Meet the shell dwellers | 水產百科網

Baseduponchutzpahtobodyweightratios,theshelldwellersofLakeTanganyikawill...Hermitcrabsaroundtheworldarefamousforcommissioningshellsofallkindsforthemselves....Neolamprologusbrevisisthespeciesyou'remostlikelytoseeins

WORDS: NATHAN HILL

Based upon chutzpah to bodyweight ratios, the shell dwellers of Lake Tanganyika will always get my vote as the bravest fish in the world. Whether their brazenness really is courage or just stupidity is hard to pinpoint, but they have a vicious streak wider than the lake they inhabit. Keep some at home, and I guarantee that they will bite you one day. 

Being bitten by one of the ‘shellies’ is actually pretty cute, thanks to their pygmy statures. The normal impression of a fierce cichlid is some burly, biting submarine of a thing, like the heavyset curs of Central America — the kind of fanged apex predator that has little to fear to begin with.

Shell dwellers tear this impression apart. They are small fish, among the smallest cichlids in the world, and they carry overtones of prey, not predator. But their hearts are those of berserkers, and they will dash ...