and meet Spongebob...
and Mr. Krabs.....
Squidward and Sandy....
These crusty crustaceans were washed up on the beaches of Jekyll Island during our vacation there last week. My girls were thrilled to find them clinging to the rocks awaiting for the tide to come in and carry them back out to sea. They found several small and large hermit crabs and decided to keep a handful of them as their new "pets". Having owned hermit crabs before, we had an idea about what they liked to eat, how to set up their habitat, etc. However, after keeping them in captivity for 1 whole day, they seemed to be dying a slow death...one at a time. And they stunk really bad. After doing a little research on the world wide web, we learned that our little critters were aquatic crabs who spend a good part of their lives in varying depths of salt water from shallow reefs and shorelines to deep sea bottoms.
So, much to my girl's disappointment, we decided to "free the crabs". We learned that sometimes it's best to enjoy nature in it's natural habitat. And to be perfectly honest, I was happy that I did not have to make the 750 mile trek home with them ;0)
"Goodbye Crabs"....
"Be Free!"
3 comments:
very interesting about the crabs, only ones I saw at the beaches here are sand crabs that look nothing like these ones. I think it was wise for the girls to release the crabs to go back to their more natural habitat because I too couldn't imagine how challenging it would have been to transport them home!
beautiful pictures of the crabs too!
betty
That is interesting, not the hermit crab that I was thinking of at all. Glad they let them go. Great shots.
Oh, what a sweet post. I am sorry that the crabs couldn't make it without salt water, but what a great biology lesson this turned out to be for the kids.
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