Twitter Thread: Hermit Crabs Organizing Themselves Based On Size And Trading Shells

Twitter is by far the funniest when users on it discover new things about animals. People's reactions to those discoveries are everything - they are absolutely hilarious. Like last week, when twitter discovered an animal whose mouth is longer than a whole human and was shook, or earlier when twitter discovered silky anteaters and absolutely lost it, or when they saw a picture of the real but mildly terrifying Gerenuk, or when twitter found out that some animals that look similar are not genetically related and couldn't handle it. Their reactions to stuff like that are the best.

So, imagine what happened when someone tweeted about the fact that when hermit crabs find a shell that is too big for them, they will wait for other hermit crabs to gather in a line based on size to rearrange themselves into their new homes. Well, clearly that was enough for twitter to go at it again.

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This is indeed true - it is fact. Hermit crabs will truly wait for other crabs to gather, arranging themselves in a line one behind the other, and then - quickly, because they are the most vulnerable when without their shells - they will quickly move up the chain and take another crab's shell.

Via @cottoncandaddy
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Via @cottoncandaddy
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Via @_stuMc
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Via @CarlsonHannahM
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Hey, they are a pretty amazing animal when you think about it. They walk and swim sideways, they first showed up in the world 200 million years ago, they can be anywhere between 0.27 inches to 12 feet in length, and a female pregnancy of just two weeks produces between 1000-2000 eggs. They sound pretty ideal to us.

Via @AmyJayliever
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Via @DiogenesSister
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Via @AV5978494248784
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Via gerfinch
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Via EroticPolitician, BBC
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Via EroticPolitician, BBC