---
title: Hermit crabs (Paguroidea)
scientific_name: Paguroidea
common_name: Hermit crabs
rank: Superfamily
published: 2024-11-19T18:41:51.573Z
updated: 2026-08-23T21:28:58.310Z
tags: Hermit crabs, Paguroidea, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs
---

# Hermit crabs (*Paguroidea*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Superfamily
- **Scientific name:** Paguroidea
- **Body shape:** Invertebrate - Not a fish - coral, mollusc, crustacean, echinoderm and other invertebrate groups.
- **Species listed here:** 13

## How to recognise this group

- invertebrate partly enclosed in a scavenged snail shell
- two pairs of walking legs visible outside the shell
- pair of prominent antennae extending from the front
- pair of claws (chelipeds), often one significantly larger
- larger claw used to block the shell entrance

A hermit crab is built around the shape of an object it did not make. Behind the armored front end the abdomen is soft, unmineralized and twisted into a spiral that matches the inside of a snail shell, ending in hooked legs that grip the central column and hold the animal in. Pull one out and you are not looking at a crab that lost its house, you are looking at an animal that cannot stand up.

Which makes shells the currency of the group. Every shell in circulation had to be built by a gastropod that then died, nobody is manufacturing them for the market, and the supply on a given rubble slope is finite. A hermit crab that finds an empty shell runs its claws over the outside, rolls it, feels the aperture, and moves only if the fit is right. Where shells are short, animals live in ones that are too small, grow more slowly and carry fewer eggs, and disputes are settled by pulling a smaller crab out of the shell you want.

The part worth telling somebody is what happens when a good shell appears. A crab that finds a vacancy too large for it will sit beside it and wait, and others gather and arrange themselves in a line by size, largest at the front. When an animal big enough for that shell finally arrives and moves in, its old shell goes to the next in the queue, whose shell goes to the one behind, and the whole column rehouses itself in a matter of minutes. Biologists borrowed a name for this from human housing markets, where one apartment freeing up at the top moves a dozen families: a vacancy chain.

On this coast they are the animal that makes a night dive on rubble worth doing, and they are also on the beach above it, where the land hermit crabs work the tideline after dark. Both feel the same shortage, which is a reason to leave empty shells where they are.


## Species (13)

- [Anemone Hermit Crab (Dardanus tinctor)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/anemone-hermit-crab)
- [Banded Hermit Crab (Clibanarius eurysternus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/banded-hermit-crab)
- [Haig's Hermit Crab (Pagurixus haigae)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/haigs-hermit-crab)
- [Hairy Red Hermit Crab (Dardanus lagopodes)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hairy-red-hermit-crab)
- [Hairy-handed Hermit Crab (Pagurus hirtimanus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hairy-handed-hermit-crab)
- [Halloween Hermit Crab (Ciliopagurus strigatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/halloween-hermit-crab)
- [Hidden Hermit Crab (Calcinus latens)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hidden-hermit-crab)
- [Keiji's Hermit Crab (Pylopaguropsis keijii)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/keijis-hermit-crab)
- [Kosugei Hermit Crab (Catapagurus kosugei)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/kosugei-hermit-crab)
- [Red Hermit Crab (Pagurixus ruber)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/red-hermit-crab)
- [Red Sea Land Hermit Crab (Coenobita scaevola)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/red-sea-land-hermit-crab)
- [Rosy Hermit Crab (Calcinus rosaceus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/rosy-hermit-crab)
- [Woodmason's Hermit Crab (Dardanus woodmasoni)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/woodmasons-hermit-crab)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*