December 21, 2019 • 46 mins
Welcome to Christmas Island, a place where it’s still only Christmas once a year… but where red crabs swarm across the land and enormous coconut crabs feast on carrion in the forests. So deck the halls with boughs of SCUTTLING HORROR as Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick celebrate the holiday season in style. (Originaly published Dec. 27, 2018)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Old Vault, this time for
part two of the episode we ran last Saturday. This
originally aired December. This is our Christmas Island Crabs Special
Part two. That's right. Yeah, these were really fun to
put together. And then also it was fun because afterwards
we heard from listeners who who had lived on Christmas
(00:29):
Island had seen these some of these marvelous creatures firsthand,
so that that was delightful. And hopefully we'll hear all
news stories with re airing these. Uh. This episode was
originally titled What Christmas Island Crabs Part two? Colon Decadecca
Pod y'all, I believe it was so hold still while
the claw closes around you. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:54):
your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Giant Crabs time. That's right.
We are continuing our exploration of Christmas Island. And if
you would if you're if you're asking yourself white guys,
(01:16):
where's Christmas Island? What are you talking about? Well, then
that means you need to go back and listen to
the episode that published right before this one, because that
one will explain where Christmas Island is, what its whole
deal is, what the human history happens to be concerning
Christmas Island, and we go in depth about the red
Crab of Christmas Island, it's most singular and famous decabod inhabitant.
(01:39):
Now it has another decapod inhabitant that is by no
means limited to Christmas Island, certainly not to the extent
that the Christmas Island Red Crab is. And that other
decapod inhabitant is the coconut crab or the robber crab,
which is another glorious clawed crustacean in its own Now,
I have to admit, and though as we mentioned the
(02:01):
previous episode, there's virtually nothing Christmas about Christmas Island other
than the fact that the guy who named it happened
to name it on Christmas Day, I think you decided,
like back in June, like, well when it when it's
time for Christmas, we're just going to talk about crabs. Yeah,
it's enough it's enough of a reason for me and
I have to admit that I I keep um hearing
(02:24):
the Christmas song Christmas Island in my head. Is I'm
thinking about this easy even Oh well, it's it's uh.
I can't remember who recorded it originally, but I think
like Being Crosby did a version of it, Leon Redbone
did a fabulous version of it. Uh. And of course
it's just kind of this silly, cheesy song about weirdly
about like having some sort of an an ideal fantasy
(02:48):
Christmas on some distant island, but also some this whole
bit about how it's going to keep your woman from
straying from you. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really notice this
part of it until I started reading the lyrics. But
it's like you'll never dre because it's gonna be Christmas
every day, um, which which is weird. But this reminds
me of another another Christmas song I listened to, made
(03:10):
on purpose to be creepy. There were a lot of
creepy Christmas songs, and there was there was I've been
listening to a lot of like R and B, like
old er R and B kind of Christmas songs and
plays on one of the Soma FM channels, and there
was one I was listening to the other day and
it had a similar thing that was like, baby, You're
never gonna leave me because when with me it's Christmas
every day. It seems like a very bold promise to
(03:33):
try and make to you know, your your prospective girlfriend
or wife. The nog never stops. We will have eggnog
every day. There will be a tree, a live Christmas
tree in the house every day. It's it's a high bar.
I have a live in Santa But it made me think, well,
what if Christmas Island was actually about Christmas Island? We
(03:54):
may end up cutting this. I don't know how to sound,
but but I think it would go something like this.
How'd you like to deck the holes with the deck
of pods? How'd you like to see a crab so
big you'll worship it as a god? If you ever
spend Christmas on Christmas side and you will never sleep,
(04:21):
You'll probably weep when robber crabs come for you. How
would you like there's more? Don't manaverse? How would you
like to eat carry on like the robber crabs do?
How'd you like to see them snip baked coconut directly
(04:41):
in two. If you ever spend Christmas on Christmas Sidland,
you will never sleep. You'll probably weep when robber crabs
come for you. Can I applaud now, yes you can. Again.
We may cut that, but hopefully it will become a standard.
What do you think is the longest period of unbroken
(05:03):
singing that has ever happened on this podcast before? Oh?
I don't know, probably from of when Julie Douglas was
one of the hosts. Oh did she sing? She she
she did have a knack for busting into show tunes.
Well wait, I don't know if they were show tunes,
but she did have a knack for bursting into song. Well,
I really appreciate that this art you've just shared with Robert,
(05:25):
and it raises so many interesting questions, like how big
would a crab have to be before you worshiped it
as a god? Well, if you look up a picture
of the robber crab or the coconut crab, specifically, if
it is next to a human being or on something
that you can you know, you know the size for
like a garbage can. Unfortunately, I gotta break your heart, Robert.
(05:46):
There is a viral image you've probably seen of a
coconut crab or robber crab on a garbage can, And unfortunately,
in that image the garbage can is a smaller than
average garbage can. It's still a garbage can. To put
your getting a little bit of a skewed perspective. Okay,
well there I saw a picture of it, of one
of these crabs fixed to a tree next to Brian Cox,
(06:08):
not the actor Brian Cox. Oh what a shame be
the science scientists and science communicator Brian Cox. And I
would say that it looks big enough in that in
that particular photo to worship. Oh these things are plenty big. Yeah,
I can see people worshiping. So okay, we we've mentioned
several times today we're gonna be talking about the coconut
crab or the robber crab. This is Burgess Latro and
(06:29):
it is the largest land dwelling arthropod on Earth. Though
technically not a true crab. They are deca pod crustaceans,
but not a member of the inver order bracky era,
which is what true crabs are. But if you don't
tattle on us, we can call them crabs today, right right?
If hermit crabs are called crabs. I mean, they're not
(06:50):
technically crabs, but we call them crabs, coconut crabs, we
can call them crab loosely referred to as crabs, and
and may even in in some of the the more
scientific literature we're looking at here, they'll still just go
ahead and calm crabs. They notice. Yeah, So if it
is the largest land dwelling arthropod on Earth, how big
is that? Right? How big do you have to be? Well,
(07:11):
a standard adult robber crab is about one meter or
about forty inches measured from the tips of the legs.
They can weigh about four point five kilograms were almost
ten pounds, and that is a big arthropod to be
on land right there. They're not the largest arthropod ever,
or overall. The largest ever that we know about. It
(07:32):
was probably j Calopterus, which is this extinct genus of C.
Scorpion that probably got about two point five meters long.
These things were gigantic, terrifying, wonderful extinct creatures. The largest
today in terms of leg span is the Japanese spider crab,
which can in extreme cases have a leg span of
almost four meters, but it's also kind of spidery with
(07:56):
like big skinny legs, so it's it depends on how
you count eyes. Yeah, Like those big spider craps, they
kind of look like they are the skeleton for a tent, right,
It's like they're they're in a contest to get measured
biggest by leg span alone. So I guess it all
depends on how you're measuring. But being the largest land
(08:16):
dwelling arthropod, I think is something very special on its own, because,
as we've often discussed psychologically, I think to us, the
sea is still very much that other world where strange
and unfamiliar life forms are expected. They're okay, right, it's
okay with you that there are sharks in the sea,
but if there were sharks on land, it would not
be okay with you. And the same is true for
(08:39):
large crustaceans. When you see a meter long decapod walking
around in your front yard and you haven't grown up
around creatures like this, you may feel you've been transported
to an atomic age monster movie, like something is wrong,
you know. I realized that people who live close to
um to to the sea and are around craps, they
(08:59):
may be more used to finding the occasional crab indoors,
the occasional land crab walking around in their house. I
always still when it happens to me, like if on
vacation somewhere and a crab is in the house, it
is an exciting and special treat. And and I have
to say that when my wife and I went on
our honeymoon to Lapa, Mexico is a little island, so again, uh,
(09:21):
the kind of place where land crabs have a field day.
And indeed, our our our journey there seemed to time
nicely with this surge of tiny land crabs that were
just walking all over the place. And since we were
staying in this kind of hut type structure that was
right on the beach, during the night, crabs would be
(09:42):
all over the floor to the to the point where
you had to be careful where you were stepping because
you might step on a crab if you're watching. And
you know, they can't actually climb up into bed with
you or anything. But it was still, uh, it was
quite a crazy environment to find myself in. Wait, how
did you prevent them from getting in bed with you?
But they just didn't. They didn't seem like they were
really climbers. The crab we're talking about here today, the
(10:04):
coconut crab again not a true crab, heck of a climber.
But these particular crabs, they I never saw them climb anything.
They would they would come in under the doors and
they would sort of come in through cracks in the
wall and then fall down onto the floor and then
keep crawling, but they never tried to make it up
the bed. What a shame. The same huts, I should
(10:25):
mention also some of them had lost some plastic screening
up around the top, which permitted fruit bats to come
in and eat fruit and poop onto into onto the
floor of the hut. But we didn't have to worry
about that in our Wow. Okay, okay, so back to
back to Bergus Latro. Now. The last time we talked,
(10:45):
we talked primarily about the Christmas Island red crab, which
is mostly just on Christmas Island and another small island group.
But the this this crab like animal, this decapod crustacean
we're talking about today, the king of crabs is not
just confined to Christmas Island, though it is very numerous
on Christmas Island. Yeah, they're found throughout the tropical islands
of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. But but Christmas Island
(11:07):
has the largest population by far, and as I mentioned,
they are excellent climbers, mostly though, to escape the any
dangers or threats that they're not crazy about if they're
nowhere near a borough. Now here's a question, what is
the danger or threat to the world's largest terrestrial Arthur Pod. Well,
my understanding is that the major threat, of course is humans,
(11:29):
which we'll get into in a bit. Though on the
other side, we have to say that the Christmas Island
population of coconut crabs or robber crabs, it's also the
best protected population of of of robber crabs in the world.
So you know, it's Christmas Island as always, it's this
it's this mix of humans really messed that one up.
