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Description
Dapper crabs are a group of species in the hermit crab superfamily (Paguroidea, family Petasatidae). They are first recorded by Thucydides, who describes in passing, following the aftermath of the Battle of Salamis, an amusing struggle between survivors of a trireme wreck and the crabs who had colonized the helmets of their fallen comrades, presumably for their superior quality compared to the usual sea shells.

The phylogenetic history is quite clear, and remarkably well-preserved in museum specimens. Later generations would migrate inland due to the paucity of helmets on the seashore, and ultimately become suited to a terrestrial habitat to the exclusion of their amphibious relatives, developing a thicker exoskeleton and losing their gills. In this process the use of their accustomed covering lost its usefulness as armour and became more important as camouflage - biologists are in disagreement over whether this was a consequence of the relative scarcity of helmets compared to cloth hats or unrelated. In any case, lighter-weight and more-prevalent hats slowly became such crabs' preferred home, with speciation occurring as crabs fit better into particular depths and sizes of hat, and as smaller or cheaper hats offered better concealment while flashier and more ornate hats proved to be more attractive 'plumage'.

Their common name originates from the 1800s, when an improperly-cleaned shipment of hats arrived at Lock & Co. Hatters from overseas, with crab eggs secreted beneath one of the brims. The immigrant crabs out-competed the local population and rapidly proliferated through the hat shops of Britain, briefly becoming an intolerable plague on the fashion sensibilities of the upper middle class.

Description
Dapper crabs are a group of species in the hermit crab superfamily (Paguroidea, family Petasatidae). They are first recorded by Thucydides, who describes in passing, following the aftermath of the Battle of Salamis, an amusing struggle between survivors of a trireme wreck and the crabs who had colonized the helmets of their fallen comrades, presumably for their superior quality compared to the usual sea shells.

The phylogenetic history is quite clear, and remarkably well-preserved in museum specimens. Later generations would migrate inland due to the paucity of helmets on the seashore, and ultimately become suited to a terrestrial habitat to the exclusion of their amphibious relatives, developing a thicker exoskeleton and losing their gills. In this process the use of their accustomed covering lost its usefulness as armour and became more important as camouflage - biologists are in disagreement over whether this was a consequence of the relative scarcity of helmets compared to cloth hats or unrelated. In any case, lighter-weight and more-prevalent hats slowly became such crabs' preferred home, with speciation occurring as crabs fit better into particular depths and sizes of hat, and as smaller or cheaper hats offered better concealment while flashier and more ornate hats proved to be more attractive 'plumage'.

Their common name originates from the 1800s, when an improperly-cleaned shipment of hats arrived at Lock & Co. Hatters from overseas, with crab eggs secreted beneath one of the brims. The immigrant crabs out-competed the local population and rapidly proliferated through the hat shops of Britain, briefly becoming an intolerable plague on the fashion sensibilities of the upper middle class.