Oyster Crab, Pea Crab

Pinnotheres ostreum Say

Appears in

By Alan Davidson

Published 1980

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Family Pinnotheridae

REMARKS The maximum width of these tiny crabs is only about 1½ cm. At an early stage in their lives, both males and females invade the shells of oysters, mussels or other bivalves. The females stay put, but the males emerge in their first year and swim round looking for a female, snug in her bivalvular home, with which to copulate. The experience of sexual intercourse within the shell of a living oyster, which shakes the mind if translated into human dimensions, seems to be too much for it, since it then dies. However, the females may live for as long as three years.