Come see limited edition Project Shellter shells at the Wonderloch Kellerland Gallery in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. Opening is tonight from 7-11PM and there will be music, live portraiture, and looping shell adoption videos. If you can’t make it tonight, the show runs through February.

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

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A picture is worth a thousand words – here are a few more…

Kendall, one of the five “sisters” living at the Shellter West crabitat, seems happy in her Project Shellter shell. She’s one of two crabs sporting printed Oxystele sinesis shells in the crabitat.

Here she is adopting it for the first time:

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

Tip o’ the hat to Greg at Dropcam for the “Holy Crab!”

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

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Kendall Karshellian adopted a printed shell!

After nearly 2 months of ongoing experimentation by the Project Shellter teams, on Wednesday December 07, 2011 at approximately 04:23 PM PST at the Shellter West crabitat in Los Angeles, Kendall adopted a printed shell!

Similar to the shells suggested by hermit crab caretaker and commentator wodosorel, the shell is modeled on that of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail.

Watch the entire fascinating process as she examines, switches, and adopts a 3D printed shell!

Got red/blue anaglyph glasses? Click the “3D” below the playback bar to see it happen in the third dimension!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

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Thingizen deeeep conducted a Project Shellter workshop at TEDxYouth@Flanders last week. The enthusiastic kids envisioned all sorts of fantastical shells for hermit crabs. Now they need to be modeled so they can be printed and introduced to the crabitats!
Will the Karshellians like a multi-room shell? Will Paris Shellton dare to wear a shell adorned with wings? There’s only one way to find out: empirical science!

Are you a Blender ninja or a Sketchup wizard? Maybe your Maya-fu is legendary. If you’re looking for a unique challenge please consider helping out by modeling one of the drawings produced at the workshop.

Drop a comment here if you take on the challenge then upload a finished model to Thingiverse and tag it with shellter.

The kids and crabs thank you!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• @ShellterEast
• @ShellterWest
• Thingiverse
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterVideos

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This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Photo credit

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtube.com/​ProjectShellterVideos

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

Thingiverse citizen deeeep is organizing a workshop around Project Shellter at TEDxYouth in Flanders, Belgium on November 20:

We are organizing a workshop for kids from 11 to 18 year old during the TEDxYouth@Flanders event in Belgium.
The idea is that the kids will sketch out their ideas for the shells and then some of them will get picked and made in CAD and printed. I will try to post the sketches and CAD files on thingiverse once they are done, so everybody can enjoy them and the kids can see their models online and see people liking them and printing them.

Thanks for the interest and support deeep!

We can’t wait to see what shells the kids create! Upload them to Thingiverse and we’ll print them out put them in the @ShellterEast and @ShellterWest crabitats!

If you’re in Flanders on November 20, go check out the event!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• @ShellterEast
• @ShellterWest
• Thingiverse
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterCams

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

Dr. Bulinski took some time out of her busy day to weigh in on the first crab encounters.

After looking at the footage, I don’t think I would classify the first video with Kourtney as a true examination.  It looked like she just walked over it.  In my experience, when the crabs investigate a shell, they really take the time to move it around in its appendages, insert claws inside and rotate the shell around.  The second video (Khloe) looks more like an investigation–I think I would go so far as to say that it would be “Examination-inserted appendages into shell.

I appreciate these professional observations, and will update the earlier post to reflect Dr. Bulinski assessment. She continued:

One thing I noticed though was that the printed shell was WAY too large for the crabs.  If the printed shells were much smaller I think that you might have better luck with the crabs investigating and interacting with them.

I also felt the shell was too large, so I am printing 60% and 50% sized shells. They will soon be in ShellterWest, awaiting another crab encounter!

Thanks for the input Dr. Bulinski!

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

We have an encounter!

Mashing up J. Allen Hynek’s famous UFO encounter taxonomy, with Dr. Bulinski’s shell assesment guidelines, we have Crab Encounters!

• Crab Encounter of the First Kind: Examination
• Crab Encounter of the Second Kind: Switching
• Crab Encounter of the Third Kind: Adoption

Last night an encounter of the first kind happened! Kourtney Karshellian examined a 70% sized ABS Prototype Shell 01 (Wednesday November 02, 2011 at 03:15:00 AM PDT) and here’s the video evidence:

Not to be outdone, Kourtney’s sister Khloe, spent even more time examining the shell later in the morning (Wednesday November 02, 2011 at 11:09:00 AM PDT):

So in one 8 hour period two encounters of the first kind happened! Prototype Shell 01 is being recognized as a shell!

Who can design a shell that will result in an encounter of the second kind? Upload your designs to Thingiverse, tag them with shellter and we’ll print them on a Thing-O-Matic and find out!

One more thing, install the video feed bookmarklets and watch the ShellterEast and ShellterWest crabitats live. Maybe you’ll be the first to see the next crab encounter!

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

The cameras are now deployed at each crabitat!

Big ups to Dropcam for being the first sponsor of Project Shellter!

Here are screen captures of recent activity in each crabitat:

             Tori Shelling (on right) taking a late night stroll at ShellterEast

             The Karshellians (Khloe and Kim, left and right) enjoying a midnight snack at ShellterWest

Here’s the real news: now you can see a live crabitat video feed while you’re surfing the interwebs; just drag-and-drop the following images to your bookmarks toolbar or right click each and add to your favorites.

This will install a bookmarklet that will allow you to watch the crabs from anywhere on the interwebs (except a blank page)!

Once installed, click on the words in the toolbar to launch a live video feed in a popup window.

Depending upon your browser and version, you may have to allow popups for certain sites to see the feed.

These are alpha versions of the bookmarklets. If you have any problems using them please post your experience in the comments.

Also, if you’re a web developer that wants to help with the continued development of these bookmarklets, drop a note in the comments.

Hermit crabs are, for the most part, nocturnal creatures. Most crabitat activity occurs during nighttime PDT and EDT. YMMV.

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

PRI talked to Bre about Project Shellter for the latest episode of their Living on Earth radio show. Listen here to get the scoop on what Project Shellter’s mission is, why hermit crabs are facing a housing crisis, and the challenges that come with the project (who knew hermit crabs were right handed?!).