What's in the box:

1 x hermit crab

Hermit crabs are omnivorous scavengers, eating microscopic mussels and clams, bits of dead animals, andmacroalgae.

These crustaceans have been misnamed for two reasons: First, theyre nottrue crabs, likeblue crabs, in that they dont have a uniformly hard exoskeleton and cant grow their own shells. Instead, hermit crabs have ahard exoskeleton on the front part of their bodiesbut a soft tail on the other half, which they protect using the discarded shells of other animals, like whelks. Theyremore closely related to certain kinds of lobstersthan to true crabs.

Hermit crabs have a curled tail with a hook that enables their bodies to fit inside these borrowed shells. Sometimes when a new shell turns up,hermit crabs will form a line, biggest to smallest, to see which animal fits the new shell.The next smallest will take that crabs hand-me-down home, and so on.