Amelia Earhart expedition faces huge coconut crabs

Key Points:

• Researchers from Purdue University and affiliated institutes are currently en route to Nikumaroro, a remote Pacific island, to search for Amelia Earhart's lost plane and investigate theories about her disappearance.
• Nikumaroro is inhabited by giant coconut crabs, land-dwelling arthropods with a leg span of over three feet and strong enough claws to crack coconuts and hunt birds and rats.
• One theory suggests that after a crash-landing on Nikumaroro, Earhart survived but was wounded and subsequently killed by these meat-eating crabs attracted to her scent.
• Past findings include skeletal fragments discovered on the island in 1940 that some researchers believe could be Earhart's remains, supporting the hypothesis that she died on Nikumaroro.
• Experiments with pig carcasses have shown coconut crabs quickly disarticulate and scatter bones, lending plausibility to the theory that the crabs could have consumed Earhart's remains.