit Crabs use their smallest pincher claw called a Cheleped to transfer food to mouth parts. Food Particals must be small enough for their smallest claw to grasp and transfer food to the mouth
- Hermit crabs are scavengers and scavenge their food in rock pools, deep water or on the shore.
- When a hermit crab finds one of the proper size, it pulls itself inside, leaving several legs and its head outside the shell. A hermit crab carries the shell wherever it goes. When it outgrows its shell, it switches to a larger one.
- signs of molting you might notice in a hermit crab:
Its eyes may get cloudy.
It may eat and drink more than usual and grow a sac of fat. Then, it may stop eating and become less active.
It may dig a lot. - Let your crab eat its old exoskeleton for the nutrition it provides.