Christmas Island, Part 2: Deca Deca Pod Y’all

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. 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 capad inhabitant is the coconut crab or the robber crab, which is another

glorious clawed crustacean on in its own. Now I have to admit even though, as we mentioned the previous episode, there's virtually nothing Christmas Uba 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 keep um hearing the

Christmas song Christmas Island in my head. Is I'm thinking about this east even Oh well it's it's I can't remember who recorded it originally, but I think like Being Crosby did a version of it. Leon Redbone a fabulous version of it. Uh. And it of course is just kind of this silly, cheesy song about weirdly about like having some sort of an an ideal fantasy 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.

I didn't really notice this part of it until I started reading the lyrics. But it's like you'll never stray 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 on purpose to be creepy. There were a lot of creepy Christmas songs there was.

There was I've been listening to a lot of like R and B, like old R, R and B kind of Christmas songs and plays on one of the Soma FMS 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. We seems like a very bold promise to 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 alive 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 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, You'll probably weep when robber crabs come for you. How would you like There's another verse, how would you like to eat? Carry on like the robber crabs do? How'd you like to see them snip baked coconut? Directly in two? If you ever spend Christmas on Christmas iland, you will never sleep, will probably weep when robber crabs coming 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 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, oh 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 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, have you know the size for like a garbage can. Unfortunately,

I gotta break your heart, Robert. 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, but you're 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. Not the actor Brian Cox, what a shame, but 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 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 infraorder brack 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 crab abs, I mean, they're not technically crabs, but we call them crabs, coconut crabs, we can call them crabs loosely referred to as crabs. And and even in some of the you know, the more scientific literature we're looking at here, they'll still just go ahead and

calm crabs, I 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, 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 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 like big skinny legs,

So it's it depends on how you count size. Yeah, Like those big spider crabs, 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. Uh So, I guess it all depends on how you're measuring. But being the largest land 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 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 crabs, they 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 yu Lapa, Mexico, just a little island, so again, uh the kind of place where land crabs

have a field day. And indeed, our our our journey there seemed to time nicely with uh 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 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? Well, they just didn't. They didn't seem like they were really climbers. The crab we're talking about here today, the coconut crab um 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 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 ours. Wow. Okay, okay, So back to

back to Bergas Latro. Now. The last time we talked, we talked primarily about the Christmas Island red crab, which is mostly just 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

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 arthropod. Well, my understanding is that the major threat, of course is humans,

which we'll get into in a bit. Though on the other side, we have to say that the 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 mess that one up. And then the same time there's some great examples of humans really trying to get it right. Uh. 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 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 motorists to drive carefully. Now. 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 inhabit them as protection.

Do uh do do we see anything like that in the in the rubber crab or the coconut crab. Not in the adults. So the adults don't use shells at all. 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, a shell is needed.

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 put your mind? No, I don't think so, 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 younger crabs, the ones that have not reached adulthood yet, they're going to try and just stay out of the thick of it until they're they're they've reached the appropriate size and um, 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 they tend to look kind of you see footage of and they look kind of like brown fish, 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

look closely, I find uh. 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 do they have anything to do with the water. Well, we see a some more situation as with the 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 if left

in water for more than an hour. The guilt tissue is given over to a highly vascular what I often I've seen described as lung tissue with lung 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. Than alright,

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 Coke Coasts 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, I have before alluded to a crab which lives on

the cocoa nuts. It is very common. I love 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. 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 by tearing the husk fiber by fiber, and always from that end under which the three eye holes are situated.

When this is comple leaded, 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 posterior and narrow pair of pincers, 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 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 I'm at 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 are usually pretty interesting, even when he's wrong. Uh, 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 star winning 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, uh so, he points 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 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 and they're just gonna do whatever, So yeah, it sounds like his report could be wrong. Here. He says they live in burrows, 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 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 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, 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 quart bottle full of limpid oil. He relays reports that the robber crabs climb up trees to get coconuts, but doubts this is true. Other reports say that they live 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. In turning down the edges, it actually punched many small holes quite through the tin. Uh. 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 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 auto complete 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 about keeping them as pets, but it seems like they 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 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 many crabs, they are opportunistic omnivores. So even if they do in a way specialize in coconuts, they also, uh, they will eat carry in I think

