Coccolì - The Adventure of a Hermit Crab

By Ruggero Lenci

A colony of Hermit Crabs lives happily on the beach of a Caribbean island. The younger of them play, the older are busy with the most different matters, some invent, others mend their shells cracked and trampled by bathers. Everything is going well, until three businessmen arrive on the beach, animated by the unfortunate idea to build a large hotel right in that beautiful little gulf on the coast. The construction work begins and the colony of Hermit Crabs is brutally uprooted from the place losing their natural habitat. But the little creatures do not give up. Will they be able to recover their lost territory?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781291581928

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Introduction

It happens to many, especially in summer by the sea, to look carefully at the sand in search of a shell, a piece of coral or a mother-of-pearl, of some colored pebbles of a particular shape, i.e. of anything that enriches the beach, transported on the wet sand by storm surges, especially during the winter.

Every so often we may even see a shell that moves, and, on a second glance, we notice that it has little claws that emerge from inside and that retract at a hint of danger.

The legs are of the Hermit Crab (or Pagurus bernhardus), a decapod crustacean belonging to the Paguridae family, known in the Caribbean islands of Spanish language as Coccolì. These legs are similar to those, much larger in size, of lobsters, shrimps and crabs: real articulated limbs that allow them to move easily and quickly, from which these small animals are called Arthropods.

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But what appears to be curious is that the Hermit Crab, i.e. the Coccolì, unlike lobsters, shrimps and crabs, to name the most well known Arthropods, lives its life within the shell of a mollusk which carries with him, as snails do.

It should be noted that the Arthropods, as well as having articulated limbs, have the body covered with a scaly outer shell, called Carapace, which protects them like an armor: in the course of evolution they have opted for an external structure, there where other living forms, including humans, have developed an internal spine.

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Also the Coccolì (henceforth we will call Coccolì our Hermit Crab) has the armor, the Carapace, but this is incomplete in the back of the body, the abdomen, which therefore remains exposed, soft and defenseless to attack from other animals. This is why