viewtopic.php?t=31271&postdays=0&postor ... ty&start=0
I've been trying to hunt down some known instances of crabs living for long periods around the web recently, and here's the 3 standouts I've come across.
1. We'll start off with the current known record of about 30 + years, the two crabs of Carol Ann Ormes, as also seen in the aforementioned thread, but now in an online news article posted back in 2005 -
http://www.shellpoint.org/news/2005/070105-crabs.html
by Eric Kurfess
FORT MYERS - If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning, you may feel a little crabby. Well, here at Shell Point, we were lucky enough to find someone who wakes up on the right side of the bed with the same feeling. Carol Ann Ormes (Parkwood) is the loving caretaker of her two pet crabs. Carol has what may be the two oldest living land hermit crabs in the world. Jonathan Livingston Crab and Crab Kate will turn 29 years old in August, far surpassing the life span of your average land hermit crab. And Carol should know- her online photo gallery is one of the top links from the unofficial crab website, CrabStreetJournal.com.
2. "We know of a hermit that lived to be over 40 years old in Ft. Lauderdale." This is taken from this website:
http://www.seashellshop.com/funstories/ ... bs6.html#2
They also have posted pics of a "20 year old crab"
http://www.seashellshop.com/funstories/ ... abs11.html
While I'm not likely to patronize the shop, or follow some of their advice, the mentions of longevity are something to hear at least.
3. Lastly, I came across this online pdf:
http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/ ... e,_Jr..pdf
Ok, I looked up the name as he is most referenced in my old land hermit crab care books from the late 70's which were still sold by the late 80's, with little or no revisions. Here's a little background -REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WORKS OF FENNER A. CHACE, JR.
(1908-2004), WITH A LIST OF HIS TAXA AND COMPLETE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BY
RAFAEL LEMAITREI
And this is what I knew initially from the old books:Fenner A. Chace, Jr. was officially a Zoologist Emeritus in the Department of
Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution,
when he died peacefully on Sunday, May 30, 2004, at his home in Chevy
Chase, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C. He was 95, and was survived by
his wife of 69 years, Janice Dexter Grinnell...During his long career he produced 94 scientific works (see bibliography) furthering
our knowledge of decapod crustaceans in general, and of caridean shrimps in
particular...
And here was I didn't know from the old books, and just found out:He kept a male specimen of Coenobita clypeatus on his desk for 11 years on a diet chiefly of fresh lettuce, an event that lead to a note on the longevity of this West Indian terrestrial hermit crab (Chace, 1972b).
And this I thought was cute:It was left unrecorded in the annals of science that after the death of that male C. clypeatus, Fenner kept another specimen of that same species under the same conditions for well over 25 years.
It's also interesting to note that in the above mentioned 11-year old crab that the crab never "grew to more than half the adult size" according to Mervin F. Roberts' All about Land Hermit Crabs book. Probably due to the diet, I am assuming.........though it is interesting to note that he kept these crabs solo, it seems.Regarding the study of hermit crabs, and how difficult they were to investigate taxonomically, Fenner once said in a letter to R A. McLaughlin: "I shall never understand why anyone wants to study these asymmetrical beasts that refuse to recline properly on demand and that vary to such an extreme that definition of specific characters is a ouija-board activity but Fm mighty glad that someone does." And in a letter to Mrs. S. K. Gerhardt, a pet hermit crab aficionado, when she asked for the name of his pet hermit crab, he answered: "The individual who shares my desk has remained nameless for about 25 years and will probably remain incognito at least as long as it continues to conceal it's[gender]."
And some of the most noteworthy HCA longevity stories I've heard, from threads long since lost or deleted, were the crabs from Flightresponse (a C. clypeatus, I think) and Tonycoenobita's female ruggie who were noted to have lived 8 years back in 2008, so presumably they are going on 10 years this year.
Feel free to post some of your longevity records as well.