In the war to unseat humanity as rulers of the animal kingdom, the main combatants are cephalopods, ravens, raccoons, and a new contender — coconut crabs. “On March 2, 2016, in the middle of ...

Coconut crabs are the largest land-living arthropods in the world and an adult can measure three feet across with legs extended and weigh up to nine pounds. They live underground and climb trees.

In early March 2016, Laidre watched as a coconut crab snatched an adult red-footed booby sleeping on a low-lying tree branch, tearing it from the branch and snapping its wing. Paralyzed, the booby ...

“I counted over 1,000 coconut crabs in single [9-mile] transects but did not observe even one ground-nesting bird,” Laidre wrote. All the nests were high up in the trees, and cracked coconuts ...

Breaking a bird’s wing would be easy for a coconut crab, says Shin-ichiro Oka at the Okinawa Churashima Foundation Research Center in Japan. In 2016, he showed that the crabs’ claws pinch with ...

They grow to the size of dogs. They climb trees, and tear through solid matter with claws nearly as strong as a lion’s jaws. And now, finally, we have video evidence that the crabs - thousands ...