The Ecuadorian hermit crab (''Coenobita compressus'') also known as the Pacific hermit crab is a species of land

hermit crab Hermit crabs are anomuran decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea that have adapted to occupy empty scavenged mollusc shells to protect their fragile exoskeletons. There are over 800 species of hermit crab, most of which possess an a ...

. It is one of the two land hermit crabs commonly sold in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

as pets, the other being the

Caribbean hermit crab The Caribbean hermit crab (''Coenobita clypeatus''), also known as the soldier crab, West Atlantic crab, tree crab, or purple pincher (due to the distinctive purple claw), is a species of land hermit crab native to the west Atlantic, Belize, ...

(''C. clypeatus'').Audrey Pavia
Hermit Crab

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Hermit Crabs

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Features and identification

''Coenobita compressus'' is a member of the phylum

Arthropoda Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

and the class

Malacostraca Malacostraca (from New Latin; ) is the largest of the six classes of crustaceans, containing about 40,000 living species, divided among 16 orders. Its members, the malacostracans, display a great diversity of body forms and include crabs, lobst ...

. They can be up to in length and are thought to be one of the smallest species of land hermit crabs. They have four walking legs, a small pincer, a large pincer, and antennae. Many people who keep these hermit crabs as pets notice that Ecuadorian crabs can be relatively fast walkers, even faster than Caribbean hermit crabs, and that they are quite active. Their eyes are more oval-shaped when compared to the round eyes of Caribbean hermit crabs and are thicker. Their big claw has four or five small ridges on the upper part. The tips of the second pair of walking legs are darker than the rest of the leg. The abdomen of the Ecuadorian hermit crab is short and fat. Ecuadorian hermit crabs vary greatly in colour, some are bright (

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the R ...

, dark

grey Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...

, or

orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

), but more often they are a

tan Tan or TAN may refer to: Businesses and organisations * Black and Tans, a nickname for British special constables during the Irish War of Independence. By extension "Tans" can now also colloquially refer to English or British people in general, es ...

colour. Sometimes, they may have a blue or green tint to their bodies or the insides of their legs. They also have comma-shaped eyes, unlike the "purple pincher" (''C. clypeatus''), which has dot-shaped eyes. When choosing a shell, they tend to give preference to shells with a wide and round

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

. As with all hermit crabs, painted shells are harmful to them, as they often eat the paint chips and can be poisoned with chemicals used in the paint. This significantly shortens their lives.

Habitats

Native to the Americas, these hermit crabs live on the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

seashore ranging from Mexico to Chile, and tend to gather around

tidal pool A tide pool or rock pool is a shallow pool of seawater that forms on the rocky intertidal shore. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide. Many tide pool habitats are home to especially adaptable animals that ...

s and high-tide zone. Their bodies have adapted to this seashore existence, and in captivity, they require access to seawater, as they must

metabolize Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...

the

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

in it and bathe in it to maintain gill moisture. Failure to provide access to seawater (real or artificial) will result in death. Like most hermit crabs, they are

scavenger Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators. While scavenging generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a herbivorous feeding b ...

s and consume

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

, dead

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

, and other

detritus In biology, detritus () is dead particulate organic material, as distinguished from dissolved organic material. Detritus typically includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms, and fecal material. Detritus typically hosts commun ...

that washes up on the shore.

Studies

''Coenobita compressus'' prefers the odors of foods that they have not recently eaten. Hermit crabs exposed to one food for at least 9 hours preferred foods having other odors for the next 6 hours. This short-term avoidance of food (like human beings who get bored with the same meals over and over again) compels the crabs to seek out a wider range of food. This might be advantageous to the crabs, possibly through the consumption of a more nutritionally balanced diet. Ecuadorian hermit crabs can make a chirping sound to communicate with each other.

As pets

Hermit crabs overall were once seen as a "throwaway pet" that would live only a few months, but species such as ''C. clypeatus'' have a 23-year lifespan if properly treated and some have lived longer than 32 years. Similarly, Ecuadorian hermit crabs have been known to live to over 30 years. In general, and despite their

moniker A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...

, hermit crabs are social animals that do best in groups. They also require a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment (ideally around 80% humidity or above and 75-85°F), and adequate substrate to allow them to bury themselves while

molting In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer ...

References

External links

Ecuadorian Hermit Crabs Wiki
{{Taxonbar, from=Q5334405 Hermit crabs Crustaceans of South America Crustaceans of the eastern Pacific Ocean Crustaceans described in 1836 Terrestrial crustaceans