Meet some of our crabby neighbors on Sanibel!

We have a lot of nice people living on and visiting our tropical Island.

But we also have a lot of crabs.

No, not human crabs, but the kind that live in our lush vegetation, or crawl on or beaches or live in our trees.

We'd like to introduce you to a few of our favorites as well as hear from you on your favorites as well.

One of  most unique neighbors is the hermit crab.  What makes the hermit crab so unusual is that he borrows "homes" from other sea creatures.  Most frequently hermit crabs use the shells of sea snails .  The tip of the hermit crab's abdomen is adapted to clasp strongly onto the columella (central axis) of the snail shell.

As the hermit crab grows in size, it has to find a larger shell and abandon the previous one. This habit of living in a second hand shell gives rise to the popular name "hermit crab", by analogy to a hermit who lives alone. Several hermit crab species, both terrestrial and marine, use vacancy chains to find new shells: when a new, bigger shell becomes available, hermit crabs gather around it and form a kind of queue from largest to smallest. When the largest crab moves into the new shell, the second biggest crab moves into the newly vacated shell, thereby making its previous shell available to the third crab, and so on. Hermit crabs often "gang up" on a hermit crab that has what they perceive to be a better shell, where they will actually pry its home (shell) away from it and then compete for it, and one will ultimately take it over.

Now how is that for strategic living?

The horse shoe crab is another favorite of ours, perhaps the most unusual looking of all our island crabs.  The entire body of the horseshoe crab is protected by a hard carapace. It has two compound lateral eyes ,  plus a pair of median eyes that are able to detect both visible light and UV-light, a single endoparietal eye and a pair of rudimentary lateral eyes on the top. The latter becomes functional just before the embryo hatches. There is also a pair of ventral eyes located near the mouth. But despite all these eyes, the poor horseshoe crab has relatively poor eyesight. The mouth is located in the center of the legs, where their base have the same function as jaws and helps grinding up food. It has five pairs of legs for walking, swimming, and moving food into the mouth, each with a claw at the tip except the last pair. The long, straight, rigid tail can be used to flip itself over if turned upside down.

Horseshoe crabs are the most commonly seen shell in the area because they are so large and many raccoons like to dine on them.

And speaking of fine dining, we must admit that our number one special crab is the blue crab. Oh, maybe they don't have the wit of the hermit crab or the looks of the horse shoe crab but they sure taste good~!

What is your favorite crab on Sanibel Island?