HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hey everyone! So just a quick question one of my guy,Wriggley does the exact same thing every night! He gets up cruises past the food dish(without stoping) then climbs the branch to the shell shop goes to the back of shell shop grabs the air line then macgyvers across the back lip of the 36 in long tank til he is over the moss pit at the top of the other log drops then goes down the log to end up where he started at! Can crabs be ocd and feel they must have patterns? We have only had him 3 1/2 weeks and he seemshappy after he does his thing eats bathes etc just worries about mental health thanks guys for any advice or reassurnce of normalness. I always get the weirdos and i love it they fit so well in our crazy house!!!!

sounds like he does a morning jog, lol

This is the second account I've noticed of such ritualized behavior in crabs on this board, but I would not be surprised if there were others. It may be what is called "institutionalized behavior," and it is common in captive wild animals (and for that matter in captive people, for example in prisons or mental institutions), especially when they don't have enough space or enough stimulation in their environment. This can include pacing back and forth (commonly seen in big cats in zoos, for example), rocking from foot to foot (bears and elephants in zoos often get into this), and repetitive circling (birds often do this), and can include following highly stereotyped patterns of fairly complex combinations (your crabs route sounds like a simple type of this). It is, as you say, related to what we call obsessive-compulsive patterns of behavior in people. Remember that these animals are not domesticated pets, but wild animals taken from their natural environment, which is a great deal larger and vastly more complex than whatever you may be keeping them in (unless you own a tropical island).

I had a hamster that would grab a mouthful of bedding a circle the perimeter of his tank over and over... I agree with dragonfly

So I guess it's a good thing that I change stuff around in the tank frequently. Both crabs become more active when I do that, investigating the new set-up and checking out every corner. I wish there was such a thing as hamster tubes for hermit crabs! It would be cool to have multiple tanks connected by tubing that the crabs could walk through to get from one tank to another. I doubt they would ever get bored then!

each of my crabs have a special spot they like to sit in during the day. They don't hide at all when they sleep, I think it's because my tat is very enclosed for them. But they do each have thier own common pattern they like to follow.

Silver Buttons wrote:So I guess it's a good thing that I change stuff around in the tank frequently. Both crabs become more active when I do that, investigating the new set-up and checking out every corner. I wish there was such a thing as hamster tubes for hermit crabs! It would be cool to have multiple tanks connected by tubing that the crabs could walk through to get from one tank to another. I doubt they would ever get bored then!

I don't see why you could not use the very same tubes for doing just that, Silver! If you had two tanks, you could definitely run those tubes from one to the other. As long as your crabs were small enough to fit (shell and all) through the tubes. If not, you could probably make something quite similar from something else. I know there is flexible plastic tubing in several sizes at hardware stores; it isn't see-through, though, so you couldn't watch them while they were in it. There might be something you could adapt that is see-through, though. . . I'll have to have a look around, next time we go to Lowe's. . .

Well, Jasper is definitely too big for the hamster tubes. I was thinking that one could the ends off some 2-liter soda bottles and tape the middle sections end-to-end to make large see-through climbing tunnels. But I can't think of how I would attach these to the tanks, themselves. Someone more innovative than me will have to figure that one out. Oh, well, I don't have room for more than one tank, anyway.

I thought my crab, Pinky, had OCD, (I wrote a couple topics on her different behaviours here: (shells) http://www.hermitcrabassociation.com/ph ... hilit=+OCD (repetitive behaviour) http://www.hermitcrabassociation.com/ph ... hilit=+OCD ) but after moving her into an entirely new tank, with MUCH more stimulation then the old one, and twice as much room, she has quit almost all of her repetitive habits. Her problems included shells, but in the new tank, she recently broke her cycle and is wearing a shell she has never worn before! I'm not saying you have to get a new tank, but if you ever feel like dramatically changing the setup, go for it! It might really help him I don't think it's a healthy behaviour, and I'm relieved my crab has stopped doing it