we already mentioned that, right. Yeah, they are into meat 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. It seems like this is probably not 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 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 if he's trying to eat one. But you know, on Christmas Island, they reside almost in all corners of the vi nament. 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, 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 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. Not 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 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 got a very crafty strategy for not wasting energy after they molt, they eat their own discarded exoskeletons. Well, that's just that's 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 to 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 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 they come across, including pots and still aware

from camps, and thus they're no as 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 Moresby and all these people, they think these things are pretty good to eat. They produce 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 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 and many Indo Pacific cultures are are ceremonial importance for weddings, and uh, 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 and do it. I don't know about fast moving yeah, and I don't know about you, but when I was looking around for footage of them, I inevitably found some reality show about like a naked guy in an island 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 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. Uh. But but this is unfortunate in some areas because it has pushed them to 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 atribution of coconut palm, leading some to theorize that the coconut palm may have been

its means of migration, Like, how does that work? Well, the way I'm imagining 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. 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 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, and when we come back, we'll ask the burning question, was Darwin right? Can they actually open coconuts with their claws? We'll find out.

Thank 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 you need a very strong tool and some leverage to get a coconut open, because these are these are hard nuts. Yeah, I I mean, have you ever tried to open a coconut? No? I haven't. It's it's it's can 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, 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 it falls from a tree.

And hits you on the head. It can kill you. So the the relationship between the 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, uh 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, 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 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 coconuts somehow,

which is more likely given 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, 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, for you to impose, you know, your human schedule on this mighty decapod, quit 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, 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 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 mass in general, and and 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 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, 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 annoyance, 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 these seconds are also strong, h I've read that they can lift up to twenty or sixty one pounds and certainly if you look 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. So they're

they're powerful and should maybe be worshiped as gods. I'm just saying, well, I mean there's a reason when when 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 Emlyn 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 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 need Er can invest in.

You know, You've got the muscles of a cheetah, which no one would say are not very powerful, right, but they're you know, they're powerful like the leg and the 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 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 onto 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 always fascinated about it,

the ranking of the different bites. 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 Whale Street. We were comparing the estimated bite forces of the megalodon, the ancient gigantic shark and the Leviathan, the ancient predatory whale, and I recall they were that

they were somewhere around each other. I think, yeah, I believe they were comfortable. Robert, have you heard this bizarre theory that Amelia Earhart was eaten by coconut crabs? No? I have not. Is this this is an actual theory? Well, I mean I don't. It's not one of those that

has 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 seven Amelia are heart. You know, she vanished while flying over the Pacific with fred Noon and her navigator, and nobody knows what happened

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. Uh. Everybody'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 apparently some theory that she crashed landed on an island called Nico 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 coconut crabs. I don't. As I said, there does not appear to be good direct evidence for this is just more kind of like

what if this happened? Well, I mean, it's assuming that she she did crash about 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 her like abs are will scavenge and they will consume human flesh. That's why you have that old bit 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. 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 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 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, like I said, crabs are gonna eat people. Umy, 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, I'm not sure it would. Yeah,

you could become part of somebody's limpid oil. Yeah, this could be one of 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 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 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, and I know that's not as popular as you might think. Yes, I think that there should be way more or 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. It's you know, 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 absorb the consciousness of everyone they eat, 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

v writers. Uh, there's a gleeful embrace of the absurdity. Supposedly, Roger Corman told Griffith when he was writing the script that he was like, I 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. 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 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 this there's a question mark, though I don't. I hope we get to get to find out. Maybe that would be like a deathbed confession from Jack Nicholson Hill tell the world that he was the crab. Those are my ankles under that crab. I was that crab man,

can't you imagine? Then I get to fit that footage into the dedication at the Academy Awards. Oh, 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. But I think it was made of fiberglass and stuff and it

wouldn't sink. It was like two buoyant 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 somewhere. They were trying to film in the surf. 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, they're like these navy sailors in a rowboat and they're just off the coast and one guy falls in the water and they 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 crabs or something. They have 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. 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 those are called, and maybe their land maybe, But anyway, I suppose it could be partially inspired by 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 a giant decapod. No, I don't think so. There's also there's a movie called Island Claws that is pretty good 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. 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. 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 Christmas silent 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 island 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 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. That 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 old man who pokes the meteoride in the blob. 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 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. 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. You'll final

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