---
title: Hidden Hermit Crab (Calcinus latens)
scientific_name: Calcinus latens
common_name: Hidden Hermit Crab
taxon: Hermit crabs
published: 2025-09-23T12:17:52.496Z
updated: 2026-08-15T16:49:01.759Z
tags: Hidden Hermit Crab, Calcinus latens, Hermit crabs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hidden-hermit-crab
---

# Hidden Hermit Crab (*Calcinus latens*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hermit crabs (*Paguroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 2 cm
- **Depth:** 1-95 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef rubble and rock, in small snail shells
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- small hermit crab, olive-brown with pale bands on the legs
- eyestalks pale with a dark band, eyes orange
- in small turban and nerite shells on rubble
- length up to 2 cm

A small banded hermit crab in a borrowed turban shell, two centimeters (0.8 in), and one of the most numerous animals on any rubble slope in this sea.

Hermit crabs of this size are the reef's cleaning staff. They work over rubble and dead coral through the night, taking algal film, detritus and anything dead, and there are enough of them that the effect is measurable: a patch of reef without hermit crabs accumulates organic matter that would otherwise be gone by morning.

The shell shortage that governs the whole group is at its sharpest here, because small shells in good condition are the ones everything wants. Empty shells rarely stay empty for more than a few minutes.

It is called hidden because it withdraws completely, seals the opening with the larger left claw, and becomes a shell - which is what it looks like whenever anyone approaches, and why almost nobody has watched one for more than five seconds.

## Also known as

- **English:** green hermit crab, hidden hermit, hidden hermit crab
- **French:** Bernard-l'ermite timide, Pagure caché
- **German:** Verborgener Einsiedler, Verborgener Einsiedlerkrebs
- **Japanese:** ツマジロサンゴヤドカリ
- **Chinese:** 隱伏硬指寄居蟹, 隱伏硬殼寄居蟹
- **LT:** Slapusis krabas atsiskyrėlis

## Scientific synonyms

- *Calcinus abrolhensis* Morgan, 1988
- *Calcinus cristimanus* (H. Milne Edwards, 1848)
- *Calcinus intermedius* De Man, 1881
- *Calcinus terraereginae* Haswell, 1882
- *Calcinus terrae-reginae* Haswell, 1882
- *Pagurus cristimanus* H. Milne Edwards, 1848
- *Pagurus latens* Randall, 1840

## Range

Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Halmahera, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mozambique, Mozambique Channel, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Pacific Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/hermit-crabs/hidden-hermit-crab)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*