Sea Shells and Hermit Crabs

Sea Shells and Hermit Crabs

While I was walking on the rocks during low tide looking for shells, I found this very beautiful shell. (Photo above)

After picking it up, I felt it started to crawl in my hand, it was still alive and had a small Hermit crab inside, which made the shell, it's home. In the photo above and below, you can see the crab peeping from underneath his shell.

I put the crab back into the sea after taking the photos. Every time I came close, it quickly retracted into his shell, thus I could not get a nice photo of the crab itself.

Hermit crabs use empty sea shells as homes. They have an soft curled abdomen, which must be protected from predators. They use the empty shells as protection. Hermit crabs spend most of their time under water and breathe though gills. They can breathe outside of the water as long as the gills are damp. Hermit crabs can outgrow it's shell and then must get a new shell, they often fight among each other to obtain suitable shells.

The photo below shows a Hermit crab outside it's shell. Note the curled and soft abdomen.

Image Source

The photos were taken with my iPhone, during my recent vacation at Scottburg KwaZulu-Natal on the East coast of South Africa.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

You can click on the link Ghost Crab to see another post on crabs.