Crabs are Very Cleverer

At Crab Museum we believe crabs are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

The common shore crab, or Carcinus maenas to give it its proper scientific name, is the most common crab that you’ll find on the coasts of the UK. You can find them in rock pools all year round and they are often a greenish colour.

But just because they’re everywhere, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

A 2019 study from Swansea University proved that, by testing the common shore crab as it made its way through a specially designed maze. The maze was constructed so that crabs would make two wrong turns if they simply hugged the wall as they moved.

Over four consecutive weeks crabs were placed in complex mazes with food at one end. The crabs showed marked improvement across the testing period.

When reintroduced to the same maze two weeks later, without any food at the end, the ‘trained’ crabs completed the maze in under 8 minutes.

Crabs have many fewer neurons, only 90,000 compared to a honey bee’s 1 million, however crabs display complex brain function. This suggests that simple neuron counting isn’t enough to determine the sentience of an animal.

Crabs live in complicated three dimensional spaces, so it seems only reasonable that they have the capacity for remembering how to get around.

Pictured is a Potamon potamios, a semi-terrestrial crab from Southern Europe.