Today we saw two giant hermit crabs battling over the same shell! It was a fierce fight, and in the end, the winner bullied the loser out of his own shell. We watched as the smaller one held on for dear life, naked without his protective home and at a loss for what to do. He finally crawled away, took his opponent's old shell, and hid inside. I had never seen anything like it!
Over the weekend, a friend of the tank brought us some cool new creatures, including a giant hermit - one of which we already had. It was evident from the start that two may be a crowd. The new guy was bigger, stronger and more aggressive.
This morning, upon arriving at the tank and taking a look at the animals inside, we found a stray hermit crab claw and a piece of a leg - signs of a fight. When we inspected further, we found the new, larger crab missing the bottom half of his leg, and the resident, smaller crab missing his claw. (He had already lost a claw to a jonah crab earlier in the month, so now he is completely clawless.) It was obvious that they had tussled sometime overnight, and it foreshadowed the events that would occur later that afternoon.
As a visiting family came up to the tank, we all looked in, and that's when we saw the hermits fighting. The smaller crab was completely out of his shell, and he was hanging on to top the of it - something I'd never seen before. Usually, hermit crabs don't exit their shells without a very good reason, so this had to be one. And it was - the larger crab had taken over his shell. The new guy may have found the shell more suitable than his own, or the takeover could have been a power move to show his aggression and dominance in the tank. Either way, the smaller crab was left shellless, until he finally let go and took the shell left empty by his enemy. It was an illustration in just how competitive hermit crabs can be!
