British Indian Ocean Territory – coconut crabs

the Chagos archipelago lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean a long way from anywhere seven huge coral atoms each crowned with a reel of small items and the islands our kingdoms of crabs on the exposed coral rock along the coast sally lightfoot crabs forage for anything that tired my friend sandy beaches are the realm of ghost crabs and inland the forest floor is alive with land hermit crabs wearing shells washed up from reefs off shore [Music] but there's one species of crab that rules supreme on these islands it's called the coconut crab and it's the largest land arthropod alive today and it's actually as big as our four bodies can get on land in the current oxygen levels in the current atmosphere on earth they're mostly nocturnal but with a bit of luck if we hunt around in this habitat we might just find one coconut crabs live on many tropical islands in the Indian West Pacific oceans but the really big specimens are now very hard to find the islands of the British Indian Ocean Territory are one of the main strongholds for the species and unknown to harbor one of the greatest concentrations left in the world I dreamt of seeing coconut crabs in the wild ever since I was a child but after searching several islands I still hadn't found any and I was beginning to lose heart but I did find a few signs of their presence ah this this is a coconut crab nest if you look down here you can see very clearly the crabs borrowed down through this old coconut palm root stock and made a hollow down here this is where he'd live there's no one at home here now but that's definitely where he'd have been and he's lined the inside of this nest with coconut fiber and look he's even dragged some coconuts back and you can see they've cut off the fiber off the coconuts and tapped into the actual nut itself and that's their primary food so this is this is the home but just no one here at the moment [Music] we've been searching for a whole week to try and find the giant coconut crabs of the Chagos archipelago and so far we've only found very small juvenile crabs and a couple of very small adult ones but just over here this morning we spotted the very first big one that we've seen so far it's just over there yep I can see Claus peeking out okay this obviously isn't a natural nest there's a crab under here under a sheet of metal but opportunistically he's just found this and thought it's obviously made a good a goodness so let's delicately lift it up and have a look [Music] wow what a water hello crab oh oh that's a big one look at this specimen this is enormous what a beauty [Music] gently gently trying pickin Wow look at this guy this is a full-sized coconut crab well and very heavy one to about three kilos this is the biggest terrestrial arthropod alive today an absolute monster they can get a little bit bigger than this making that up to a 90 centimeter leg span to next man but this is getting one for full-size and this has got to be two three kilograms what a beauty but you can see why they become sell endangered basically all you have to do is hit them on the head with a piece of wood then you've got two three kilos of meat so as a consequence they become endangered throughout all of their range but here on jegos at least they're doing quite well you're saying and this is one of the last places in the world where you get this big size Tatas it's always the way once you find one you find many and for the rest of my stay in the British Indian Ocean Territory I saw many more larger dogs every day apart from humans coconut crabs have few enemies on these remote islands they're protected by tough armor and a pair of formidable claws they use those claws to drag coconuts back to their lairs and to break into them to reach the flesh [Music] they're related to land hermit crabs that swarm in these forests and when they young and less well armored they also use empty shells for protection [Music] nor are they strong enough to break into coconuts instead they have to find a coconut already broken open by the large adults despite their size the big adults are excellent climbers they can even reach the tops of coconut palms it's been an ambition since my childhood to see the world's largest land invertebrate and the coconut crab didn't disappoint I leave the Chagos archipelago a contented man the britain's treasure islands book explores the unique wildlife cultures and history of all of the UK overseas territories visit britain's treasure islands calm for details insincere thanks to Lord Ashcroft for funding the donation of one copy of the Britain's treasure Islands book to every secondary school across the UK and her overseas territories thanks also to all Kickstarter backers and all sponsors and partners for making the 40 mini documentaries possible you

Channel: Redfern Natural History Productions

Views: 2,051,876

Rating: 4.6978507 out of 5

Keywords: Stewart McPherson, UK Overseas Territories, Britain's Treasure Islands, Great Britain, United Kingdom, British Indian Ocean Territory, Chagos, Chagos Islands, coconut crab, coconut, crab, land crab, land, robber crab, robber, Birgus latro, Birgus, latro, biggest terrestrial invertebrate

Id: JCkNSWz-IDc

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016