Blanket Hermit Crabs Use Anemones as Defensive Snuggies

[Judi Lynn]

Invertebrate apparel is apparently nonplussed

By Jennifer Frazer on May 30, 2018



Credit: Lemaitre et al. 2018

Let other hermit crabs use hard, uncomfortable shells that have to be rotated every 5,000 scuttles. Hermit crabs in the genus Paguropsis and Paguropsina have stumbled on a much better solution: flexible, toxin-secreting, cozy sea anemones that can be pulled up and down like a blanket.

In the western Pacific and Indian Ocean, they gad about the seafloor making all the other hermit crabs jealous of their fabulous ballistic millinery.

. . .

First described from a specimen collected by the pioneering 1874 HMS Challenger expedition, blanket hermit crabs have been seldom seen by humans since. However, a recent French-sponsored biodiversity study (let it not be said that the French don’t try, in spite of my last post) of the Indo-West Pacific encountered many blanket hermit crabs, resulting in the discovery and naming of five previously undescribed species.

I have many questions about these crabs. Can the anemones wrapped around these crabs live independently? How and when do the anemone and the crab find each other? How effective are anemone-slankets relative to shells? I don't think scientists yet know the answers, given how little seen and studied these animals are.

More:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/blanket-hermit-crabs-use-anemones-as-defensive-snuggies/

[samnsara]

1. awwwwwwww

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Appears to me

to be evidence of toolmaking. The same bar we use to determine intelligence in Apes, Birds etc. The wonders of life.