Hermit Crabs on Survivor

by Blake Newton, UK Extension Entomologist

After all these years, I'm still a big fan of Survivor. One of my favorite things about the show is the nature footage used to segway between scenes: I often get to see interesting arthropods from exotic locations. This season (Heroes vs Villains) is being filmed on Samoa, and on the most recent episode I saw a couple of cool things, including a very large orb-weaver spider that may have been the Golden Silk Orb Weaver (or a close relative), a spider that is common in the southern U.S. But this episode was all about the hermit crabs! I learned that hermit crabs will hunt for and kill live insects: the one on this episode captured a confused cicada. Also: a hermit crab can apparently be eaten. The villains were cooking one in their firepit. I didn't see them actually eating it, though.

Well, I've written another post about crustaceans. That's three in about a month. Maybe this blog should be called the Daily Carcinologist?