The living habits of hermit crabs

Hermit crabs often live in the shells of dead mollusks to protect their soft belly. There are more than 500 species of hermit crabs in the world, most of them live in water, a few live on land, and some hermit crabs no longer live in carapace. Instead, they have developed a hard shell similar to crabs. Let's take a look at the living habits of hermit crabs.

Food habit

Hermit crabs are versatile and omnivorous animals. They are called seaside scavengers who eat everything from algae and food residues to parasites. For family fish farmers, putting one or two hermit crabs in the aquarium will play the role of a cleaner.

Life span

The life span of hermit crabs is generally 2-5 years, but in a good breeding environment, they often live to 20-30 years, and the longest on record has lived for more than 70 years.

Change the shell

Hermit crab houses have conch shells, seashells, snail shells, and even use bottle caps as homes because of the poor ecological environment. Hermit crabs are relatively soft when they are born and are easy to be preyed on. When they grow up, they must find a house that suits them and attack the conch, killing and tearing it to pieces. Then get in, hook the top of the shell with the tail, support the inner wall of the shell with several short legs, crawl out of the shell with long legs, and guard the mouth of the shell with big claws. In this way, it moved into a new home with strong environmental protection.

Symbiosis

The shell carried by hermit crabs is a good hard substrate for benthos, and there are many organisms symbiotic with it. The symbiotic relationship between most hermit crabs and cyclists is not absolute, nor is it one-to-one, and most of the relationships are mutually beneficial symbiosis. The spiny cells of the sea anemone can provide some degree of protection for the hermit crab, while the sea anemone can obtain the hard matrix on the shell and the debris when the hermit crab is foraging. Hydra can also provide some degree of protection to hermit crabs and prevent other large harmful appendages from forming colonies on the shell, while polyps can not only obtain debris, but also avoid being submerged by the bottom. Even when hermit crabs gather, it can also promote the sexual reproduction of hydra.