Bivalves put a lot of energy into their shells. These hardened, hinged sheaths of carbonate are an effective defense against many predators looking to get at the squishy clam’s body encased inside. Parasitic pea crabs have evolved to free-ride on the bivalves’ hard work.

(video courtesy Dana Shultz)

Pea crabs are small (pea-sized), very specialized parasites which live in the mantle cavity of many bivalve groups including oysters, mussels, clams and more. The mantle is the wall encasing the soft body of the bivalve, and the cavity is the space between this soft gooey tissue and the shell itself.

For a pea crab, there is no better place to be than this tiny, claustrophobic space. In fact, they can’t live anywhere else, though some species have been found in other unusual places such as inside the anuses and respiratory tracts of sea cucumbers (link SFW, fortunately, unless you’re a sea cucumber). In a bivalve host, the crab is protected from predation by the shell, and the bivalve provides a constant buffet of food as it sucks in suspended particles with its gills. The crab steals some of this food from itself before the bivalve can digest it.

As you might imagine, having a crab living in you taking your food and pinching at your gills is not an ideal arrangement for the bivalve. Pea crabs damage their hosts’ gills with their constant picking, and bivalves infected with crabs suffer slower growth than uninfected individuals, particularly for those unlucky enough to play host to the larger female pea crabs. At a certain point, the males will sneak out of their hosts and find a bivalve with a female crab inside. At this point, they mate inside the host’s shell, adding great insult to injury. The female releases her larvae, which swim out to infect new hapless bivalves and start the cycle over again.

You might think that commercial oysters with crab parasites would be thrown out, but to the contrary, finding a pea crab or its close relative the oyster crab with your meal is a cause for celebration in some areas, such as the Cheasapeake Bay. The crabs are eaten whole and often raw, and are said to have a texture akin to shrimp, with notes of sweetness and umami. Personally I prefer surprises in my Kinder eggs rather than in my shellfish, but to each their own.