Amelia Earhart expedition team heads to island of huge, hunting crabs

Could a crab (or crabs) be responsible for the ultimate demise of one of the 20th century's great American heroes?

As researchers make their way to the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro in search of the famed aviator Amelia Earhart, they'll contend with thick vegetation, rats and giant meat-eating crabs.

Meat-eating crabs ?! Yes, meat-eating crabs.

Nikumaroro, an island that's controlled by the nation of Kiribati , is home to coconut crabs, a species of arthropod that the London Museum of Natural History calls "bird-eating behemoths" that thrive on "isolated tropical islands."

"Their leg span is up to a meter," or more than three feet, the museum says on its website, and the crabs, which can live up to 60 years, "have incredible grip strength and they can lift objects the weight of a 10-year-old child." The museum describes the crabs, whose scientific name is Birgus latro , as "absurdly large, land-dwelling, bird-hunting crustaceans." Once fully grown, they can only live on land, and they're known to hunt rats and large migratory birds, the museum says.

The Taraia Object expedition, which includes researchers from Indiana-based Purdue University, Purdue's Archaeological Legacy Institute and the Purdue Research Foundation, departed on Oct. 2 and is expected to reach the island by Oct. 12. They're in search of the plane that belonged to Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who went missing in 1937 as they attempted to be the first people to fly around the world at the Equator. (Purdue produced a podcast series about Earhart and the search for her plane.)

USA TODAY reached out to Purdue to ask about the crabs. While the research team is en route to Nikumaroro, communication is difficult. But one member of the team, Steve Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel at Purdue University, indicated that the team is well aware of the danger they pose, saying in an email through the university, "The coconut crabs are one of the reasons we're leaving the island every night before sundown."

Meanwhile, at least one theory has Earhart meeting her demise not in a crash, but instead at the hands, uh, claws of the giant coconut crabs, who have an excellent sense of smell and may have detected a wounded Earhart on the beach after a crash landing.

A 2013 article in Smithsonian Magazine, drawing on a story in Environmental Graffiti (a now-defunct online publication), lays out the long-held, if somewhat gruesome, theory that Earhart and Noonan crash-landed their Lockheed Electra 10-E in a lagoon on Nikumaroro and she survived, but was wounded.

The theory goes that the crabs, whose huge claws are strong enough to crack coconuts open, were drawn to the smell of blood and descended on the wounded aviator, overtaking her and, well, taking her.

Smithsonian Magazine quotes Environmental Graffiti, which wrote: "In 1940, researchers discovered a fraction of a skeleton on the island that matched the description of Amelia Earhart. Now, even more interesting clues are arising that seem to substantiate the idea that this is where she met her demise. The most compelling hypothesis currently under consideration is that coconut crabs overwhelmed her where she lay."

In 2007, researchers even tried to test the theory, using a small pig carcass to see how the crabs would react, Environmental Graffiti said; the bones, it continued, were quickly removed and scattered by the crabs.

Perhaps the scariest thing about all of this? Coconut crabs, according to the London Museum of Natural History, aren't even the world's largest crabs. The Japanese spider crab , the Monterey Bay Aquarium says, can be as large as 12 feet from claw to claw.

Phaedra Trethan is a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writing about history and Americana. Contact her by email at ptrethan@usatoday.com, on X @wordsbyphaedra, on BlueSky @byphaedra, or on Threads @by_phaedra .