the.com/hermit crab
a soft-bodied squatter that wears the real estate market on its back.
means A small crustacean with a soft, vulnerable abdomen that protects itself by living inside an empty snail shell, swapping to a bigger one as it grows.
from From "hermit," a religious recluse who lives alone in a cell — itself from Greek "erēmitēs," "of the desert," from "erēmos," meaning lonely or deserted. The crab earned the name because it dwells solitary inside a borrowed shell, like a monk in his hermitage. "Crab" is an old Germanic word tied to the notion of scratching or clawing, a cousin of "crawl" and "crab" the verb meaning to grumble.
- shell market
- They line up by size to trade shells in order
- not crabs
- More closely related to lobsters than true crabs
- social climbers
- One leaving its shell triggers a whole swap chain
- long lives
- Some species survive over 30 years
- borrowed armor
- Their twisted abdomen evolved to fit spiral shells
pagurus bernhardus — the common european hermit crab, found throughout the atlantic and north sea
coenobita clypeatus — the caribbean hermit crab, popular in the pet trade since the 1970s
dardanus megistos — the white-spotted hermit crab of the indo-pacific, the largest hermit crab species