HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I know it will be quite impossible unless they get hundreds of babies, record their babies, and wait like 50 years to see the average years they lived, but how long do we think?

Carol Ann Ormes had her crabs Jon and Cate, Cate lived 32 years but I don't know about Jon. She got them in 1978. They're were PP

Coconut crabs (which are a species of hermit crabs if you don't know, they get so huge they don't need shells after like 20 years) have been recorded to live 60-70 years

But with our crabs, I've heard so many different ages. I've heard 10 all the way up to 100.

I beleive around 50-60 live the coconut crab. I think 10-20 is to young up to 100 is to old.

I know that micros are already like 10 and jumbos are 30 which is why I don't beleive those.

1976. Kate died in 2011 at 35 years, Jonathon Livingston is still alive by all accounts.

Some scientists have claimed to have found 70 year old specimens ion the wild, but the problem is there is no way to age hermit crabs accurately. It's always been a guess. We're also assuming that they could live longer in the wild then in captivity, which may not be the case.

The neat thing about crustaceans is that they don't get old like other animals. Their cells don't break down, they don't really age. What happens though is that the energy required to molt becomes too much on their systems, and that's when they die - when they're ancient and trying to molt and they just can't do it anymore, or when the stress of molting becomes so much that they succumb to secondary infections. What that upper limit of years (or molts) is though no one can yet say.

If you look at the growth of Jon and Kate and of the captive crabs that have been born in the last few years, a micro would be between 1 and 5 years of age since the babies do not grow at the same rate. Jumbos would be at least 15 or 20, but could be much older. Carol always believed that her two were stunted from being in captivity since there were other crabs found at pet stores that were bigger so they aren't a completely accurate gauge for growth.