Coconut Crabs Devour Pig Carcass | Searching For Amelia

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[music playing]

NARRATOR: If Amelia did survive on this island, there would be no avoiding this formidable creature. Up to three feet across and weighing in at over nine pounds, coconut crabs are the largest on earth, and many thousands of them teem over at tiny Nikumaroro.

SCIENTIST: They're just amazing. Their pinchers are so strong that they can climb trees and grab a bird and kill it.

NARRATOR: They are also voracious scavengers, as demonstrated by Tiger in 2007 with half a pig carcass.

TOM KING: This creature was laid out, and they set time-lapse cameras in the trees. And the results are about the most disgusting thing you've ever seen. But it is very enlightening.

NARRATOR: With help from their smaller strawberry hermit crab cousins, they devour the carcass within a week, carrying the bones every which way into their lairs. The scientists are now thinking something similar would have happened to whoever died at the ren.

SCIENTIST: So right now the biggest hypothesis is to see if we can find a crab burrow with the remains of some human right at the site. That would be like, [whistles], unbelievable.

NARRATOR: As they unleash the dogs to sniff out remains, they've already found some tantalizing clues here over the decades, suggesting that person was Amelia.

Crowding out | AP Macroeconomics | Khan Academy

How Are Businesses Applying Digital Currencies? | Anthony Pompliano

View All

The global economy is a pyramid scheme | End of the Road (full documentary)

The strength of a nation’s currency is based on the strength of that nation’s economy, and the American economy is by far the strongest in the world. Accordingly, I have directed the Secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dol…

Gravitational forces | Forces at a distance | Middle school physics | Khan Academy

When you hear the word gravity, you probably just think of things falling, like an apple from a tree. But did you know it’s also the reason why your lamp is staying on the floor? That’s because gravity is so much more than things falling down. Gravitation…

TIL: These Spiny Sea Creatures Can Regrow Lost Body Parts | Today I Learned

There’s an incredible group of animals out there called the echinoderms. They can actually regenerate a lost body part. So, a kind of derm essentially just means spiny skin, so derm like dermis, so skin, and a chi know is sort of spiny. So, sort of spiny …

Paul Giamatti on Human Engineering | Breakthrough

I’m Paul Gatti, and I am directing and doing the interviewing in an episode of Breakthrough called “More Than Human.” It was out of left field for me. I’ve obviously never done anything like this, but a guy that I know was helping produce at David Jacobso…

The Border Between Crocs and Humans | Explorer

The saltwater crocodile is among the fiercest hunters on the planet. This awe-inspiring prehistoric predator has the strongest animal bite ever recorded and can measure 20 feet long. No doubt it takes a certain breed of human to live in the salty’s habita…

Competition, predation, and mutualism | Middle school biology | Khan Academy

All across ecosystems, we know that organisms interact in specific ways, and scientists use special words to describe these types of interaction: competition, predation, and mutualism. So let’s first talk about competition, which we have already talked ab…

Coconut Crabs Devour Pig Carcass | Searching For Amelia

More Articles