And at the same time there's some great examples of
(11:51):
humans really trying to get it right. Yeah. Well, we
will talk in a little bit about using them for
meat and for their oil. Um. But yeah, so so
how do they survive on Christmas Island specifically? Well, um,
we we mentioned in the last episode about the danger
that the automobiles pose as well as trains. Pose to
(12:12):
the smaller Christmas Island red crab. But according to the
Australian Department of Environment and Energy, between two thousand and
ten and two thousand twelve, some two thousand coconut crabs
died on the roads of Christmas Island. They kept track
of the fatalities and they actually posted fluorescent pink circles
by the roadside. Drew a mind motorist to drive carefully. Now.
(12:35):
I think we've mentioned that the coconut crabs are relatives
of the hermit crabs, and if you see them, they
almost kind of look like gigantic hermit crabs. But what
we know is that hermit crabs will claim shells that
they find in their environment and and inhabit them as protection.
Do uh do do we see anything like that in
the in the robber crab or the coconut crab. Not
(12:57):
in the adults. So the adults don't use shells at all, uh,
They're beyond that. Instead, the abdomen is is tucked partially
underneath the body and they have a series of hardened
plates that provide covering along with the bruskley tufts of
skin along the rest of the abdomen. On my own shell. Yeah,
I mean, what would they even climb inside football helmets?
But Fate whispers to the warrior, the shell is needed.
(13:23):
The warrior whispers back, I am the shell. What is
that from? No, it's some saying that's in. It's in
like one of the Mission Impossible movies. It's on T
shirts and stuff. It's one of those like no fear
T shirt slogans. It's on T shirts. You say, yeah,
I don't know where it originally. Are you saying it
should be in our T shirt shop accessible via stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com? No, I don't think so,
(13:44):
just throwing it out there. Okay, So, even though the
adults don't use the shells, juvenile coconut crabs do seem
to employ the shell method of hermit crabs for protection,
but the juveniles are hard to observe because they are
often burrowed. That's a similar to what we saw with
the red crabs of Christmas Island. Like the the the
younger crabs, the ones that have not reached adulthood yet,
they're going to try and just stay out of the
(14:05):
thick of it until they're they're they've reached the appropriate size,
and the adults Incidentally, they mold underground and special burrows,
so they'll they'll they'll just dig down into this kind
of spherical chamber and that's where they'll do all their
molting and then they'll come back up. Now, coconut crabs
are mostly sort of a deep blue in color, and
(14:25):
they tend to look kind of you see footage of
and they look kind of like brownish, but you'll see
kind of bits of blue. Sometimes there's a tinge of
red in places. It becomes kind of like a weird
off purple. Yeah. And then of course they have claws.
They have a large left claw a smaller right claw,
and it's kind of hard to pick up on the
size differential when you're just looking at them unless you
(14:47):
look closely I find. But then they have two pairs
of long walking legs and a smaller pair of appendages
that are used for mating and egg manipulation. Now these
are land crabs, so that do they have anything to
do with the water. Well, we see a some more
situation as with the the the red crabs that we
talked about in the last episode. So they have only
the stigial gills and they'll actually drown have left in
(15:10):
water for more than an hour, the guilt tissue is
given over to a highly vascular Uh what I often
I've seen described as long tissue with long in quotation marks.
But for for land lubber breathing. Yeah, these are land crabs.
These are the crabs of the forests. All right, let's
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will discuss Charles Darwin's encounters with the coconut crabs. Thank, alright,
(15:35):
we're back. So you know, Charles Darwin himself wrote about
coconut crabs in his eighteen thirty nine work The Voyage
of the Beagle. This was in his chapter on Keeling Island.
What was known as Keeling Island then, I think it's
also now known as the Cocos Islands or Territory, which
is another group of islands in the Indian Ocean. And
so Darwin's observations were interesting. He starts by writing, quote,
(15:59):
I have to four alluded to a crab which lives
on the coco nuts. It is very common. I love it.
He hyphenates cocoa nuts. It is very common on all
parts of the dry land and grows to a monstrous size.
It is closely allied or identical with the beer ghost Latro,
so he basically he's already talking about the same animal. Uh.
(16:20):
The front pair of legs terminate in very strong and
heavy pincers, and the last pair are fitted with others
weaker and much narrower. It would at first be thought
quite impossible for a crab to open a strong cocoa
nut covered with the husk, but Mr Leask assures me
that he has repeatedly seen this affected. The crab begins
(16:41):
by tearing the husk fiber by fiber, and always from
that end under which the three eye holes are situated.
When this is completed, the crab commences hammering with his
heavy claws on one of the eye holes till an
opening is made, Then, turning around its body, by the
aid of its past your ear and narrow pair of pincers,
(17:02):
it extracts the white albuminous substance. I think this is
as curious a case of instinct as I have ever
heard of, and likewise of adaptation and structure between two
objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme
of nature, as a crab and a coconut tree. Maybe
I'm missing something, but I honestly don't see what he
(17:23):
thinks is so strange about that the crab is a
creature of the dark, infernal depth, and the coconut is
is the fruit of heaven. I don't know one is
one is high, the other low. I mean because one
of the things about it, when you look at a
coconut crab, I mean it kind of looks like a coconut. Yeah, yeah,
that is strange. I mean, I'm not saying like Darwin
is dense here, obviously, you know, his insights about nature
(17:45):
are usually pretty interesting, even when he's wrong. I'm not
I'm not seeing what's so strange about that. That seems
like a very natural kind of relationship. But I don't know,
maybe we're just used to thinking post dar Winnie and
thoughts about this kind of thing. And I'll have a
little more on coconut crabs eating coconuts a little later
on in the episode. Oh yes, yes, So he points
(18:07):
out a few other things. He says that the crab
is active in the daytime, but every night it goes
to the sea to moisten it skills. And this seems
contradicted by modern reports in which I've read that the
coconut crab is not exclusively nocturnal, but it likes nocturnal
activity sort of prefers it. Right, This is what I
read too, that it it will come out at night,
but it also it will come out if it's a
(18:27):
cloudy day. And it also it's very I think, an
environmentally informed. So the coconut crab is living in an
area where humans or say dogs or whatever are going
to mess with it, that might impact how often it
comes out. But if they have free range, they're just
gonna do whatever. So yeah, it sounds like his report
could be wrong. Here. He says they live in burrows,
(18:49):
that they dig under the roots of trees, and that
they make beds in their burrows out of the fibers
of husks that they tear from coconuts. And I have
I have looked for modern evidence of that. I have
not found that anything about that. I didn't run across
it either. I certainly ran across observations that you will
(19:09):
find like shredded bits of coconut husk in areas where
the crabs live, but I think that is probably due
to what they do to coconuts and not any kind
of like nesting ritual. Yeah. Interesting, Uh, if anybody out
there knows of any evidence of that, we would like
to see it. Also Darwin, on eating the largest terrestrial arthropod, quote,
(19:31):
these crabs are very good to eat. Moreover, under the
tail of the larger ones there is a massive fat which,
when melted, sometimes yields as much as a court bottle
full of limpid oil. Now he relays reports that the
robber crabs climb up trees to get coconuts, but he
doubts this is true. Other reports say that they live
(19:52):
only on the nuts that have already fallen to the ground.
And uh. And he also says quote to show the
wonderful strength of the front pair of pincers, I may
mention that Captain Morrisby can find one in a strong
tin box which had held biscuits, the lid being secured
with wire, but the crab turned down the edges and escaped.
(20:13):
In turning down the edges, it actually punched many small
holes quite through the tin. So we must return to
the subject of these tin piercing claws in a bit now.
As a side note, I so I was trying to
find if there was any evidence of the coconut crabs
making husk beds in their in their nests, and I
(20:33):
kept I was googling things like do coconut crabs make
uh nests of coconut husks or something? But every time
I typed do coconut crabs make Google wanted to autocomplete
do coconut crabs make good pets? What is wrong with
this world? Why is that what it's telling me to
look up? Yeah? I didn't. I did not research anything
(20:56):
about keeping them as pets, but it seems like it
would seem like a good idea. I mean, for one thing,
they're just a larger creature that seems like it needs
to roam around and live a fairly nomadic lifestyle. On
the other hand, there there are varieties of hermit crabs
that it seemed to be more established as pets um
not every species, but a few particular species they given
the tin box story, it seems like they might be
(21:18):
a little bit hard to confine. Yeah, and yeah, and
then the other thing too. When I first saw them,
the footage I foresaw of them in that that documentary
we talked about, they look like brown fly covered um
carrying gobblers. So I'm not sure to what extent that
you see that and you're like, yes, I want one
of those in my house. Yeah, I mean they, like
(21:40):
many crabs, they are opportunistic omnivores. So even if they
do in a way specialize in coconuts, they also they
will eat carrying I think we already mentioned that, right. Yeah,
they are in too meet when they can get it,
even weird sources of meat you might not expect. In fact,
there there are viral videos of them. I don't know
if this is common. Is like, this is probably not
(22:00):
super common, but there there have been videos posted on
the internet of these crabs like attacking and killing live animals,
like live birds. Yeah. I was looking at one of
these as well. The cut of it, at least that
I saw, I was unclear exactly how they came counter
one another. Yes, that's a very good point. It cuts
in in the middle of their encounter, so it could
(22:21):
be that the bird attacked the crab, or they just
stumbled into each other by accident. So I wouldn't want
to imply that the crabs are like hunting the birds,
but clearly if if they were given the chance, they
would they would kill and eat a bird. Yeah. Um, yeah,
they're pretty fierce creatures. In fact that they have no
natural predators other than themselves and of course Charles Darwin
(22:42):
if he's trying to eat one. But you know, on
Christmas Island they reside almost in all corners of the environment.
