HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I did a science experiment for a school project and discovered that (possibly) hermit crabs prefer higher calorie produce. I did a little researched and found out that of the foods I was feeding them (red grapes, GS apples, cauliflower, and carrots) they chose the food with the highest caloric value!

smart little buggers! they even count calories!

Cool experiment! Mine definately have sweet tooths. They prefer grapes & mango to peas & carrots.

Wow, cool that makes sence. They need to store lots of calories for molting and such, so cool! How I wish we could find out how they could tell which foods that were the highest in calories. They are very smart little critters when it comes to self persveration.

crabber wrote:Wow, cool that makes sence. They need to store lots of calories for molting and such, so cool! How I wish we could find out how they could tell which foods that were the highest in calories. They are very smart little critters when it comes to self persveration.

Dieting websites usually have it. I think I just searched "fruit calorie content" or something of that nature.
and I came up with a website that listed different foods and their calorie amount per unit (or cup, or whatever)

Thats intresting. I wonder if they can tell by the taste. Did you also look at sugar content of the food, that might be it too...

blaze88 wrote:Thats intresting. I wonder if they can tell by the taste. Did you also look at sugar content of the food, that might be it too...

that's a good point too... I didn't think about that.
But I guess calories and sugar amount can go hand in hand.

Carrots are a fast converting sugar...which means most of its calories are instantly converted to sugar for immediate use (same with corn)...rather than being stored for future use.