Coconut Crabs Devour Pig Carcass | Searching For Amelia

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·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.

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Coconut Crabs Devour Pig Carcass | Searching For Amelia

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