HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I'm just wondering if anyone else out there loves Coconut Crabs as much as I do? I think that they are fascinating and amazing! I'd love to know if anyone has ever gotten to see them in person somewhere, whether in the wild or in a zoo?

Yeah, the native people who consider them a delicacy lol

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Eeep! No! Sad. They are so magnificent, to live so long.

There are some great YouTube videos out there on them. Unbelievably big! They knock over the islanders' garbage cans at night looking for food!

I think they're pretty cool but you'd need a crabitat the size of a two car garage! Some day I'd like to see them in the wild and maybe feed them some snacks and take some pics or video. Not likely since the only wildlife in my area are deer, antelope, rabbits and wild horses.

Way better off left alone


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Oh, I imagine that because of our love and careful care tending to their hermit crab relatives, they'll welcome us into their garbage can raids with, er, open claws... open claws of love.

They're great! I would love some coconut crab cuddles. But it'll be a sad day for me when i see them kept as pets by peeps


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Do you think anyone could ever really keep one as a pet? I could see maybe feeding scraps to a wild one and having it hang around your house or something, but they seem so impractical to me. And very dangerous.

I know people keep dangerous animals all the time as pets, but it just seems to me that a crab like this would be flailing its dangerous claws all the time - whereas other dangerous pets might be calmer or more apt to grow to know you, like a large cat or properly fed python, etc. (not to say accidents don't happen sometimes)

I would be very sad to see these beautiful creatures literally kept as pets. I just don't see how it would be easy to do?

The thing I'm curious about is if it's possible that a juvenile coconut crab can be living amongst our own hermit crabs...

Coconut crabs also use discarded shells when they're young and eventually grow a hard cover on their abdomen when they outgrow shells. The only times I've ever seen baby or young coconut crabs has been on the internet, and they seem to look like Indos and beefed up PP's. Now of course they may not actually be young coconut crabs since you can't really trust a Google search, especially when it's land crab related...but is it possible to have a young coconut crab masquerading as a hermit crab?
Has anyone actually seen a young coconut crab wearing a shell? Do they look anything like the giant coconut crabs we see online or do they actually look identical to hermit crabs at a young age?

Someone got one once as an Indo, but it may have been Feelix. (Who lives in the tropics.) They do look extremely close to Indos when they're small, but from what I've read they grow much more quickly.

I'm sure there are some sneaking through to the pet trade, but I would imagine the locals would be pretty good at identifying young coconut crabs since they can sell for a lot of money to the tourist resorts as a specialty dish once they're grown. Farming them is common, but it's with wild collected individuals and not from actually breeding them in captivity.

wodesorel wrote:I'm sure there are some sneaking through to the pet trade, but I would imagine the locals would be pretty good at identifying young coconut crabs since they can sell for a lot of money to the tourist resorts as a specialty dish once they're grown.

True, I'm sure the locals double check just to make sure that they're not loosing profit.

I just absolutely love these creatures and it upsets me that they get eaten as a delicacy. It's just like when my friends or relatives make jokes about eating my hermit crabs.

I'm upset over them being a delicacy to the point where they're now at risk of being endangered. I've always felt that as humans we have to be conscientious of where our food comes from and how to best manage it so it's around forever, not just in the moment. If the people harvesting them were able to support population growth or were able to find a way to breed them and raise them captivity I'd be all for it. Or if it was just the native people who were using it as a food source, that would also not be an issue to me. But the major consumers of coconut crab are tourists who want to eat a rare delicacy and will pay whatever it takes to do so, and the population is now declining faster than they can reproduce. Not cool. (Mind you, I adore king and snow crab, so I do consider coconut crabs to be more like them then like my hermits.)

I've also found it extremely interesting that no culture eats hermit crab. With how plentiful they are you'd think they would be a delicacy somewhere, but no culture seems to want them. In some parts of the world coconut crab and hermit crabs have the same exact diet in the exact same area, but hermits must taste absolutely horrific naturally or something.

Coconut crabs do taste horrific. That's why they douse then in hot sauce before eating.

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Yuka wrote:Coconut crabs do taste horrific. That's why they douse then in hot sauce before eating.

Anthony Bordain raved about it when he had it in I think French Polynesia. (With a local family. It was the great grandma who was doing the cooking, so that might be why it was delish.)