NATURAL PHENOMEN ... RED LAND CRABS, AUSTRALIA

 

For most of the year you’ll see little of the red land crabs of Australia’s Christmas Island. They live in shady sites inside the forest that covers much of the island’s plateau.

Then, suddenly, at the beginning of the wet season, in around October or November, more than 100 million enormous red crabs suddenly emerge, breaking out of the forest like escapees, climbing down cliff faces and – more dangerously – crossing roads. All this so the female crabs can release their eggs into the Indian Ocean at precisely the turn of the high tide during the moon’s last quarter.

Christmas Island Crab Spawning 2010 GoPro from Seanna Cronin on Vimeo.