Why are Christmas Island red crabs famous?

Christmas Island red crabs are famous throughout Australia and the world for their bright red color and for their spectacular annual migration to the sea. Millions of crabs become rivers of red as they move from Christmas Island's interior rainforests to the ocean to breed and lay eggs.



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Early inhabitants of Christmas Island rarely mentioned these crabs. It is possible that their current large population size was caused by the extinction of the endemic Maclear's rat, Rattus macleari in 1903, which may have limited the crab's population.

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Christmas Island's mass red crab migration is one of the most incredible natural processes on Earth. Every year, millions of these large crabs emerge from the forest and make their way to the ocean to breed, swarming across roads, streams, rocks and beaches.

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Red crabs contribute to rainforest health by selectively consuming plants, cleaning up leaf litter, turning over the soil and fertilising it with their droppings. Christmas Island's red crab migration occurs at the beginning of the wet season every year.

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You cant eat the red crabs they are apparently poisonous. They also have these crabs on the island, which are supposed to be tasty, but they are protected. Nope not poisonous. Their meat is made up mostly of water so they just don't taste good and they're pointless to eat.

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Red crabs, thought to live as long as 20 to 30 years, are the only species of land crab where both females and males migrate to breed. In other land crab species, only the females march to the coast to deposit their eggs into the sea after mating inland. This mass migration is also tied to the lunar schedule.

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The island has a tropical climate and experiences both a wet season (December through April) and a dry season (May through November). More than 120 million red crabs can be found on the rain forest floor of Christmas Island. Red crabs live alone in dirt burrows, or deep rock crevices.

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Red king crabs are eaten by a wide variety of organisms including but not limited to fishes (Pacific cod, sculpins, halibut, yellowfin sole), octopuses, king crabs (they can be cannibalistic), sea otters, and several new species of nemertean worms, which have been found to eat king crab embryos.

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Also known as the coconut crab, the robber crab is the world's biggest land crustacean.

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Christmas Island red crabs are famous throughout Australia and the world for their bright red color and for their spectacular annual migration to the sea. Millions of crabs become rivers of red as they move from Christmas Island's interior rainforests to the ocean to breed and lay eggs.

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Christmas Island began appearing on the charts of English and Dutch navigators from the early 1600s. But it wasn't until 1643 that Captain William Mynors of the British East India Company named the island after sighting it on Christmas Day.

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The annual migration of millions of red crabs from the rainforests of Australia's Christmas Island to the coast is underway.

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