In: Advocacy, Conservation, Painted Shells

Painted shells are inhumane and unnecessary and destroy a much-needed natural resource. Please speak out about this to your local pet shops that continue to order hermit crabs in painted shells just so they can charge more for them. Hermit crabs are forced out of their natural shell. One method can be seen in the video below, the crabs are placed in a vice and their natural shell is destroyed. Other methods include heating the shell so the crab abandons it, drilling a hole, and poking the crab with a wire until it abandons the shell. Hermit crabs are often forced into the shells whileRead More →

In: General, Painted Shells

Our treatment of animals will someday be considered barbarous. There cannot be perfect civilization until man realizes that the right of every living creature are as sacred as his own – Dr. David Starr Jordan and now, on with the show… Crab in a cup anyone? First a bit o’ the story. I went to the pet store, the one that I LIKE, and they always have good patties, in natural shells, none of the painted. So I wander to the hermit crab tank and in the aquarium is about 16 crabs in cups, stacked on top of each other. all in red or pinkRead More →

In: General, Painted Shells

Written by Stacy Griffith Its been nearly 2 months since I brought home 8 E’s from Petco. Thankfully four of them shed their painted shells before being moved to the main tank. You can watch one of the in the video below. The sole reason shells are painted is to entice your children into begging you for a hermit crab. In most instances the child doesn’t necessarily want the crab but the brightly colored shells. This has been a losing battle for us for many years and I still have no ideas how to convince Petco and others to stop buying from suppliers who pushRead More →