---
title: Hairy-handed Hermit Crab (Pagurus hirtimanus)
scientific_name: Pagurus hirtimanus
common_name: Hairy-handed Hermit Crab
taxon: Hermit crabs
published: 2025-09-24T14:06:42.364Z
updated: 2026-08-30T10:16:25.216Z
tags: Hairy-handed Hermit Crab, Pagurus hirtimanus, Hermit crabs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hairy-handed-hermit-crab
---

# Hairy-handed Hermit Crab (*Pagurus hirtimanus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hermit crabs (*Paguroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rubble, sand and seagrass beside reef
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- medium hermit crab with bristly, hairy claws
- right claw larger than the left, unlike the reef hermits
- in moderately large snail shells on open bottom
- length up to 3 cm

A bristly-clawed hermit crab of open bottom, three centimeters (1.2 in), and one where the asymmetry runs the other way: in this genus the right claw is the big one, where the reef hermits carry an oversized left.

That is not a detail for its own sake - claw asymmetry is one of the characters used to sort the whole group, and which side is enlarged separates whole families. A photograph that shows the claws is worth more than one that shows the shell.

Its abdomen is soft, twisted, and shaped to the inside of a snail shell, held in place by hooked appendages at the tail. That asymmetric body is why a hermit crab cannot simply leave - the animal is built around the shell it inherited.

It feeds on detritus, carrion and small animals at night, working sand and seagrass rather than reef.

## Also known as

- **Japanese:** オキナワホンヤドカリ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Eupagurus hirtimanus* Miers, 1880
- *Eupagurus janitor* Alcock, 1905
- *Pagurus hirtimanus* White, 1847
- *Pagurus janitor* (Alcock, 1905)

## Range

Halmahera

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hairy-handed-hermit-crab)*
*Updated: August 30, 2026*