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Coconut Crab Filmed Hunting a Seabird

takyon writes:

Giant coconut crab sneaks up on a sleeping bird and kills it

A giant coconut crab has been filmed stalking, killing and devouring a seabird. It is the first time these whopping crustaceans have been seen actively hunting large, back-boned animals, and suggests they might dominate their island ecosystems.

Coconut crabs (Birgus latro), also known as robber crabs, are an imposing sight. They can weigh up to 4 kilograms, as much as a house cat, and sport legs that span almost a metre. This makes them the largest invertebrates – animals without backbones – on land. The crabs live on coral atolls in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans.

They are renowned for their tree-climbing abilities and taste for coconuts, which they crack open with their powerful claws. They do sometimes eat meat, but until now it was thought that they only obtained it by opportunistic scavenging.

[...] Breaking a bird's wing would be easy for a coconut crab, says Shin-ichiro Oka at the Okinawa Churashima Foundation Research Center in Japan. In 2016, he showed that the crabs' claws pinch with a force of up to 3300 newtons [open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166108] [DX], stronger than any other crustacean and comparable to the bite force of a big predator like a lion. "The claws of coconut crabs can generate a force 80 to 100 times the mass of their body," says Oka. "The crab in the video seems to be about 2 kilograms, so it would be able to easily break the bird's bones."

Video (34s) featuring the killer coconut crab. Also at Newsweek.

Coconut Crab 2: Amelia Earhart Eaten?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Amelia Earhart Mystery: Was the Lost Pilot Eaten by Giant Coconut Crabs?

On a summer day in 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart took off with her navigator to fly around the globe, and—according to one theory—eventually crash-landed on a remote island in the Pacific where she was eaten by crabs the size of dogs.

[...] Some have called the Amelia Earhart theory total nonsense. As one skeptical commenter on an iO9 report put it: "Every credible historian says Earhart's Lockheed Electra ran out of fuel and sank in almost 20,000 feet of water. It's expensive and difficult to look in the deep ocean, but I promise you that's where she'll ultimately be found." She also notes that most of the work investigating this theory comes from the organization TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), which has been the target of some skepticism.

The next time you eat a crab, you could be eating a piece of history.

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