However, not only humans love to taste coconuts, but also an animal likes to drink coconut juice and eat coconut meat. But they are more brave than humans. They can break coconuts "by hand" without any tools, and their strength is endless-it is the famous coconut crab.
Coconut crabs are not crabs. Climbing trees and opening coconuts with bare hands are a piece of cake.
Although the name of coconut crab has a word "crab", it is not a crab family. To be precise, coconut crab should belong to a kind of hermit crab. When people think of hermit crabs, they often think of agile little crabs living in the sea and swinging around with dead mollusks on their backs.
Coconut crabs break people's inherent impression of hermit crabs: they only live in the sea in their infancy and need other hard shells to protect themselves; But when they grow up, they will leave the sea and live in the tropical rain forest on the island. After adapting to life on land well, if you stay in the sea for a long time, the coconut crab will be drowned by the sea.
Mature coconut crabs are different from hermit crabs that need the help of other mollusks to protect themselves. Their shells are hard and huge, and they can grow to 1 meter. They are the largest terrestrial hermit crabs and the largest terrestrial arthropods known at present. The color of crabs will change with the island environment, and some coconut crabs will show beautiful blue. But most coconut crabs are mainly brown and look like a giant spider. Imagine that if a huge brown coconut crab is suddenly found in the depths of the island's tropical rain forest, I'm afraid it will make people mistakenly think that it is a huge and terrible spider, and it will make people feel cold behind them.
Although it looks terrible, coconut crabs eat normally. As can be seen from the name of coconut crab, coconut is one of their favorite foods, but coconut usually grows on coconut trees 18 meters off the ground. How to eat coconut has become the most urgent problem for coconut crabs. In order to eat delicious food, coconut crabs have developed strong legs and crab claws. Using these "tools", coconut crabs have become "tree climbers". They can easily climb coconut trees and pick coconuts. If you walk under a coconut tree, you may look up and see a coconut crab lying on the head of the tree, picking a huge coconut.
So, how do coconut crabs feed on coconuts? You know, the coconut shell is hard and it is difficult to open without tools. However, for coconut crabs, this is not difficult. They will start from the germination hole of the coconut, insert the crab claw into the coconut shell, and then pry open the coconut shell bit by bit. This process will take 3 4 days, and then the coconut crab can enjoy its own food.
The pair of crab claws of coconut crab are strong and powerful, which is its deadly weapon. It can use crab claws to pry open coconut and eat coconut meat. Crab claws can also be used to clamp seabirds and break their wings.
So, how did the coconut crab finish the difficult task of peeling the coconut shell by hand? This has to start with its pair of strong crab claws. The crab claws of coconut crabs are muscular and can output a grip strength of 120 kg, and some individuals can even output a grip strength of more than 300 kg. What is the concept? In nature, of all terrestrial animals weighing more than 0. 14 kg, only the bite force of alligator can reach this grip strength, and the bite force of the spotted hyena, a predator we are familiar with on the grassland, is only 102 kg. It is conceivable that it is easy for coconut crabs to pry open coconut shells. It is also very easy to crush the bones of a small animal and kill it.
Coconuts are not the only food, but corpses can also be Chinese food.
The recipe of coconut crab is never monotonous. As a typical omnivore, except coconut, the fruits and seeds of other plants are also food. They also prey on small turtles that have just hatched on the beach and haven't had time to return to the ocean. In addition, some crabs with hard shells are also snacks for coconut crabs.
When hungry, coconut crabs even go up trees to kill seabirds as food. At the beginning of 20 17, an American researcher witnessed the "tragedy" of coconut crabs following, killing and sharing a red-footed booby in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
The coconut crab climbed up the tree and quietly approached the resting red-footed booby. When it was unprepared, it severely broke the bones of the red-footed booby's wings with a huge crab claw. The red-footed booby fell headlong from the tree and cried in pain, but the "murderer" slowly returned to the ground from the top of the tree, once again lifted the strong crab claw and broke the red-footed booby. Soon, the smell of blood in the air alarmed several coconut crabs around, and they quickly gathered to participate in this "gluttonous feast".
