HCA: Hermit Crab Association

2/7 of my hermit crabs Lego and sammy have been hanging out together, they o everywhere together and wont leave I know sammy is a girl and Lego is a boy, they eat, drink, and sleep together, they are hugging too! They are not doing this with other crabs... Do the love each other?

I highly doubt it. Your tank isn't natural enough a setting for them to mate. They're just hanging out.

Lasuna wrote:I highly doubt it. Your tank isn't natural enough a setting for them to mate. They're just hanging out.

Someone on here had a tank with two hideys, a piece of wood, and a second level, and they had eggs.

I'm not sure about love but they could be mating. Tank conditions may contribute to mating but from what I was told they're still not sure what makes some crabs mate in captivity & others not...they just don't know. Keep an eye out for eggs! Goodluck

Noswad0208 wrote: Someone on here had a tank with two hideys, a piece of wood, and a second level, and they had eggs.

That would be me. And it was a shock. But they were given natural temperatures and high humidity, and about 12 inches of peat moss and sand substrate to molt in. It was natural, it was just barren.

Crabs will travel in packs, and they will often climb all over each other and try to chase each other out of shells they may want. The differences between mating and shell fighting is basically nothing until you actually see them fertilizing eggs. Having been lucky enough to watch and film an actual mating this year, I was nearly at the point where I thought they were going to kill each other before I realized that nope, that was fertilization instead. (And I still thought Mighty Man was going to kill any male within claw distance he was being so dominate.)

wodesorel wrote: That would be me. And it was a shock. But they were given natural temperatures and high humidity, and about 12 inches of peat moss and sand substrate to molt in. It was natural, it was just barren.

Crabs will travel in packs, and they will often climb all over each other and try to chase each other out of shells they may want. The differences between mating and shell fighting is basically nothing until you actually see them fertilizing eggs. Having been lucky enough to watch and film an actual mating this year, I was nearly at the point where I thought they were going to kill each other before I realized that nope, that was fertilization instead. (And I still thought Mighty Man was going to kill any male within claw distance he was being so dominate.)

Yeah, the natural temp an dhigh humidity is what I mean, the barrenness doesn't really matter, since in the wild they will spend a portion of their time on a beach where the only terrain is sand and a few rocks scattered about ya know? As for the eggs Wode found, I was always a bit curious if the females would have eggs despite not being fertilized. Like lizards you know?