They will certainly shelter under tree roots as we mentioned,
but they also use like small caves, crevices, hollow logs
and just earth burrows, especially for that molten practice I
was talking about. And uh, and like we we've said,
(23:03):
they will generally stay out of sight during the day
and head out to forage at night, but also on
overcast days. And it does seem to also depend upon uh,
you know, what's going on in the local environments. You know,
winter humans, about winter competitors about. They seem nomadic, but
may return to a specific burrow and may need to
return to the sea to drink water in order to
(23:24):
obtain um osmotic balance from time to time. This is
something that the Darwin actually touched on and on larger
islands they seem to remain in the same area for
exterior extended periods of time. Out sightseers, Yeah, they're not
really really sightseers. Now what do they forage for? Well,
they love vegetable material, the fruits of various trees and
(23:44):
the pith of fallen orange of palms. But they also
tear into some carry on as we've been been been discussing,
and they have a great sense of smell to aid
in these hunts. One diet fact I came across is
that apparently it is true that they've had a very
crafty strategy g for not wasting energy after they molt,
they eat their own discarded exoskeletons. Well that's just that's
(24:06):
just common sense right there. Right, So, I mean, who
out there picks their dead skin and doesn't eat it
too much? For you? Now, Robert shifted over the primates
and now you're like, no, I won't take it um alright.
So one thing that's probably um come to some of
(24:27):
your minds out there is, Okay, the link between the
coconut and the coconut crab is pretty obvious, but we've
also referred to them as robber crabs. Where does that
moniker come from? I was wondering about that. Do they
do they have like a little like a bandit mask
kind of coloration or something? No, but what I read
is that they will obsessively carry off any foreign object
(24:47):
they come across, including pots and silverware from camps, and
thus they are non a robber crabs. Now, these these uh,
these crabs will live for quite a while. I've read
that they may live up to fifty years. I've also
seen between thirty and forty. But longevity may exceed fifty years.
All right, So I want to come back to a
Darwin question. Darwin reports him and his friends and Captain
(25:10):
Moresby and all these people, they think these things are
pretty good to eat. They produced tasty oil, all that
kind of stuff. Is that, I mean, are there people
who still eat these things? Well? I was reading a
bit about this in Coconut Crabs by Warwick J. Fletcher,
and he he points out that they are quite edible
despite their appearance as a large, you know, slightly grotesque,
fly covered scavenger. And he wrote that the crabs in
(25:32):
many Indo Pacific cultures are are ceremonial importance for weddings,
and they're they're attributed with afrodes act qualities. And there
are also pretty easy to catch. Is the other thing?
You know, if a human wants to eat a coconut crab,
they can do it. I don't know, not fast moving, yeah,
and I don't know about you, but when I was
(25:53):
looking around for footage of them, I inevitably found some
reality show about like a naked guy and an I
and that ends up did not find that killing and
um and grilling and eating a coconut crap? Is it
that TV show about putting a naked guy in the woods?
I believe it is. I mean, I don't know how
many shows with that description exist. You'd be shocked, but
it is at least one of them. No, that was
(26:15):
the primite. It was, like I think it was. It's
had the word naked in the title. I think it
was Discovery who did it too well. At any rate,
they're they're easy to catch. If you're an established hunter,
you can do it, and if you're just some naked
reality TV star you also have a pretty good shot
at catching one and eating it. But but this is
unfortunate in some areas because it has pushed them to
(26:37):
the point of extinction in some parts of the world. Now,
an interesting theory that Fletcher points out is that you
look at their distribution, um, you know, on these various islands,
and it roughly matches the distribution of coconut palm, leading
some to theorize that the coconut palm may have been
its means of migration, Like, how does that work? Well,
(26:59):
the way I met and he didn't really go into
a lot of detail on this is I'm guessing they
they arrived on like floating on bits of the tree
or perhaps coconuts themselves. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting, and I
should point out they are common only on island habitats
where they typically don't have to compete with as many
terrestrial organisms. I mean, that's I think that's one of
(27:20):
they don't do well where there are tigers or something. Yeah, well,
it's it comes back to the you know, the beauty
of an isolated island environment, right that you can you
can have certain organisms really go wild in ways that
they wouldn't be able to do elsewhere in the world. Okay,
I think we're gonna take another break. When we come back,
we'll ask the burning question, was Darwin right? Can they
(27:42):
actually open coconuts with their claws? We'll find out. Alright,
we're back, all right, Robert, I bet you have seen
videos of humans trying to open coconuts. It often seems
to require something like a machette, like get a very
strong tool and some leverage to get a coconut open,
(28:03):
because these are these are hard nuts. Yeah, I mean,
have you ever tried to open a coconut? No? I haven't.
It's it's could be a bit difficult. We we purchased one.
I purchased one for the first time in the last
year or two because my son like really wanted to
eat one, and so I bring it home and then
I'm like buster on the rest development I have to ask, like,
(28:24):
how do you eat one? I have to like do
YouTube search, how do I open a coconut? How do
I prepare it? And uh? And there are several steps involved.
Um so yeah, these are these are robust uh nuts there.
They are difficult to crack. This is something that if
it falls from a tree and hits you on the head,
it can kill you. So the the relationship between the
(28:48):
coconut crab and the coconut this is apparently an area
of some controversy because because despite the fact that this
is where they get their name, you know, in the
fact that we have all these stories about them opening coconuts,
we have a lot less in the way of definitive proof.
So a Fletcher that Warwick J. Fletcher I mentioned earlier.
(29:10):
He points out some of the more believable of the
ideas regarding coconut crabs opening coconuts. The first is that
the crab first de husks the coconut and then the
stringy fibers, pulls off the stringy fibers, and then climbs
up the tree with it and then drops it to
bust it open. This does not seem to be um
(29:33):
a popular theory like this doesn't seem to be one
that a lot of people are really putting a lot
of stock in because it sounds crazy, right, the idea
that the crab would take the coconut, and despite being
no one's doubting that the coconut crab is not a
great climber, but the idea that it would get the
coconut and climb a tree and drop it seems crazy. Um.
I think. The other likely idea is that it might
crab climb the tree, of course, and and dislodge the
(29:56):
coconuts somehow, which is more likely give and its ability
to climb. But then other versions are that it it
simply de husts the coconut and then bashes the nut
open with its claw or that that it pokes a
claw through one of the eyes, like the lower part
of one of the eyes, and then snips the coconut open. Well,
(30:17):
that would be a very powerful snip. Fortunately, these are
very powerful claws. This last method, the snipping method, actually
was observed by Fletcher in the lab, but he points
out that it took several days for the crab to
do it. But then again, like this crab is on
its own schedule. You know, who are you to impose,
you know, your human schedule on this mighty decapod. Quit
(30:39):
hurry and me we're on crab time. We mentioned already
that husts and broken coconuts are often seen in the
domain of the coconut crab. However, contrary to opinions in
the past, it is not a pest for coconut growers,
nothing on the level of say the rat, which is
a true pest for coconut growers. Now that the crab
here doesn't depend on the coconut as a primary food source, again,
(31:04):
it's happy with all these other things that comes across
to eat. It's a it's it's an omnivore. Uh. It
is not exclusive to the coconut, but it does seem
to eat them, and in order to eat them, it
has to tear into the coconut with those claws. The
claws of the coconut crab have the strongest pinching force
of any crustacean uh And according to this according to
(31:26):
a study published November sixteen in the open access journal
PLOS one by a a Japanese team of researchers led
by shin Ichiro Oca, And that's that's saying something, right.
I mean, this is the strongest pinching force of any crustacean.
Because decapods exert the greatest pinching force relative to their
(31:47):
mass in general, and then this is the greatest pincher
of them all. They write, quote, based on the crabs
maximum known weight, the maximum pinching force of their claws
was projected to be three thousand, three hundred Newton's This
exceeds both the pinching force of other crustaceans and the
bite force of all terrestrial animals except alligators. Now I
(32:10):
was looking around and I could be missing something, but
I found that to be slightly contradicted by other figures
that were saying, like, you know, what would be the
bite force of like a tiger or a lion, and
I saw that estimated it somewhere around four thousand Newton's
I mean, even being in the same ballpark as the
bite force of a tiger sounds pretty good. Well, yeah,
(32:31):
because I don't know about you, but when I think
of being pinched by a crab, I tend to think
of it more as an anolance, not a bone crushing
kind of right. Like if I'm playing around on the
beach and my son and I see a crab and
I'm like, oh, should I touch it on its head?
And my son's like, oh, don't do it, You'll get pinched.
I'm not thinking about losing a finger. But these seconds
(32:53):
are also strong. I've read that they can lift up
to twenty or sixty one pounds, And certainly if you
back to Kingdom of the Crabs that that documentary special
narrated by David Attenborough, you see like three or four
of them tearing across, tearing apart of bird carcass. Yeah,
so they're they're powerful and should maybe be worshiped as gods.
I'm just well, I mean, there's a reason when when
(33:17):
the crabs start doing their dominance displays, what do they do?
They hold their claws up in the air. They're like,
look at the power, Look at the glory. Do you
see it? Yeah? And that that again brings me back
to what Douglas j Emland pointed out in his book
Animal Weapons, that you know, these are high energy adaptations
not only for just growing these powerful muscular pinchers, but
(33:38):
also the ability to wave them around like that, the
ability to put on that show. Yeah, and that's I mean,
when you think about it, there are there are very
different kinds of powerful muscles that nature can invest in.
You know, you've got the muscles of a cheetah, which
no one would say you're not very powerful, right, but
they're you know, they're powerful, like the leg and the
(33:59):
body muscles that allow it to move very fast. And
then you've got these other I'm sure there's a biological
or biomechanics term for this I'm not aware of at
the moment. That that's sort of like the single use
muscle that's therefore exerting a really powerful single force all
at once. It's not made for speed, it's not made
for you know, necessarily repeated use or anything. But it's
(34:21):
like the jaw muscles of the crocodile, and the crocodilians
have one of the most powerful bites or I think
the most powerful bite of any animal that comes on
the land. Right, Yes, I believe. So this reminds me
we should we should come back and do a like
a bite based episode because I don't know, some some
listeners might find it a bit dry, but but I'm
(34:41):
always fascinated about at the ranking of the different bite right.
