How do you tell between a boy and a girl hermit crab?

Answer 1

Like lobsters, the swimmerettes (the tiny swimming paddles on the anterior of the tail section) will be longer in the female and shorter in the male -- usually. The males have yellow claps on the ventral side of their bodies. The use the claps to hold the female when mating.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, checking a cray's gender is not as easy as lifting its legs and peeking. It involves being able to classify your cray by species, molting phase, and health. It's no surprise that even most professionals can only guess at gender and typically use breeding pools instead of breeding pairs.

Knowing your cray's species is the first step: Do you have a Red Swamp Crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) or a Red BayouCrayfish (Procambarus kentii)? Without first knowing the species, gender identification becomes difficult, if not impossible, as we shall see below.

A crayfish's phase is the next important thing to know. A phase is simply a morphological structure the cray adopts for mating. Their phase changes at molts and comes during breeding season. Crays exposed to videos of mating pairs have also molted into a breeding phase.

The structural differences are unique among genera and species. For instance, a male Red Jaconda Cray (Cancerita rojoña) during non-breeding Phase I resembles a female Clouded Cray (Cancerita nublado), a closely related species. As you can see, this gets complicated.

Overall health is one last factor. Obviously, a cray whose appendages have been chewed off completely will be difficult to sex, as will one which is too small to study closely. Also, not all cray species exhibit sexual dimorphism, so size isn't a good identifier unless you first discern the species.

One method of sexing crays scientists have had some success with has been taking cray whose gender is known, grinding it into a paste, and releasing the paste into a holding tank with other crays of the same species. The crays that respond first will be members of the opposite gender to the ground cray, as they respond to the pheremones in the offal.

Good luck identifying your cray's species, gender, and phase. If you're lucky you'll have a well-known species you can identify quickly and without much mess.

Answer 3

Male crayfish have their first pair of swimmerets modified into a pipe shaped copulatory organs. Female crayfish have paired openings between the last pair of walking legs.

Answer 4

A male cricket has 2 spines sticking out of its body, and a female cricket has 3 spines sticking out of its body

Answer 5

you can tell by it's swimmereites. Boys do not have hair where girls are long and hairy.

Answer 6

With a girl you will find a line of eggs along her side and with the boy you will find nothing

Answer 7

You can tell if a hermit crab is a boy or a girl by the size of their claws.