Consider the Hermit Crab
August 20, 2025 at 02:58AMGrowing up, I spent a lot of time on the California coast, exploring tidepools and observing hermit crabs. Unless one happened to scurry across the same rock I was standing on, I kept my distance and let them be. After reading this fascinating Slate story, I realized there’s an entire industry I was unaware of—one that sells hermit crabs as household pets. It saddens me to think of so many tiny crustaceans plucked from their habitats for human enjoyment. But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. Melissa Scott Sinclair writes about Mary Akers, a crab enthusiast who has figured out how to breed and raise them in captivity. Yet it raises a larger question: Should these creatures be kept as pets at all?
A 2015 investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals documented the practices at one hermit crab supplier in Orlando, Florida, where thousands of crabs were packed into pens. Their protective shells were broken open with a vise so they could be coerced into the painted shells that appeal to kids. (Sometimes, crab rescuers report, the still-damp paint adheres to the crab’s body, rendering it unable to crawl out of that shell. Suddeth recently took in one of these stuck crabs and managed to extricate it after a long soak.)
To have a shot at keeping the zoae alive and thriving, Akers said, “I had to re-create the ocean”—in her house in Lockport, New York, 500 miles from the Atlantic.
Using 5-gallon water jugs, Akers fashioned rotating tanks to mimic ocean currents. (Aquarists call these Kreisel tanks.) She fed the zoae live phytoplankton and brine shrimp. She hovered over the tanks, siphoning out the debris that fouled the crabs’ nursery and changing the water multiple times a day. Once the zoae became megalopae, they had to be moved to a flat-bottomed tank, then ushered onto land.
None survived Akers’ first attempt in 2017. The next year, she spotted more zoae, and again tried to keep them alive. This time, the ant-sized crabs donned their tiny shells, walked up a ramp, and began to breathe. She wept.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/08/19/hermit-crabs-pets/
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