And then also when you get into the the study
of what the the the estimated bite power would have
been for something say like a sabretooth cat. Yeah, yeah,
of extinct animals. Well, I remember we were in our
episode about the Wolf of Whales Street. We were comparing
the estimated byte forces of the Megalodon, the ancient gigantic shark,
(35:07):
and the Leviathan, the ancient predatory Whaley and I recall
they were that they were somewhere around each other. I
think I believe they were comfortable. Robert, have you heard
this bizarre theory that Amelia Earhart was eaten by coconut crabs? No?
I have not. It's this then actual theory. Well, I
mean I don't. It's not one of those that has
(35:28):
good direct evidence for it. It's one of those that
it seems like every few years this shows up again
in a new round of articles on the internet because
I probably just because it's a captivating image, but I
think the idea so in N seven Amelia are Heart,
you know, she vanished while flying over the Pacific with
fred Noon and her navigator, and nobody knows what happened
(35:49):
to them. It's often been presumed that there there might
have been bad weather and they crashed into the water
and they sank into the ocean and died, you know,
died in the crash or drowned. H every he's always
got these these hypothetical what if she actually landed on
this island and something happened to the plane and you know,
and that's why we don't, you know whatever. But there's
(36:10):
apparently some theory that she crashed landed on an island
called Nicko Maruro, and that her remains were not found
there in full because they were consumed and dragged into
the dens of land crabs of of howcnut crabs. I don't.
As I said, there does not appear to be good
direct evidence for this. It is just more kind of
(36:32):
like what if this happened. Well, I mean, its assuming
that she she did crash upon an island like that
and either survived or didn't, she stayed there and she
died there. It seems highly likely that the land crabs
would eat, or crabs are will scavenge and they will
consume human flesh. That's why you have that old bit
(36:54):
of folk wisdom to never eat crabs after a hurricane,
because you're because I guess you don't want to eat
crabs that have been eating human flesh. I have not
heard that one. Yeah. Wow, However, if you kind of
secretly want to eat human flesh, probably never a better time.
It's a weird area to get into two jokes about
hurricane related death, but here we are. Well, it didn't
(37:15):
mean to be insensitive about hurricane related death. But yeah,
I I do not believe that there is any good
reason to think that this is what happened to Amelia
are hard. I think most of the historians of or
her biographers and historians think that they probably sank into
the ocean. But anyway, for some reason, people want to
keep coming back to this one. I think they just
like the idea of crabs eating people well, and like
(37:38):
I said crabs are gonna eat people. UM. Crabs have
probably eaten quite a few people over over the course
of human history, especially in UH in areas close to
the sea. And ultimately would UH would sky burial by
land crab be that bad of a thing? You know? Oh,
I'm not sure it would. Yeah, you could become part
of somebody's limpid oil. Yeah, this could be one of
(37:58):
the big trends in the future. You know, as we're
beginning to is removing even further away from UH from
from burial of the dead. We've adn't done whole episodes
about some of the newer methods of burial that have
become increasingly popular, the idea of green burials. Perhaps we
will come back to something more like the Tibetan sky burial,
where a body is uh is ritually um taken apart
(38:23):
and then fed to scavenging animals in the In the
Tibetan case, it is vultures. But why not land crabs,
Why not the coconut crab. I think it's a good
idea to give the invertebrates a taste for us. Now,
speaking of giant crabs that may consume human flesh, UM,
giant crabs are, of course pretty popular in motion pictures,
(38:44):
and I know that's not as popular as you might think. Yes,
I think that there should be way more giant crab movies. Well,
what are some of the notable examples. I mean, the
main one that comes to my mind is Mysterious Island
from fifty one because you had those ray hairy house
and effects of that giant crab. Oh, those are great.
I love Attack the Crab Monsters, the seven Roger Corman special.
(39:06):
It's you know, I you know, I'm a sucker for
the Atomic Age monster movies, where there was atomic radiation
and it made a bigger version of some normal animal.
Except it's not just a bigger version of crabs in
this movie. It's great because they're telepathic, sort of immaterial, magnetic, electric,
radioactive crabs that absorbed the consciousness of everyone they eat,
(39:30):
and they've got plans for world domination, and they slowly
are consuming the island that they live on. It's um
It's just one of the best stupid movies ever made
because it is made with such energy and enthusiasm. I
think a lot of that goes to the script by
Charles Griffith, who is one of my favorite B movie writers. Uh,
(39:51):
there's a gleeful embrace of the absurdity. Supposedly, Roger Corman
told Griffith when he was writing the script that he
was like, don't want any boring scenes and people just talking.
There's gotta be action or suspense in every scene, and
then the story goes that. Griffith asked him, Okay, does
it have to be about atomic radiation? And Corman said yes.
(40:15):
So this is the film where the crabs have kind
of human looking faces. Yeah, they've got googly eyes. Yeah.
And is this the one that you were telling me
about where it's possible that Jack Nicholson played the crab
he I think people have denied it, but other people
have claimed it. So Jack Nicholson was part of the
Corman scene. I think he was helping out on set
with Corman movies in the fifties. And yes, some people
(40:37):
have claimed that underneath the giant crab puppet in attack
of the crab monsters in some shots it's Nicholson under there,
but other people have said it's not him. So that
is a there's a question mark, though, I don't know.
I hope we get to get to find out. Maybe
that would be like a deathbed confession from Jack Nicholson.
Hill would be the world that he was the crab.
(40:59):
Those are my ankle under that crab. I was that
crab man, can't you imagine? Then they get to fit
that footage into the dedication at the Academy Awards. Man
they're there are hilarious stories about the behind the scenes
puppet work where they were trying to get the crab
puppet to do what they wanted, because there was like
an underwater scene where they were trying to feature it.
(41:20):
But I think it was made of fiberglass and stuff,
and it wouldn't sink. It was like two buoy and
and they were weighing it down with stuff to try
to make it sink, and but it ended up exploding somehow.
And so they're filming this in the actual surf, right,
uh might have I think it was in like an
aquarium take somewhere they were trying to film in the surf.
(41:40):
I can only imagine how awful that would have been.
Like trying to do anything in the surf other than
just sort of retain your footing is is quite a
challenge enough. There are at least a few scenes that
are actually shot in the surf. There's one great one
where there are a few guys, you know, there, like
these navy sailors in a rowboat and they're just off
the coast. One guy falls in the water and they
(42:01):
pull him back out and he doesn't have a head.
And then one of the scientists is like, I hope
that men's death is not an omen of things to come. Well,
crab that would that big would have had considerable pinching power.
That well, they do specify an attack of the crab
monsters that the crabs are supposed to be land crabs,
So maybe I mean they look more just like blue
(42:24):
crabs or something that normal kind of sea crab or
I don't know about blue crabs. They look like, you know, well,
they look kind of like the red the Christmas Island
red crab. It looks like the kind of crabs you
would eat. No, not so much like those. They look
like the crabs that you would buy at the grocery store.
I don't know what are called. And maybe their land maybe,
But anyway, I suppose it could be partially inspired by
(42:44):
the kind of decapod crustacean we've been discussing today. Maybe well,
but and yet you I don't think in any of
these giant crab movies you see a giant land crab
um that looks like a giant hermit crab. It looks
like the coconut crab, which is our best example of
the giant decapod. No, I don't think. So. There's also
there's a movie called Island Claws that is pretty good
(43:06):
if you get a chance. It's also a terrible giant
crab b movie. But I also think in that one,
it's just it looks more like you know, dinner crabs.
They were created by some scientific experiments performed by Barry Nelson.
All right, But you know, this makes me think though
that maybe what we don't need is more giant crab
films in terms of just like huge, hulking, truck sized crabs.
(43:29):
But how about just like a dog sized crab, you know,
just just scale up a little bit from the coconut
crab and then give it, give it to enhance speed.
I think I feel like that's the kind of movie
that audiences would really get behind. I agree, more giant
crab movies, please, yeah, Or to go back to the
(43:49):
Christmas island crabs, you know, streaming hordes of tiny crabs
that you can essentially make the squirm movie of of
crab films. Oh, that's sort of what I land clauses
before there's a giant crab at the end. There's one
part where guys like living in a bus. He's just
living in a bus and he suddenly there crabs everywhere
(44:11):
and he goes ah, and then the crabs turn his
bus over. How they do that? This is kind of
the sacrificial hobo character that shows up, and a lot
of that is that guy. Yeah. My favorite example, of
course being the original from or maybe not the original,
but I feel like the prime example of the archetype
the the old man who pokes the meteor ride in
(44:32):
the blob, right, yeah, the old Jordi Verile mistake. All right, well,
there you have it. We we got a little off
topic there at the end, just talking about giant crab cinema.
But this was a fun episode of the Coconut Crab.
I originally thought would just be part of our Christmas
of a single Christmas Island episode, but it turned out
they were just far more interesting. There was too much
(44:55):
limpid oil in there, just too much limpid oil. We
just had to suck it all up. So uh, we
hope you enjoyed the episode. Again, if you've ever been
to Christmas Island or any or if you've been to
any island that has in this case, that has coconut
crabs or Robert crabs, if you'd rather please tell us
about your your sightings of these creatures or your experiences
with these creatures, we would love to hear from you.
(45:17):
In the meantime, check out all the episodes of this
show at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh.
