What to Look for When Choosing a Pet Hermit Crab

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Debbie with expertvillage.com and we are talking about having hermit crabs for pets today. Right now we are going to talk about how to pick your crabs. Most pet stores have hermit crabs, some are better than others, some have a bigger variety than other, so you just have to look at your local pet store and see what they have. One word of caution when you go to the beach, do not be tempted to pick up these crabs and take them home, it is just that they are not adapted to that much change and they will usually die on you and that will be a sad death for you and your family. So, don’t do that, go to the pet store. When you are picking your crabs, ask the pet store people if they can get them out for you, because I would like to see who is going to be walking around and active and who isn’t. Some hermit crabs won’t come out very often at all and you want them to be a little more active and there is just more fun for your kids. So, I ask them if they will just dip them in their water and get him out on the floor and let me look and see who is going to walk around. When you are picking your crabs, you need to think about how old your children are who are going to be with these crabs. You don’t want to get really, really big ones, they can get really huge as big as my hand. I prefer the smaller ones and may be small to medium for young kids, because some of them are going to be a little teeny bit afraid of them and you don’t want that. So they do have a powerful pinch, so you have got to be cautious about that. These crabs are considered according to the pet store and we have sand all over like this are fancy crabs and I am thinking they are called fancy crabs because they are in fancy shells. So, what fun about these is, they are all of different colorful painted shells and the kids like that. Now if you are purists, and you want your crabs to look more natural in your habitat, then you can certainly get crabs in these kinds of shells. I personally like the fancy ones. They just look cuter and the kids like to watch and them give them names according to their shells. When you are buying hermit crabs you don’t want to buy just one, that might be a temptation if you have one child and they just want one little pet, I would not advise that you need to buy at least two or three, may be four, they like, being together they are very social, unlike their hermit crab they really, they travel in packs and in their natural habitat, they work together as families and the word hermit crab actually comes from the solitude of the crab inside a shell, not because he is shy or timid. Although, some times they do look a little shy when they are pulling into their shells, but as you can see these guys are pretty active and they are going to be a lot of fun for the kids. "