Mondo Knows Facts
The coconut crab is the heaviest land arthropod
Large adults can weigh over 4 kilograms and span nearly a metre Coconut crabs live on islands across the Indian and Pacific Oceans and are a type of hermit crab that abandons its shell once grown. The largest individuals reach about 4 kilograms and a leg span approaching one metre, which is the heaviest of any land invertebrate. Their claws can crack coconuts open, and they can climb palms to cut the fruit loose. It sits in Mondo's records & extremes collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Tags: crabs, islands, arthropods
The coconut crab is the heaviest land arthropod: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Large adults can weigh over 4 kilograms and span nearly a metre. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.