That is where you'll find all the episodes will final
inksto our social media accounts. Just a quick reminder to
check out our new show Invention. You'll find that at
invention pod dot com that comes out every Monday. Each
episode is a new invention, a new page from human
(45:38):
techno history. And if you dig this show, we think
you're gonna dig Invention as well. Absolutely so check it
out big thanks to our awesome audio producers Alex Williams
and Torii Harrison. If you would like to get in
touch with us directly to let us know feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, just to say hi, you can email us
(45:59):
at load the Mind at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com The big
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Old Vault, this time for
part two of the episode we ran last Saturday. This
originally aired December. This is our Christmas Island Crabs Special
Part two. That's right. Yeah, these were really fun to
put together. And then also it was fun because afterwards
we heard from listeners who who had lived on Christmas
(00:29):
Island had seen these some of these marvelous creatures firsthand,
so that that was delightful. And hopefully we'll hear all
news stories with re airing these. Uh. This episode was
originally titled What Christmas Island Crabs Part two? Colon Decadecca
Pod y'all, I believe it was so hold still while
the claw closes around you. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:54):
your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Giant Crabs time. That's right.
We are continuing our exploration of Christmas Island. And if
you would if you're if you're asking yourself white guys,
(01:16):
where's Christmas Island? What are you talking about? Well, then
that means you need to go back and listen to
the episode that published right before this one, because that
one will explain where Christmas Island is, what its whole
deal is, what the human history happens to be concerning
Christmas Island, and we go in depth about the red
Crab of Christmas Island, it's most singular and famous decabod inhabitant.
(01:39):
Now it has another decapod inhabitant that is by no
means limited to Christmas Island, certainly not to the extent
that the Christmas Island Red Crab is. And that other
decapod inhabitant is the coconut crab or the robber crab,
which is another glorious clawed crustacean in its own Now,
I have to admit, and though as we mentioned the
(02:01):
previous episode, there's virtually nothing Christmas about Christmas Island other
than the fact that the guy who named it happened
to name it on Christmas Day, I think you decided,
like back in June, like, well when it when it's
time for Christmas, we're just going to talk about crabs. Yeah,
it's enough it's enough of a reason for me and
I have to admit that I I keep um hearing
(02:24):
the Christmas song Christmas Island in my head. Is I'm
thinking about this easy even Oh well, it's it's uh.
I can't remember who recorded it originally, but I think
like Being Crosby did a version of it, Leon Redbone
did a fabulous version of it. Uh. And of course
it's just kind of this silly, cheesy song about weirdly
about like having some sort of an an ideal fantasy
(02:48):
Christmas on some distant island, but also some this whole
bit about how it's going to keep your woman from
straying from you. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really notice this
part of it until I started reading the lyrics. But
it's like you'll never dre because it's gonna be Christmas
every day, um, which which is weird. But this reminds
me of another another Christmas song I listened to, made
(03:10):
on purpose to be creepy. There were a lot of
creepy Christmas songs, and there was there was I've been
listening to a lot of like R and B, like
old er R and B kind of Christmas songs and
plays on one of the Soma FM channels, and there
was one I was listening to the other day and
it had a similar thing that was like, baby, You're
never gonna leave me because when with me it's Christmas
every day. It seems like a very bold promise to
(03:33):
try and make to you know, your your prospective girlfriend
or wife. The nog never stops. We will have eggnog
every day. There will be a tree, a live Christmas
tree in the house every day. It's it's a high bar.
I have a live in Santa But it made me think, well,
what if Christmas Island was actually about Christmas Island? We
(03:54):
may end up cutting this. I don't know how to sound,
but but I think it would go something like this.
How'd you like to deck the holes with the deck
of pods? How'd you like to see a crab so
big you'll worship it as a god? If you ever
spend Christmas on Christmas side and you will never sleep,
(04:21):
You'll probably weep when robber crabs come for you. How
would you like there's more? Don't manaverse? How would you
like to eat carry on like the robber crabs do?
How'd you like to see them snip baked coconut directly
(04:41):
in two. If you ever spend Christmas on Christmas Sidland,
you will never sleep. You'll probably weep when robber crabs
come for you. Can I applaud now, yes you can. Again.
We may cut that, but hopefully it will become a standard.
What do you think is the longest period of unbroken
(05:03):
singing that has ever happened on this podcast before? Oh?
I don't know, probably from of when Julie Douglas was
one of the hosts. Oh did she sing? She she
she did have a knack for busting into show tunes.
Well wait, I don't know if they were show tunes,
but she did have a knack for bursting into song. Well,
I really appreciate that this art you've just shared with Robert,
(05:25):
and it raises so many interesting questions, like how big
would a crab have to be before you worshiped it
as a god? Well, if you look up a picture
of the robber crab or the coconut crab, specifically, if
it is next to a human being or on something
that you can you know, you know the size for
like a garbage can. Unfortunately, I gotta break your heart, Robert.
(05:46):
There is a viral image you've probably seen of a
coconut crab or robber crab on a garbage can, And unfortunately,
in that image the garbage can is a smaller than
average garbage can. It's still a garbage can. To put
your getting a little bit of a skewed perspective. Okay,
well there I saw a picture of it, of one
of these crabs fixed to a tree next to Brian Cox,
(06:08):
not the actor Brian Cox. Oh what a shame be
the science scientists and science communicator Brian Cox. And I
would say that it looks big enough in that in
that particular photo to worship. Oh these things are plenty big. Yeah,
I can see people worshiping. So okay, we we've mentioned
several times today we're gonna be talking about the coconut
crab or the robber crab. This is Burgess Latro and
(06:29):
it is the largest land dwelling arthropod on Earth. Though
technically not a true crab. They are deca pod crustaceans,
but not a member of the inver order bracky era,
which is what true crabs are. But if you don't
tattle on us, we can call them crabs today, right right?
If hermit crabs are called crabs. I mean, they're not
(06:50):
technically crabs, but we call them crabs, coconut crabs, we
can call them crab loosely referred to as crabs, and
and may even in in some of the the more
scientific literature we're looking at here, they'll still just go
ahead and calm crabs. They notice. Yeah, So if it
is the largest land dwelling arthropod on Earth, how big
is that? Right? How big do you have to be? Well,
(07:11):
a standard adult robber crab is about one meter or
about forty inches measured from the tips of the legs.
They can weigh about four point five kilograms were almost
ten pounds, and that is a big arthropod to be
on land right there. They're not the largest arthropod ever,
or overall. The largest ever that we know about. It
(07:32):
was probably j Calopterus, which is this extinct genus of C.
Scorpion that probably got about two point five meters long.
These things were gigantic, terrifying, wonderful extinct creatures. The largest
today in terms of leg span is the Japanese spider crab,
which can in extreme cases have a leg span of
almost four meters, but it's also kind of spidery with
(07:56):
like big skinny legs, so it's it depends on how
you count eyes. Yeah, Like those big spider craps, they
kind of look like they are the skeleton for a tent, right,
It's like they're they're in a contest to get measured
biggest by leg span alone. So I guess it all
depends on how you're measuring. But being the largest land
(08:16):
dwelling arthropod, I think is something very special on its own, because,
as we've often discussed psychologically, I think to us, the
sea is still very much that other world where strange
and unfamiliar life forms are expected. They're okay, right, it's
okay with you that there are sharks in the sea,
but if there were sharks on land, it would not
be okay with you. And the same is true for
(08:39):
large crustaceans. When you see a meter long decapod walking
around in your front yard and you haven't grown up
around creatures like this, you may feel you've been transported
to an atomic age monster movie, like something is wrong,
you know. I realized that people who live close to
um to to the sea and are around craps, they
(08:59):
may be more used to finding the occasional crab indoors,
the occasional land crab walking around in their house. I
always still when it happens to me, like if on
vacation somewhere and a crab is in the house, it
is an exciting and special treat. And and I have
to say that when my wife and I went on
our honeymoon to Lapa, Mexico is a little island, so again, uh,
(09:21):
the kind of place where land crabs have a field day.
And indeed, our our our journey there seemed to time
nicely with this surge of tiny land crabs that were
just walking all over the place. And since we were
staying in this kind of hut type structure that was
right on the beach, during the night, crabs would be
(09:42):
all over the floor to the to the point where
you had to be careful where you were stepping because
you might step on a crab if you're watching. And
you know, they can't actually climb up into bed with
you or anything. But it was still, uh, it was
quite a crazy environment to find myself in. Wait, how
did you prevent them from getting in bed with you?
But they just didn't. They didn't seem like they were
really climbers. The crab we're talking about here today, the
(10:04):
coconut crab again not a true crab, heck of a climber.
But these particular crabs, they I never saw them climb anything.
They would they would come in under the doors and
they would sort of come in through cracks in the
wall and then fall down onto the floor and then
keep crawling, but they never tried to make it up
the bed. What a shame. The same huts, I should
(10:25):
mention also some of them had lost some plastic screening
up around the top, which permitted fruit bats to come
in and eat fruit and poop onto into onto the
floor of the hut. But we didn't have to worry
about that in our Wow. Okay, okay, so back to
back to Bergus Latro. Now. The last time we talked,
(10:45):
we talked primarily about the Christmas Island red crab, which
is mostly just on Christmas Island and another small island group.
But the this this crab like animal, this decapod crustacean
we're talking about today, the king of crabs is not
just confined to Christmas Island, though it is very numerous
on Christmas Island. Yeah, they're found throughout the tropical islands
of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. But but Christmas Island
(11:07):
has the largest population by far, and as I mentioned,
they are excellent climbers, mostly though, to escape the any
dangers or threats that they're not crazy about if they're
nowhere near a borough. Now here's a question, what is
the danger or threat to the world's largest terrestrial Arthur Pod. Well,
my understanding is that the major threat, of course is humans,
(11:29):
which we'll get into in a bit. Though on the
other side, we have to say that the Christmas Island
population of coconut crabs or robber crabs, it's also the
best protected population of of of robber crabs in the world.
So you know, it's Christmas Island as always, it's this
it's this mix of humans really messed that one up.
