coconut crab
- Also called:
- robber crab
coconut crab, (Birgus latro), large nocturnal land crab of the southwest Pacific and Indian oceans. It is closely related to the hermit crab and king crab. All are decapod crustaceans (order Decapoda, class Crustacea). Adult coconut crabs are about 1 metre (40 inches) from leg tip to leg tip and weigh about 4.5 kg (10 pounds). The full-grown adult ranges in colouring from light violet to brown and deep purple. Young adults are brown, with black stripes on their legs.
Coconut crabs are generalist scavengers that feed on fallen fruit, carrion, and (to ingest calcium) the shells of other crabs. The coconut crab is known for its ability to use its massive pincers (chelae) to crack open coconuts. The largest coconut crabs can exert a force of 3,300 newtons (about 742 pound-force) with their pincers. Coconut crabs have also been known to open coconuts by dropping them from trees and striking them repeatedly with their pincers or using their pincers to pierce the coconut’s husk before splitting the seed open.
The female releases her ripe eggs in the sea, and they immediately hatch as microscopic swimming zoeas. This first larval stage, which lives in the water, feeds on small organisms. After 20 to 30 days the zoea develops into a glaucothoe, the intermediate stage, and leaves the water to live in a seashell for three or four weeks. It then discards the shell, buries itself in moist sand, and transforms into a small adult. Most of the daylight hours are passed in burrows up to about 0.6 metre (2 feet) deep, sometimes two crabs to a burrow.
The crabmeat is a local delicacy, and the crab is at risk because of demand for its flesh in some parts of its range.