The hermit crab works bring together living organisms and artificial objects, focusing on the shells these animals inhabit. Hermit crabs rely on empty shells for protection and change them as they grow. In the absence of suitable natural shells, they can also take shelter in discarded human-made objects. Degeyter uses this behaviour as a starting point for sculptures that combine preserved crabs with objects drawn from popular culture, toys and imagined worlds. In Mas Del Bos (2025), the hermit crabs inhabit custom-made shells surrounding the house where Degeyter spent his childhood summers in the south of France. The installation consists of twenty parts containing thirteen crabs, with the house reimagined as a small, crumbling structure gradually taken over by crustaceans. Alongside the house, the works refer to the people and animals associated with it, including the family dog. Rather than reconstructing the place as it once existed, Degeyter works from his memories of it, presenting the house as a ruin shaped by time and recollection. An earlier group of works draws on the illustrations of Henry Darger, the self-taught American artist and writer known for his fictional world of the Vivian Girls. Degeyter reimagined Darger’s characters as toys, then imagined these toys washed ashore and inhabited by hermit crabs. The resulting works combine preserved animals with doll heads, creating an uneasy contrast between childhood imagery and the realities of marine life. Alongside the sculptures, Degeyter produced images of the hybrid creatures using Perler beads, borrowing the format of ancient mosaics to depict these combinations of animal and toy. The series began with Anthropos Metron in 2019, where hermit crabs inhabited the heads of Funko Pop figures based on characters from Disney’s Hercules. The exhibition took its title from the Greek dictum Anthropos metron panton, meaning “Man is the measure of all things.” By placing living organisms inside mass-produced toys, Degeyter brought the natural world into contact with objects designed for human consumption. The works also refer to the growing presence of plastic waste in marine environments, where discarded objects can become substitutes for natural shells.