The mother of all crab cakes?

[Jenise]

I'd leave the boat if this came up in one of my traps....

http://kottke.org/07/10/giant-coconut-crab

I'd leave the boat if this came up in one of my traps....

http://kottke.org/07/10/giant-coconut-crab

On a totally geeky note (what other kind do I ever hit, you ask?) I'll point out that these beasties are almost certainly at the upper limit of size for a terrestrial animal with an exoskeleton. One of the most interesting books I read in my intro Biology class lo those many years ago was D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, in which he points out that you can't get an arthropod the size of an elephant because its shell would have to be a meter thick to keep from breaking under the animal's weight (that's why the biggest animals are and will always be vertebrates). So, among other things, the Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati will have to remain a figment of some fertile imagination.

Mark Lipton

One of my very favorite Dr. Demento songs!

We were recently involved in a project that required the analysis of crab excrement from a Pacific island for pesticides. We didn't think it was possible to get decent-sized samples of crab excrement until we saw pictures of those things. (I'm not sure if the samples we received were produced by these specific crabs or not, but they were certainly bigger than what I'd expect from your typical dungeness.)

[Jenise]

We were recently involved in a project that required the analysis of crab excrement from a Pacific island for pesticides. We didn't think it was possible to get decent-sized samples of crab excrement until we saw pictures of those things. (I'm not sure if the samples we received were produced by these specific crabs or not, but they were certainly bigger than what I'd expect from your typical dungeness.)

I'd never even heard of these until watching an episode of Iron Chef maybe a year ago when the topic was coconut and Morimoto used a coconut crab in one of his dishes--but his was about 1/10th the size of this one.

Imagine that thing molting and for a short while having its still soft new shell. One heck of a soft-shelled crab sandwich!!!