Crab Hierarchy

[Xenpurgisn@cht]

I'm curious about something, but how does the Hiearchy among crabs work? From what I've read it's really weird, but what is the general relationship between crabs of two different sizes? ( such as a medium and a jumbo ) and would the jumbo automatically be the most dominant one and run things? Such as first pickings of whatever food is available, that dealio

[Motörcrab]

We don't really know everything about their heierachy. Crabs will push and shove each other, kind of like wrestling. They will also bat antennas too. Their demeanor has a lot to do with ranking. You can get a smaller crab that is more aggressive than a bigger one and can be the alpha crab. Sometimes you can have two stubborn crabs and they can go back and forth like a WWE battle between two wrestlers leading up to a championship.

When it was mating season for my straws last summer my biggest male was the only one able to mate. I saw him pull other males off females. Then a king of the hill fight would begin. The ladies didn't find it amusing, they would usually end up sneaking away! Before I saw all that fighting I never saw any physical aggression. The occasional climbing over each other or batting antennas.

[Crabby7Crabber]

We don't really know everything about their heierachy. Crabs will push and shove each other, kind of like wrestling. They will also bat antennas too. Their demeanor has a lot to do with ranking. You can get a smaller crab that is more aggressive than a bigger one and can be the alpha crab. Sometimes you can have two stubborn crabs and they can go back and forth like a WWE battle between two wrestlers leading up to a championship.

When it was mating season for my straws last summer my biggest male was the only one able to mate. I saw him pull other males off females. Then a king of the hill fight would begin. The ladies didn't find it amusing, they would usually end up sneaking away! Before I saw all that fighting I never saw any physical aggression. The occasional climbing over each other or batting antennas.

That's actually really interesting! I wonder if certain species act different ways during mating season. Maybe strawberries are just naturally more dominant when it comes to that? Has anyone with different species of crabs notice anything about how often they wrestle, have antennae battles, etc? Just a thought I'm now starting to wonder about
Edit: Ex- do straws examine each other more (more aware of the crabs around them) then PPs? Do you guys think some species are less 'aggressive' than others when it comes to being the king of the tank?