I brought three OKA YADOKARI babies from a tropical fish shop the other day. They are so cute - each of them is around still as big as 2cm, although the one in this picture looks a little bigger than the other two because she moved to a new shell already : ) I hear some of them just like moving - changing home very often even if they don't need to, and some of them like to stay in their old home unless they really really have to move when they grow bigger or the shell got broken. Before I write this note, I looked up into the dictionary for the English translation of Yadokari. I found it HERMIT CRAB. If I want to be exact about OKA Yadokari, then it should be called Land Hermit Crab in English. Yes, they live on the land - they can't swim at all. I thought it interesting the word HERMIT is used for them. In Japanese, OKA means the land, YADO means INN or home, and KARI means renting. So it means they live in temporary home all the time. I think both are very good naming and I am very curious what they are called in other languages : ) back home |