Imagine that you are lying on the beach enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Suddenly, a monster with 10 legs and nearly 1 meter long begins to slowly climb up a coconut tree beside you, or worse, suddenly falls down to you from the tree. You must be scared. In fact, this is the world's largest terrestrial arthropod, coconut crab. This is a large blue coconut crab in Cook Islands.
Coconut crabs are strong, but unfortunately their numbers are very rare. They have been listed in the red list of the World Conservation Union (lack of data category) due to human killing, indicating that although it is not clear how many populations are left, the high possibility is that their numbers are very low.
Coconut crabs eat almost everything. Although coconut crabs look very strong, the efficiency with which they open the coconut remains controversial. But there are cases where they can even catch and eat a mouse.
The coconut crab climbs the coconut tree with its second and third pairs of feet, plus the fourth pair of pincers. They can climb trees 20 feet (6 meters) high.
Not only do coconut crabs like to eat juicy coconut meat, they also use the shell of the coconut as a bedding for their nests
Although it's hard to kill coconut crabs completely, some areas, such as Guam and Vanuatu, have set up reserves to try to minimize the harm to them.