HCA: Hermit Crab Association

One of my crabs, Twitchy, is out a little earlier than usual today. She fell asleep next to the glass a while back and when I checked on her again just now, she was awake. She would sweep her little claw along the glass and pick up a little bit of substrate and eat it. Then she would rub the fuzzy patches on her claws together for about five seconds and then stick them against the glass, still pressed together for about ten seconds. While she had her claws pressed against the glass, she would sit frozen, not even moving her feelers. She was so happy doing this that I went to crab my camera to video tape it, but she spotted me and decided to leave.
Has anyone else seen their crabs do this sort of thing?

So cute! I've never had any of my crabs eating the substrate- but I've definitely had them be totally active and then just sort of 'zone out' for a minute and not move. I wonder if it's similar to a person sitting in a trance staring at something? We just say they're "meditating". I'm guessing what they might actually be doing is staying still in case of predators? Or possibly staying still looking for prey- like a bug? Then they happily go back to whatever they were doing about a minute or two later. Who knows. Silly crabs.

Twitchy has a habit of sticking everything in her mouth no matter what it might be, lol, but she's happy and healthy, so I don't worry about her eating the substrate. I just thought her little act was adorable, she reminded me of people trying to warm their hands by rubbing them together and then holding them out towards heat.

Glad I found this post, Lokalai, since I've caught two of my E's doing that recently and I was about to start a new post about it.
Mine seem to do it most frequently next to the water dishes - my bigger E (Miss Piggy) will touch her front claws to the outside of the pool where it's wet, then do the quick rubbing together of those claws as if she's trying to warm them or trying to start a fire!
Meanwhile, she sort of hunker down and then she'll freeze and be perfectly still for anywhere from 10-20 seconds.
And then she'll get up, walk a few steps & do the same thing again. <sigh>
(Being OCD myself, I was a little worried it was some sort of abnormal crab "ritual" but then I caught my little E doing the same thing, and was reassured to see it wasn't just unique to one crab. (After all, if *everyone* is crazy, then no one is crazy by comparison.))

Still wonder why they do that though. <shrug>

Cheers! Elsie