- Futurity.org - http://www.futurity.org - Hermit crabs gather
to evict neighbors Posted By Robert Sanders-UC Berkeley On
November 5, 2012 @ 11:06 am In Top Stories | 2 Comments UC
BERKELEY (US) — Most social animals get together for protection
or to mate or hunt, but terrestrial hermit crabs socialize to
steal each other’s houses. All hermit crabs appropriate
abandoned snail shells for their homes, but the dozen or so
species of land-based hermit crabs—popular terrarium pets—are
the only ones that hollow out and remodel their shells,
sometimes doubling the internal volume. This provides more room
to grow, more room for eggs—sometimes a thousand more eggs—and a
lighter home to lug around as they forage. But empty snail
shells are rare on land, so the best hope of moving to a new
home is to kick others out of their remodeled shells, says Mark
Laidre, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral
fellow who reports this unusual behavior in Current Biology .
When three or more terrestrial hermit crabs congr