I’m a marine biologist currently working with Shawn Miller studying hermit crabs in the wild who have started to adapt to a lack of natural shells by using plastic bottle caps and other trash found on the beach as “shells” I was wondering if any of you have noticed this in the wild or if you’ve noticed your crabs are particularly obsessed with some plastic in their enclosure?
Previously, researchers have found that gasses released from decaying plastic attract hermit crabs and entrap them in waste on the beach.
We are trying to see if the crabs are resorting to using plastic waste as shells because there are no natural shells available to them. We also want to try and determine the cause of this behavior whether that’s tourists collecting shells off of the beaches or overfishing of the edible snails that would naturally provide shells for them.
Idk if this is allowed, but here is a link to our project page on the funding site “Experiment”
https://experiment.com/projects/blueber ... rash-homes
If anyone has any ideas as to how to improve the project or you’d like to donate to the crowd funded research project, it would be greatly appreciated. I know hermit crab keepers often know far more about them than us scientists and I’m excited to hear your thoughts.
Another idea, I know in the hermit crab society, we like to soak shells in salt water to encourage hermit crabs to switch into that shell, maybe if the plastic has been floating in the ocean for a while it attracts them that way too? (Also I haven't seen my hermit crabs attracted to plastic, but I don't really have a lot of plastic items in their tank, if you like I can try putting plastic bottles in the tank and see how the hermies react.)
