• Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Arthropoda
  • Subphylum: Crustacea
  • Class: Malacostraca
  • Subclass: Eumalacostraca
  • Superorder: Eucarida
  • Order: Decapoda
  • Suborder: Pleocyemata
  • Infraorder: Anomura
  • Superfamily: Paguroidea
  • Family: Paguridae
  • Scientific name: Pagurus bernhardus
  • Norwegian: vanlig eremittkreps

Characteristics:

The color is brown. The common hermit crab can reach a body length of 35 mm. The claws are jagged, but hairless. Like most other hermit crabs it uses snail shells for protection. It is not unusual to find bristle worms inside the snail shell. They eat leftovers from the hermit crabs. In return they remove any parasites from the abdomen. The common hermit crab is also flexible when picking from the menu, and eats almost anything it can catch, including its own relatives.

Habitat:

This is probably the most common hermit crab - at least the one most frequently seen by divers. It thrives on both rocky and sandy substrate, and is found from the tidal zone and down to several hundred meters depth.

Distribution:

It is widespread in the North-East Atlantic Ocean, including Iceland, Russia Norway, the British Isles, the Atlantic coasts of Europe as well as on the Azores.