Do hermit crabs mate?
Crabzilla.net – Frequently Asked QuestionsThey do mate, in a manner of speaking, but they cannot breed in captivity, so this should not be a major concern for hermit crab owners. When hermit crabs mate, the male hermit crab positions the female hermit crab in front of him and passes spermatophore packets into her gonopores, where the female hermit crab’s eggs are fertilized. In the wild when a female hermit crab is ready to release her eggs, she releases them into the ocean.
They do mate, in a manner of speaking, but they cannot breed in captivity, so this should not be a major concern for hermit crab owners. When hermit crabs mate, the male hermit crab positions the female hermit crab in front of him and passes spermatophore packets into her gonopores, where the female hermit crab’s eggs are fertilized. In the wild when a female hermit crab is ready to release her eggs, she releases them into the ocean. Up to this point, scientists have successfully kept hermit crab larvae in captivity, unfortunately they’ve never (to my knowledge) successfully raised hermit crabs through all their larval stages due to the difficulty in recreating just the right conditions.
While it’s possible, I don’t think you’ll be having any hermit babies anytime soon. Like many other “exotic” pets, the breeding conditions have to be perfect, and if you’re only keeping them as regular pets, without the intention of breeding, you won’t be creating the correct environment. I doubt the temperature is warm enough to encourage the crabs out of their shells to mate.