And at the same time there's some great examples of
(11:51):
humans really trying to get it right. Yeah. Well, we
will talk in a little bit about using them for
meat and for their oil. Um. But yeah, so so
how do they survive on Christmas Island specifically? Well, um,
we we mentioned in the last episode about the danger
that the automobiles pose as well as trains. Pose to
(12:12):
the smaller Christmas Island red crab. But according to the
Australian Department of Environment and Energy, between two thousand and
ten and two thousand twelve, some two thousand coconut crabs
died on the roads of Christmas Island. They kept track
of the fatalities and they actually posted fluorescent pink circles
by the roadside. Drew a mind motorist to drive carefully. Now.
(12:35):
I think we've mentioned that the coconut crabs are relatives
of the hermit crabs, and if you see them, they
almost kind of look like gigantic hermit crabs. But what
we know is that hermit crabs will claim shells that
they find in their environment and and inhabit them as protection.
Do uh do do we see anything like that in
the in the robber crab or the coconut crab. Not
(12:57):
in the adults. So the adults don't use shells at all, uh,
They're beyond that. Instead, the abdomen is is tucked partially
underneath the body and they have a series of hardened
plates that provide covering along with the bruskley tufts of
skin along the rest of the abdomen. On my own shell. Yeah,
I mean, what would they even climb inside football helmets?
But Fate whispers to the warrior, the shell is needed.
(13:23):
The warrior whispers back, I am the shell. What is
that from? No, it's some saying that's in. It's in
like one of the Mission Impossible movies. It's on T
shirts and stuff. It's one of those like no fear
T shirt slogans. It's on T shirts. You say, yeah,
I don't know where it originally. Are you saying it
should be in our T shirt shop accessible via stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com? No, I don't think so,
(13:44):
just throwing it out there. Okay, So, even though the
adults don't use the shells, juvenile coconut crabs do seem
to employ the shell method of hermit crabs for protection,
but the juveniles are hard to observe because they are
often burrowed. That's a similar to what we saw with
the red crabs of Christmas Island. Like the the the
younger crabs, the ones that have not reached adulthood yet,
they're going to try and just stay out of the
(14:05):
thick of it until they're they're they've reached the appropriate size,
and the adults Incidentally, they mold underground and special burrows,
so they'll they'll they'll just dig down into this kind
of spherical chamber and that's where they'll do all their
molting and then they'll come back up. Now, coconut crabs
are mostly sort of a deep blue in color, and
(14:25):
they tend to look kind of you see footage of
and they look kind of like brownish, but you'll see
kind of bits of blue. Sometimes there's a tinge of
red in places. It becomes kind of like a weird
off purple. Yeah. And then of course they have claws.
They have a large left claw a smaller right claw,
and it's kind of hard to pick up on the
size differential when you're just looking at them unless you
(14:47):
look closely I find. But then they have two pairs
of long walking legs and a smaller pair of appendages
that are used for mating and egg manipulation. Now these
are land crabs, so that do they have anything to
do with the water. Well, we see a some more
situation as with the the the red crabs that we
talked about in the last episode. So they have only
the stigial gills and they'll actually drown have left in
(15:10):
water for more than an hour, the guilt tissue is
given over to a highly vascular Uh what I often
I've seen described as long tissue with long in quotation marks.
But for for land lubber breathing. Yeah, these are land crabs.
These are the crabs of the forests. All right, let's
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will discuss Charles Darwin's encounters with the coconut crabs. Thank, alright,
(15:35):
we're back. So you know, Charles Darwin himself wrote about
coconut crabs in his eighteen thirty nine work The Voyage
of the Beagle. This was in his chapter on Keeling Island.
What was known as Keeling Island then, I think it's
also now known as the Cocos Islands or Territory, which
is another group of islands in the Indian Ocean. And
so Darwin's observations were interesting. He starts by writing, quote,
(15:59):
I have to four alluded to a crab which lives
on the coco nuts. It is very common. I love it.
He hyphenates cocoa nuts. It is very common on all
parts of the dry land and grows to a monstrous size.
It is closely allied or identical with the beer ghost Latro,
so he basically he's already talking about the same animal. Uh.
(16:20):
The front pair of legs terminate in very strong and
heavy pincers, and the last pair are fitted with others
weaker and much narrower. It would at first be thought
quite impossible for a crab to open a strong cocoa
nut covered with the husk, but Mr Leask assures me
that he has repeatedly seen this affected. The crab begins
(16:41):
by tearing the husk fiber by fiber, and always from
that end under which the three eye holes are situated.
When this is completed, the crab commences hammering with his
heavy claws on one of the eye holes till an
opening is made, Then, turning around its body, by the
aid of its past your ear and narrow pair of pincers,
(17:02):
it extracts the white albuminous substance. I think this is
as curious a case of instinct as I have ever
heard of, and likewise of adaptation and structure between two
objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme
of nature, as a crab and a coconut tree. Maybe
I'm missing something, but I honestly don't see what he
(17:23):
thinks is so strange about that the crab is a
creature of the dark, infernal depth, and the coconut is
is the fruit of heaven. I don't know one is
one is high, the other low. I mean because one
of the things about it, when you look at a
coconut crab, I mean it kind of looks like a coconut. Yeah, yeah,
that is strange. I mean, I'm not saying like Darwin
is dense here, obviously, you know, his insights about nature
(17:45):
are usually pretty interesting, even when he's wrong. I'm not
I'm not seeing what's so strange about that. That seems
like a very natural kind of relationship. But I don't know,
maybe we're just used to thinking post dar Winnie and
thoughts about this kind of thing. And I'll have a
little more on coconut crabs eating coconuts a little later
on in the episode. Oh yes, yes, So he points
(18:07):
out a few other things. He says that the crab
is active in the daytime, but every night it goes
to the sea to moisten it skills. And this seems
contradicted by modern reports in which I've read that the
coconut crab is not exclusively nocturnal, but it likes nocturnal
activity sort of prefers it. Right, This is what I
read too, that it it will come out at night,
but it also it will come out if it's a
(18:27):
cloudy day. And it also it's very I think, an
environmentally informed. So the coconut crab is living in an
area where humans or say dogs or whatever are going
to mess with it, that might impact how often it
comes out. But if they have free range, they're just
gonna do whatever. So yeah, it sounds like his report
could be wrong. Here. He says they live in burrows,
(18:49):
that they dig under the roots of trees, and that
they make beds in their burrows out of the fibers
of husks that they tear from coconuts. And I have
I have looked for modern evidence of that. I have
not found that anything about that. I didn't run across
it either. I certainly ran across observations that you will
(19:09):
find like shredded bits of coconut husk in areas where
the crabs live, but I think that is probably due
to what they do to coconuts and not any kind
of like nesting ritual. Yeah. Interesting, Uh, if anybody out
there knows of any evidence of that, we would like
to see it. Also Darwin, on eating the largest terrestrial arthropod, quote,
(19:31):
these crabs are very good to eat. Moreover, under the
tail of the larger ones there is a massive fat which,
when melted, sometimes yields as much as a court bottle
full of limpid oil. Now he relays reports that the
robber crabs climb up trees to get coconuts, but he
doubts this is true. Other reports say that they live
(19:52):
only on the nuts that have already fallen to the ground.
And uh. And he also says quote to show the
wonderful strength of the front pair of pincers, I may
mention that Captain Morrisby can find one in a strong
tin box which had held biscuits, the lid being secured
with wire, but the crab turned down the edges and escaped.
(20:13):
In turning down the edges, it actually punched many small
holes quite through the tin. So we must return to
the subject of these tin piercing claws in a bit now.
As a side note, I so I was trying to
find if there was any evidence of the coconut crabs
making husk beds in their in their nests, and I
(20:33):
kept I was googling things like do coconut crabs make
uh nests of coconut husks or something? But every time
I typed do coconut crabs make Google wanted to autocomplete
do coconut crabs make good pets? What is wrong with
this world? Why is that what it's telling me to
look up? Yeah? I didn't. I did not research anything
(20:56):
about keeping them as pets, but it seems like it
would seem like a good idea. I mean, for one thing,
they're just a larger creature that seems like it needs
to roam around and live a fairly nomadic lifestyle. On
the other hand, there there are varieties of hermit crabs
that it seemed to be more established as pets um
not every species, but a few particular species they given
the tin box story, it seems like they might be
(21:18):
a little bit hard to confine. Yeah, and yeah, and
then the other thing too. When I first saw them,
the footage I foresaw of them in that that documentary
we talked about, they look like brown fly covered um
carrying gobblers. So I'm not sure to what extent that
you see that and you're like, yes, I want one
of those in my house. Yeah, I mean they, like
(21:40):
many crabs, they are opportunistic omnivores. So even if they
do in a way specialize in coconuts, they also they
will eat carrying I think we already mentioned that, right. Yeah,
they are in too meet when they can get it,
even weird sources of meat you might not expect. In fact,
there there are viral videos of them. I don't know
if this is common. Is like, this is probably not
(22:00):
super common, but there there have been videos posted on
the internet of these crabs like attacking and killing live animals,
like live birds. Yeah. I was looking at one of
these as well. The cut of it, at least that
I saw, I was unclear exactly how they came counter
one another. Yes, that's a very good point. It cuts
in in the middle of their encounter, so it could
(22:21):
be that the bird attacked the crab, or they just
stumbled into each other by accident. So I wouldn't want
to imply that the crabs are like hunting the birds,
but clearly if if they were given the chance, they
would they would kill and eat a bird. Yeah. Um, yeah,
they're pretty fierce creatures. In fact that they have no
natural predators other than themselves and of course Charles Darwin
(22:42):
if he's trying to eat one. But you know, on
Christmas Island they reside almost in all corners of the environment.
