While it has a hard, spiked outer shell, and dangerous claws for defense, the animal underneath is a nutritious (if somewhat gamey) food source and several large water sacs give successful hunters important supplies of water on the barren planet.

Hitcher crabs grow upwards of one and a third meters long, and full grown adults (about 15 standard years old) can present quite a challenge to even seasoned hunters; there are stories of encounters with hitcher crabs nearly four meters across, but most locals on Sevarcos attribute these stories to an overactive imagination.

Hitcher crabs are active during both day and night, and spend their time prowling the desert plains and canyons for outcroppings of plant life and small rodents. When frightened, however, they can move quite quickly, outpacing most Humans. They are least dangerous during the height of the summer seasons, as the intense temperatures force even these hardy creatures to burrow into the sand for protection from the heat. When buried, their bodily functions slow substantially, and hunters have a much easier time of subduing these animals. Unfortunately, when buried in this manner, the hitcher crabs are much harder to spot and many careless animals (and people) have walked right over the crabs - leading to, more often than not, a brutal and painful death.

Hitcher crabs produce a slow acting poison which coats their claws, it also coats their shell spikes, but is much less concentrated in this area. While quite effective on smaller prey, it is merely painful to most Humans (provided they receive medical treatment within an hour of being slashed); a small number of individuals have proven to be quite allergic to the toxin, however, so caution is recommended when near these animals.

They are often found in same sex pairs. During mating season, a male and female pair join, effectively forming a pack. This pack remains together through the gestation period (about three weeks), egg laying phase (a female normally produces four to eight eggs per season) and the hatching, about nine standard weeks after the eggs are released. Hitcher crabs bury their eggs in the sand. When the young hatch, the females split off with the female pair while the males are raised by the adult males. Biologists have not determined any clear biological reason for this, but they have noted that the behavior of male and female pairs is virtually indistinguishable.