#crablr

Galápagos Ghost Crab

THE CRAB ORB!!

I got this from a Japanese gacha machine at an anime convention. It has one of four buildable crab models and I don't know which one. Let's find out.

Eyy, it's a spider crab!

Surgery is going well

I recently went to Holden Beach, where my family always goes for vacation! This is the birthplace of my love of hermit crabs :) there are marine hermit crabs wild out where we usually stay, and I always enjoy looking for them! Anyway, this time I decided to record my hermit crab findings!

(other than wild marine hermies, I also saw terrestrial hermit crabs in two places, one being a store that has always had them for relatively cheap as pets, but they don't take the best care of them, they're in a wire cage and most have painted shells, but this time they weren't super overcrowded, and they had proper food and water, so that is definitely a win compared to how it has been in past years! I've had to make the staff give them food and water before :( ,,, I also saw them in a petsmart, which usually have pretty bad care, but these looked very well taken care of! anyway, onto the marine hermies lol)

I went out to see the wild hermits four days. Also of note, for as long as I can remember, we've had thinstripe hermit crabs (Clibanarius vittatus, Diogenidae) at this beach. This time, there were no thinstripes to be seen, they were all long-wristed hermit crabs (Pagurus longicarpus, Paguridae)????? idk what that's about but uhhh yeah thats whats there now so I hope wherever my thinstripes are they're doing ok. here's a pic of a thinstripe vs a long-wristed (from google)

Day 1 - didn't bring a container, so was unable to properly count them, but I would estimate that in 30 mins we (me and @boop-your-dragons) found about 30-40 hermies.

This was obviously the day I noticed they weren't thinstripes and that night I did excessive research on Paguridae. (looked through every available wikipedia page) Note to anyone who wants to research hermit crabs on wikipedia - theres. like nothing. most species don't have pages, and if they do, its like "This is a species of the hermit crab family Paguridae" with one picture. It is incredibly frustrating. 2/10 Do Not recommend.

Day 2 - brought a bucket, mostly looked by myself for about 30 mins, and found 31 hermit crabs. confirmed they were indeed long-wristed hermit crabs.

Pictures at end of post are from day 2*

Day 3 - brought the bucket again, looked with boop for about 30 mins, found 120+ hermit crabs. It was a hermit crab party. we technically found more, but we had officially stopped counting at that point. also found one dead hermit crab that unfortunately had a very large clutch of eggs on her. Who knows if they were fertile, but we took her out of her shell for another crab to have, and let her body go in the ocean. I had also found a large number of empty shells that were suitable for hermies, and scattered those around when we released them after counting.

Day 4 - we didn't go to the place in the ocean we went the past 3 days, since we didn't want to fully get in the water, but we walked all the way down to the end of the shoreline, and found what appeared to be the breeding grounds. it was literally hermie heaven. I would estimate thousands, at least 4k, because they were all down the shore towards the end. you had to look closely before you took a step, because they were all over the ground (in the shallow water), and had to walk very slowly because they were all so small that an unexpected wave from your feet would move them around from where they were walking. this day we also found a flat-clawed hermit crab (Pagurus pollicaris, Paguridae) (see image below, it's also from google). it was about twice the size of the largest long-wristed hermit crab and there was only one, so I guess it was just in the wrong place?

Now for the pictures we took (courtesy of my mom) under the cut!!!!