They will certainly shelter under tree roots as we mentioned,
but they also use like small caves, crevices, hollow logs
and just earth burrows, especially for that molten practice I
was talking about. And uh, and like we we've said,
(23:03):
they will generally stay out of sight during the day
and head out to forage at night, but also on
overcast days. And it does seem to also depend upon uh,
you know, what's going on in the local environments. You know,
winter humans, about winter competitors about. They seem nomadic, but
may return to a specific burrow and may need to
return to the sea to drink water in order to
(23:24):
obtain um osmotic balance from time to time. This is
something that the Darwin actually touched on and on larger
islands they seem to remain in the same area for
exterior extended periods of time. Out sightseers, Yeah, they're not
really really sightseers. Now what do they forage for? Well,
they love vegetable material, the fruits of various trees and
(23:44):
the pith of fallen orange of palms. But they also
tear into some carry on as we've been been been discussing,
and they have a great sense of smell to aid
in these hunts. One diet fact I came across is
that apparently it is true that they've had a very
crafty strategy g for not wasting energy after they molt,
they eat their own discarded exoskeletons. Well that's just that's
(24:06):
just common sense right there. Right, So, I mean, who
out there picks their dead skin and doesn't eat it
too much? For you? Now, Robert shifted over the primates
and now you're like, no, I won't take it um alright.
So one thing that's probably um come to some of
(24:27):
your minds out there is, Okay, the link between the
coconut and the coconut crab is pretty obvious, but we've
also referred to them as robber crabs. Where does that
moniker come from? I was wondering about that. Do they
do they have like a little like a bandit mask
kind of coloration or something? No, but what I read
is that they will obsessively carry off any foreign object
(24:47):
they come across, including pots and silverware from camps, and
thus they are non a robber crabs. Now, these these uh,
these crabs will live for quite a while. I've read
that they may live up to fifty years. I've also
seen between thirty and forty. But longevity may exceed fifty years.
All right, So I want to come back to a
Darwin question. Darwin reports him and his friends and Captain
(25:10):
Moresby and all these people, they think these things are
pretty good to eat. They produced tasty oil, all that
kind of stuff. Is that, I mean, are there people
who still eat these things? Well? I was reading a
bit about this in Coconut Crabs by Warwick J. Fletcher,
and he he points out that they are quite edible
despite their appearance as a large, you know, slightly grotesque,
fly covered scavenger. And he wrote that the crabs in
(25:32):
many Indo Pacific cultures are are ceremonial importance for weddings,
and they're they're attributed with afrodes act qualities. And there
are also pretty easy to catch. Is the other thing?
You know, if a human wants to eat a coconut crab,
they can do it. I don't know, not fast moving, yeah,
and I don't know about you, but when I was
(25:53):
looking around for footage of them, I inevitably found some
reality show about like a naked guy and an I
and that ends up did not find that killing and
um and grilling and eating a coconut crap? Is it
that TV show about putting a naked guy in the woods?
I believe it is. I mean, I don't know how
many shows with that description exist. You'd be shocked, but
it is at least one of them. No, that was
(26:15):
the primite. It was, like I think it was. It's
had the word naked in the title. I think it
was Discovery who did it too well. At any rate,
they're they're easy to catch. If you're an established hunter,
you can do it, and if you're just some naked
reality TV star you also have a pretty good shot
at catching one and eating it. But but this is
unfortunate in some areas because it has pushed them to
(26:37):
the point of extinction in some parts of the world. Now,
an interesting theory that Fletcher points out is that you
look at their distribution, um, you know, on these various islands,
and it roughly matches the distribution of coconut palm, leading
some to theorize that the coconut palm may have been
its means of migration, Like, how does that work? Well,
(26:59):
the way I met and he didn't really go into
a lot of detail on this is I'm guessing they
they arrived on like floating on bits of the tree
or perhaps coconuts themselves. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting, and I
should point out they are common only on island habitats
where they typically don't have to compete with as many
terrestrial organisms. I mean, that's I think that's one of
(27:20):
they don't do well where there are tigers or something. Yeah, well,
it's it comes back to the you know, the beauty
of an isolated island environment, right that you can you
can have certain organisms really go wild in ways that
they wouldn't be able to do elsewhere in the world. Okay,
I think we're gonna take another break. When we come back,
we'll ask the burning question, was Darwin right? Can they
(27:42):
actually open coconuts with their claws? We'll find out. Alright,
we're back, all right, Robert, I bet you have seen
videos of humans trying to open coconuts. It often seems
to require something like a machette, like get a very
strong tool and some leverage to get a coconut open,
(28:03):
because these are these are hard nuts. Yeah, I mean,
have you ever tried to open a coconut? No? I haven't.
It's it's could be a bit difficult. We we purchased one.
I purchased one for the first time in the last
year or two because my son like really wanted to
eat one, and so I bring it home and then
I'm like buster on the rest development I have to ask, like,
(28:24):
how do you eat one? I have to like do
YouTube search, how do I open a coconut? How do
I prepare it? And uh? And there are several steps involved.
Um so yeah, these are these are robust uh nuts there.
They are difficult to crack. This is something that if
it falls from a tree and hits you on the head,
it can kill you. So the the relationship between the
(28:48):
coconut crab and the coconut this is apparently an area
of some controversy because because despite the fact that this
is where they get their name, you know, in the
fact that we have all these stories about them opening coconuts,
we have a lot less in the way of definitive proof.
So a Fletcher that Warwick J. Fletcher I mentioned earlier.
(29:10):
He points out some of the more believable of the
ideas regarding coconut crabs opening coconuts. The first is that
the crab first de husks the coconut and then the
stringy fibers, pulls off the stringy fibers, and then climbs
up the tree with it and then drops it to
bust it open. This does not seem to be um
(29:33):
a popular theory like this doesn't seem to be one
that a lot of people are really putting a lot
of stock in because it sounds crazy, right, the idea
that the crab would take the coconut, and despite being
no one's doubting that the coconut crab is not a
great climber, but the idea that it would get the
coconut and climb a tree and drop it seems crazy. Um.
I think. The other likely idea is that it might
crab climb the tree, of course, and and dislodge the
(29:56):
coconuts somehow, which is more likely give and its ability
to climb. But then other versions are that it it
simply de husts the coconut and then bashes the nut
open with its claw or that that it pokes a
claw through one of the eyes, like the lower part
of one of the eyes, and then snips the coconut open. Well,
(30:17):
that would be a very powerful snip. Fortunately, these are
very powerful claws. This last method, the snipping method, actually
was observed by Fletcher in the lab, but he points
out that it took several days for the crab to
do it. But then again, like this crab is on
its own schedule. You know, who are you to impose,
you know, your human schedule on this mighty decapod. Quit
(30:39):
hurry and me we're on crab time. We mentioned already
that husts and broken coconuts are often seen in the
domain of the coconut crab. However, contrary to opinions in
the past, it is not a pest for coconut growers,
nothing on the level of say the rat, which is
a true pest for coconut growers. Now that the crab
here doesn't depend on the coconut as a primary food source, again,
(31:04):
it's happy with all these other things that comes across
to eat. It's a it's it's an omnivore. Uh. It
is not exclusive to the coconut, but it does seem
to eat them, and in order to eat them, it
has to tear into the coconut with those claws. The
claws of the coconut crab have the strongest pinching force
of any crustacean uh And according to this according to
(31:26):
a study published November sixteen in the open access journal
PLOS one by a a Japanese team of researchers led
by shin Ichiro Oca, And that's that's saying something, right.
I mean, this is the strongest pinching force of any crustacean.
Because decapods exert the greatest pinching force relative to their
(31:47):
mass in general, and then this is the greatest pincher
of them all. They write, quote, based on the crabs
maximum known weight, the maximum pinching force of their claws
was projected to be three thousand, three hundred Newton's This
exceeds both the pinching force of other crustaceans and the
bite force of all terrestrial animals except alligators. Now I
(32:10):
was looking around and I could be missing something, but
I found that to be slightly contradicted by other figures
that were saying, like, you know, what would be the
bite force of like a tiger or a lion, and
I saw that estimated it somewhere around four thousand Newton's
I mean, even being in the same ballpark as the
bite force of a tiger sounds pretty good. Well, yeah,
(32:31):
because I don't know about you, but when I think
of being pinched by a crab, I tend to think
of it more as an anolance, not a bone crushing
kind of right. Like if I'm playing around on the
beach and my son and I see a crab and
I'm like, oh, should I touch it on its head?
And my son's like, oh, don't do it, You'll get pinched.
I'm not thinking about losing a finger. But these seconds
(32:53):
are also strong. I've read that they can lift up
to twenty or sixty one pounds, And certainly if you
back to Kingdom of the Crabs that that documentary special
narrated by David Attenborough, you see like three or four
of them tearing across, tearing apart of bird carcass. Yeah,
so they're they're powerful and should maybe be worshiped as gods.
I'm just well, I mean, there's a reason when when
(33:17):
the crabs start doing their dominance displays, what do they do?
They hold their claws up in the air. They're like,
look at the power, Look at the glory. Do you
see it? Yeah? And that that again brings me back
to what Douglas j Emland pointed out in his book
Animal Weapons, that you know, these are high energy adaptations
not only for just growing these powerful muscular pinchers, but
(33:38):
also the ability to wave them around like that, the
ability to put on that show. Yeah, and that's I mean,
when you think about it, there are there are very
different kinds of powerful muscles that nature can invest in.
You know, you've got the muscles of a cheetah, which
no one would say you're not very powerful, right, but
they're you know, they're powerful, like the leg and the
(33:59):
body muscles that allow it to move very fast. And
then you've got these other I'm sure there's a biological
or biomechanics term for this I'm not aware of at
the moment. That that's sort of like the single use
muscle that's therefore exerting a really powerful single force all
at once. It's not made for speed, it's not made
for you know, necessarily repeated use or anything. But it's
(34:21):
like the jaw muscles of the crocodile, and the crocodilians
have one of the most powerful bites or I think
the most powerful bite of any animal that comes on
the land. Right, Yes, I believe. So this reminds me
we should we should come back and do a like
a bite based episode because I don't know, some some
listeners might find it a bit dry, but but I'm
(34:41):
always fascinated about at the ranking of the different bite right.
