If you were to find an animal that is completely harmless to humans, but enough to make you shudder, what would you choose?
Many people are expected to choose coconut crabs.
This guy is definitely a coward's nightmare.
Sleeping during the day, haunting at night, red eyes, shining brightly; four long tentacles, constantly dangling, looking for where to crunch and good prey; two disproportionately huge claws, ready to dismember all life encountered; covered in cold armor, it looks like a huge heavy-armored killing machine, completely subverting your delicious impression of crab creatures, except for nausea and fear, I am afraid that you will not have any other unrealistic ideas.
However, coconut crabs are indeed harmless to people, except that many years ago they were suspected of eating the body of a famous female pilot - there are also legends that they were eaten alive, and coconut crabs have never been rumored to have any scandals related to human deaths.
If we think about how difficult it is, let's not talk about terrible guys like crocodiles, lions, hippos, African bison and snakes, even small and inconspicuous mosquitoes, 2 million people die every year from causes related to them.
And coconut crabs, yes, you read that right, they really don't have any evil deeds.
Coconut crab, also known as Bagua crab, is an arthropod and invertebrate of the decapod hermit crab family, and is the largest living terrestrial crustacean on Earth, the largest individual can grow to nearly 1 meter and weigh more than 6 kg. Think about it, such a huge crab crawling up to you, what would you think, what would you do?
Coconut crabs are widely distributed in the tropics and some subtropical archipelago coasts, from southern Japan to Taiwan, and then to other islands in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, coconut crabs are with their superb climbing skills, rush to the top of the coconut tree, a wave of large claws, click and click to cut the coconut, painfully eat its flesh, so it was given the name of coconut crab.
However, like other crabs, coconut crabs are actually omnivorous, and in addition to coconuts, they also eat sweet potatoes, papayas and peanuts, and then the carcasses of dead animals.
However, with the continuous expansion of human activities, coconut crabs have been hunted in large quantities as a delicacy and aphrodisiac, and their habitats have been continuously reduced, resulting in a large decline in the number of coconut crabs in some areas, or even complete extinction, and are now included in the list of vulnerable species.
Not only that, but humans also snatched a large number of coconuts, causing coconut crabs to run out of food, began to kill, and turned into killing machines, such as this poor medium-sized booby, which was clamped from the nest by coconut crabs, broke their wings and tore them into pieces; people have also observed records of coconut crabs killing Polynesian rats and eating them; other crabs, even their kind, will also encounter coconut crab claws and die.
So coconut crabs are actually considered pure opportunistic scavengers, even carnivores. Because their sense of smell is particularly sensitive, they are said to crawl into your picnic field under the cover of night, touch your tent, or cut the screen window and turn into your room, looking for everything they can eat. Think about seeing that you are sleeping soundly, suddenly awakened by what sound, a pair of red eyes staring at you in the darkness, a putrid smell coming from your nostrils, you still have to fly out of the sky, scattered nine clouds?
The most appalling legend about coconut crabs is related to the famous American female pilot and feminist activist Amelia Earhart. The world-famous aviation pioneer and legend disappeared on July 2 with his assistant Fred Noonan while flying a globe in 1937, one of the legends of which was that the plane crashed at Nikumanoro Atoll in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.
Due to the large number of coconut crabs on the island, some people believe that their bodies were eaten by coconut crabs after the crash, so they cannot be found, and only some 1930s beauty and skin care products have been found, as well as cosmetics such as makeup mirrors and folding knives.
Others believe that Earhart and Noonan may have been injured in the crash, unable to move, watching themselves being torn apart and eaten by coconut crabs. Later searches failed to find their remains because coconut crabs had a habit of hoarding skeletons and dragging the bones of animals they ate into their burrows.
Of course, this is not the mainstream explanation for Earhart's disappearance, most scholars believe that their plane fell into the sea near Howland Island because of fuel ran out, sunk and disappeared; others believe that it crashed on Gardner Island, and in 2007 an international expedition team even made a special trip to the island to search and found some suspected Personal Belongings of Earhart.
Since the mystery of Earhart's disappearance has not been solved, many conspiracy theories have emerged in the past hundred years, and coconut crabs have innocently laid down their guns and become The murderers of Earhart, which seems to be somewhat inconsistent with its reputation of never harming people and only being killed. However, I believe that coconut crabs will not care about these gossip, after all, they do not have any emotions and thoughts, and their instinct is to convert anything they can eat into protein and continue the existence of their own population on this planet.
Life has done this, sometimes it is quite comfortable to think about, at least there is no annoying trouble.