Coconut crabs do eat seabirds and mammals, but they rarely kill living things. They usually eat the carcasses of animals. There is also a shocking legend about coconut crabs feeding on animal carcasses. 1937, amelia earhart, a famous American female pilot, lost track of her first flight around the world. The American government sent an aircraft carrier and spent $4 million on search and rescue, but nothing was found. After the incident, there were different opinions. Many people thought that earhart's body had been eaten by coconut crabs. Because there are a large number of coconut crabs living on Gardner Island (now NiCoumaros Luo Island) where earhart's plane disappeared, they like carrion, eat corpses, and have the habit of hoarding animal remains. Some bones that can't be eaten will be dragged into caves for storage. In the place where the plane disappeared in earhart, some scattered remains were indeed found, and the rumor that coconut crabs ate earhart's remains intensified. Until now, people still think that she was eaten by coconut crabs, and a layer of horrible fog hangs over the coconut crabs.
Of course, coconut crabs don't care about the truth of the earhart incident. For them, seabirds and rotting corpses are just channels for them to obtain protein and survive. In addition, coconut crabs are also one of the few animals that will eat their own kind. During the molting period, coconut crabs will eat their molted crab shells and smaller ones, and the reason why they do this can be said to be very simple and rude. The purpose is to supplement the trace element calcium needed by the body.
For food, coconut crabs almost come to everyone, but on the island, they can be regarded as the "overlord" of the dominant party-huge crab claws, which make the rest of the animals afraid to approach; No one dares to climb trees and it is difficult to kill them easily. However, even if it is so powerful, coconut crabs are still vulnerable to powerful and intelligent human beings.
The disappearing coconut crab is an endangered species that needs to be protected urgently
Coconut crabs used to be distributed in many countries in the world, such as China, Thailand, Fiji, India, Japan, Indonesia and other places. However, due to human hunting, coconut crabs in these areas are now very rare, and even completely disappeared in Mauritius.
In fact, the indigenous people on the island have been killing coconut crabs for a long time, and the reason for killing them is really ridiculous. They think that eating coconut crabs can make men aphrodisiac and make them healthy. Coconut crabs may not understand until they die, and they will die for such absurd reasons.
Coconut crabs have long been hunted by the indigenous people of the island on the grounds of "aphrodisiac". Coupled with their tender meat, even if they are expensive, they have become a "dish" for many people.
But in fact, this is only one of the reasons why coconut crabs were killed, and the main reason lies in the huge catering market behind coconut crabs. Coconut crab has delicious meat. It is rumored that its meat has a coconut-like fragrance, so it is very popular, and its price has been high. 1 kg can be sold to 750 yuan RMB. Usually, an adult coconut crab can grow to 8 kg, and the price of the whole crab is 6,000 yuan. Without buying and selling, there is no killing, profiteering is often accompanied by endless hunting, and coconut crabs can't escape such a tragic fate.
In addition to being hunted, the reproduction of coconut crabs is also an important reason for their population decline. Wildlife experts found that under normal circumstances, coconut crabs can live to be around forty years old, but it takes at least five years for them to develop from fertilized eggs to mature individuals. In these five years, coconut crabs have to face the threat of other animals, such as seabirds, which were eaten by coconut crabs in the previous article. Young coconut crabs are their most delicious snacks. In this case, some young individuals cannot live to maturity. It was not supplemented by fresh blood, and it was slaughtered, which caused the coconut crab to die out.
1996, the world conservation union listed coconut crabs on the red list of endangered species, and many countries are also making efforts to protect them. For example, in Christmas Island, Australia, the government has promulgated a relevant bill to protect coconut crabs, which explicitly prohibits hurting coconut crabs. If it is violated, it will be severely punished by law, which leads to tourists who go to Christmas Island being robbed of food by coconut crabs, and they can only watch and feel unlucky. At the same time, human beings are also helping coconut crabs to breed artificially, which has a remarkable effect on increasing the population of coconut crabs.
We have reason to believe that under the protection of human beings, this kind of animal, which can open coconuts with its bare hands and catch birds on trees, can certainly settle down on the earth and enjoy a better life with human beings.