And then also when you get into the the study
of what the the the estimated bite power would have
been for something say like a sabretooth cat. Yeah, yeah,
of extinct animals. Well, I remember we were in our
episode about the Wolf of Whales Street. We were comparing
the estimated byte forces of the Megalodon, the ancient gigantic shark,
(35:07):
and the Leviathan, the ancient predatory Whaley and I recall
they were that they were somewhere around each other. I
think I believe they were comfortable. Robert, have you heard
this bizarre theory that Amelia Earhart was eaten by coconut crabs? No?
I have not. It's this then actual theory. Well, I
mean I don't. It's not one of those that has
(35:28):
good direct evidence for it. It's one of those that
it seems like every few years this shows up again
in a new round of articles on the internet because
I probably just because it's a captivating image, but I
think the idea so in N seven Amelia are Heart,
you know, she vanished while flying over the Pacific with
fred Noon and her navigator, and nobody knows what happened
(35:49):
to them. It's often been presumed that there there might
have been bad weather and they crashed into the water
and they sank into the ocean and died, you know,
died in the crash or drowned. H every he's always
got these these hypothetical what if she actually landed on
this island and something happened to the plane and you know,
and that's why we don't, you know whatever. But there's
(36:10):
apparently some theory that she crashed landed on an island
called Nicko Maruro, and that her remains were not found
there in full because they were consumed and dragged into
the dens of land crabs of of howcnut crabs. I don't.
As I said, there does not appear to be good
direct evidence for this. It is just more kind of
(36:32):
like what if this happened. Well, I mean, its assuming
that she she did crash upon an island like that
and either survived or didn't, she stayed there and she
died there. It seems highly likely that the land crabs
would eat, or crabs are will scavenge and they will
consume human flesh. That's why you have that old bit
(36:54):
of folk wisdom to never eat crabs after a hurricane,
because you're because I guess you don't want to eat
crabs that have been eating human flesh. I have not
heard that one. Yeah. Wow, However, if you kind of
secretly want to eat human flesh, probably never a better time.
It's a weird area to get into two jokes about
hurricane related death, but here we are. Well, it didn't
(37:15):
mean to be insensitive about hurricane related death. But yeah,
I I do not believe that there is any good
reason to think that this is what happened to Amelia
are hard. I think most of the historians of or
her biographers and historians think that they probably sank into
the ocean. But anyway, for some reason, people want to
keep coming back to this one. I think they just
like the idea of crabs eating people well, and like
(37:38):
I said crabs are gonna eat people. UM. Crabs have
probably eaten quite a few people over over the course
of human history, especially in UH in areas close to
the sea. And ultimately would UH would sky burial by
land crab be that bad of a thing? You know? Oh,
I'm not sure it would. Yeah, you could become part
of somebody's limpid oil. Yeah, this could be one of
(37:58):
the big trends in the future. You know, as we're
beginning to is removing even further away from UH from
from burial of the dead. We've adn't done whole episodes
about some of the newer methods of burial that have
become increasingly popular, the idea of green burials. Perhaps we
will come back to something more like the Tibetan sky burial,
where a body is uh is ritually um taken apart
(38:23):
and then fed to scavenging animals in the In the
Tibetan case, it is vultures. But why not land crabs,
Why not the coconut crab. I think it's a good
idea to give the invertebrates a taste for us. Now,
speaking of giant crabs that may consume human flesh, UM,
giant crabs are, of course pretty popular in motion pictures,
(38:44):
and I know that's not as popular as you might think. Yes,
I think that there should be way more giant crab movies. Well,
what are some of the notable examples. I mean, the
main one that comes to my mind is Mysterious Island
from fifty one because you had those ray hairy house
and effects of that giant crab. Oh, those are great.
I love Attack the Crab Monsters, the seven Roger Corman special.
(39:06):
It's you know, I you know, I'm a sucker for
the Atomic Age monster movies, where there was atomic radiation
and it made a bigger version of some normal animal.
Except it's not just a bigger version of crabs in
this movie. It's great because they're telepathic, sort of immaterial, magnetic, electric,
radioactive crabs that absorbed the consciousness of everyone they eat,
(39:30):
and they've got plans for world domination, and they slowly
are consuming the island that they live on. It's um
It's just one of the best stupid movies ever made
because it is made with such energy and enthusiasm. I
think a lot of that goes to the script by
Charles Griffith, who is one of my favorite B movie writers. Uh,
(39:51):
there's a gleeful embrace of the absurdity. Supposedly, Roger Corman
told Griffith when he was writing the script that he
was like, don't want any boring scenes and people just talking.
There's gotta be action or suspense in every scene, and
then the story goes that. Griffith asked him, Okay, does
it have to be about atomic radiation? And Corman said yes.
(40:15):
So this is the film where the crabs have kind
of human looking faces. Yeah, they've got googly eyes. Yeah.
And is this the one that you were telling me
about where it's possible that Jack Nicholson played the crab
he I think people have denied it, but other people
have claimed it. So Jack Nicholson was part of the
Corman scene. I think he was helping out on set
with Corman movies in the fifties. And yes, some people
(40:37):
have claimed that underneath the giant crab puppet in attack
of the crab monsters in some shots it's Nicholson under there,
but other people have said it's not him. So that
is a there's a question mark, though, I don't know.
I hope we get to get to find out. Maybe
that would be like a deathbed confession from Jack Nicholson.
Hill would be the world that he was the crab.
(40:59):
Those are my ankle under that crab. I was that
crab man, can't you imagine? Then they get to fit
that footage into the dedication at the Academy Awards. Man
they're there are hilarious stories about the behind the scenes
puppet work where they were trying to get the crab
puppet to do what they wanted, because there was like
an underwater scene where they were trying to feature it.
(41:20):
But I think it was made of fiberglass and stuff,
and it wouldn't sink. It was like two buoy and
and they were weighing it down with stuff to try
to make it sink, and but it ended up exploding somehow.
And so they're filming this in the actual surf, right,
uh might have I think it was in like an
aquarium take somewhere they were trying to film in the surf.
(41:40):
I can only imagine how awful that would have been.
Like trying to do anything in the surf other than
just sort of retain your footing is is quite a
challenge enough. There are at least a few scenes that
are actually shot in the surf. There's one great one
where there are a few guys, you know, there, like
these navy sailors in a rowboat and they're just off
the coast. One guy falls in the water and they
(42:01):
pull him back out and he doesn't have a head.
And then one of the scientists is like, I hope
that men's death is not an omen of things to come. Well,
crab that would that big would have had considerable pinching power.
That well, they do specify an attack of the crab
monsters that the crabs are supposed to be land crabs,
So maybe I mean they look more just like blue
(42:24):
crabs or something that normal kind of sea crab or
I don't know about blue crabs. They look like, you know, well,
they look kind of like the red the Christmas Island
red crab. It looks like the kind of crabs you
would eat. No, not so much like those. They look
like the crabs that you would buy at the grocery store.
I don't know what are called. And maybe their land maybe,
But anyway, I suppose it could be partially inspired by
(42:44):
the kind of decapod crustacean we've been discussing today. Maybe well,
but and yet you I don't think in any of
these giant crab movies you see a giant land crab
um that looks like a giant hermit crab. It looks
like the coconut crab, which is our best example of
the giant decapod. No, I don't think. So. There's also
there's a movie called Island Claws that is pretty good
(43:06):
if you get a chance. It's also a terrible giant
crab b movie. But I also think in that one,
it's just it looks more like you know, dinner crabs.
They were created by some scientific experiments performed by Barry Nelson.
All right, But you know, this makes me think though
that maybe what we don't need is more giant crab
films in terms of just like huge, hulking, truck sized crabs.
(43:29):
But how about just like a dog sized crab, you know,
just just scale up a little bit from the coconut
crab and then give it, give it to enhance speed.
I think I feel like that's the kind of movie
that audiences would really get behind. I agree, more giant
crab movies, please, yeah, Or to go back to the
(43:49):
Christmas island crabs, you know, streaming hordes of tiny crabs
that you can essentially make the squirm movie of of
crab films. Oh, that's sort of what I land clauses
before there's a giant crab at the end. There's one
part where guys like living in a bus. He's just
living in a bus and he suddenly there crabs everywhere
(44:11):
and he goes ah, and then the crabs turn his
bus over. How they do that? This is kind of
the sacrificial hobo character that shows up, and a lot
of that is that guy. Yeah. My favorite example, of
course being the original from or maybe not the original,
but I feel like the prime example of the archetype
the the old man who pokes the meteor ride in
(44:32):
the blob, right, yeah, the old Jordi Verile mistake. All right, well,
there you have it. We we got a little off
topic there at the end, just talking about giant crab cinema.
But this was a fun episode of the Coconut Crab.
I originally thought would just be part of our Christmas
of a single Christmas Island episode, but it turned out
they were just far more interesting. There was too much
(44:55):
limpid oil in there, just too much limpid oil. We
just had to suck it all up. So uh, we
hope you enjoyed the episode. Again, if you've ever been
to Christmas Island or any or if you've been to
any island that has in this case, that has coconut
crabs or Robert crabs, if you'd rather please tell us
about your your sightings of these creatures or your experiences
with these creatures, we would love to hear from you.
(45:17):
In the meantime, check out all the episodes of this
show at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh.
That is where you'll find all the episodes will final
inksto our social media accounts. Just a quick reminder to
check out our new show Invention. You'll find that at
invention pod dot com that comes out every Monday. Each
episode is a new invention, a new page from human
(45:38):
techno history. And if you dig this show, we think
you're gonna dig Invention as well. Absolutely so check it
out big thanks to our awesome audio producers Alex Williams
and Torii Harrison. If you would like to get in
touch with us directly to let us know feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, just to say hi, you can email us
(45:59):
at load the Mind at how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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