Are Hermit Crabs Cold Blooded? Yes!
What does it mean to be cold blooded?
Cold blooded, or ectothermic, animals rely on their environment to regulate their body temperature. The sun is the main external source of warmth that cold blooded animals use to help keep their blood temperature at a healthy level.
As pets, hermit crabs will most likely need assistance in creating a suitable environment with the appropriate temperature and humidity levels. If you live in South Florida and keep your hermit crabs on a covered patio, there’s no need to use a heating lamp. However, most all hermit crab pet owners keep their habitats indoors.
Challenges to an indoor hermit crab habitat in relation to cold-blooded animal needs:
- absence of sun
- AC temperature inside your home
- climate, depending where you live and inside temps of your home
- humidity levels need to remain at a “tropical” or “sub-tropical” level year-round
- need gauges to regularly monitor temperature and humidity
Typical "Cold Blooded" Animal Behaviors
- basking in the sun
- seeking out warm spots to raise body temperature
- burrowing in substrate when too hot or too cold
When creating your hermit crab habitat, incorporate elements like lighting on an automatic timer that mimics the sun, daytime and nighttime. Also, for fall and winter depending on where you live (or if you run your AC cold inside your home) you’ll want a source of heat. Also make sure there is plenty of substrate your hermit crabs can burrow down in not just for body temperature regulation but also for molting! (for more on molting, see my blog post What is Molting in Hermit Crabs?
Keeping Suitable Ectothermic Parameters
To create a healthy environment for hermit crab pets, it’s important to try to mimic the tropical or sub-tropical conditions they would experience in the wild. But there are different types of hermit crabs, which come from different parts of the world! It’s important to know which type of hermit crabs you have, to know the best parameters to keep them healthy. See my blog post on Hermit Crab Types of Pets with Photos here.
See my blog post for products, tips and ideas: Do Hermit Crabs Need Heat?
Other Common Cold Blooded Pets
- lizards like geckos, chameleons and bearded dragons
- snakes like pythons and kingsnakes
- turles like red-eared sliders and box turtles
- frogs like poison dart frogs and leopard frogs
- salamanders and newts like axolotls and fire belly newts
It’s important to create a suitable environment for your hermit crab pets that factors in the fact that they are cold blooded and can’t regulate their own body temperature. If the habitat gets too cold (or hot!) their health and life is at risk.
Last update on 2024-05-07 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API