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