Gerald
Christmas Island is a territory of Australia, situated in the Indian Ocean. The island is populated by just 2,000 or so human residents, but there is a cool little animal that lives on this island in massive numbers and every year it puts on an incredible show for those lucky natives.
Say hello to the Christmas Island red crab.
Pretty cute in isolation… but (to put it lightly) there’s quite a lot of them on Christmas Island, in fact some estimates put the number at over 43 million!
Once a year these little guys take part in a mass migration, scarpering down to the sea to lay their eggs in the Ocean. And I’m sure you can imagine from the number of them, this is quite an impressive site. Take a look at these incredible photos, which capture the annual migration.
Most of the year the crabs live in the forests, but once a year, millions of them migrate to the Ocean
Their route takes them across several roads
Even forcing some of them to close
The crabs clamber over kerbs
Flocking in huge numbers and meeting a few locals along the way
If they can’t go over…
They’ll go under!
Although they are pretty good at climbing to be fair!
Fortunately they are pretty harmless…
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As it’s impossible to avoid them in migration season! they just want to get to the sea to lay their eggs
Phew! Made it at last… unfortunately they have to do it all again in reverse!
What an epic journey! The migration of the Christmas Island red crabs takes place between October and January and redditor Justsoinsane confirmed it is already in full swing when he posted up this pic, taken behind a friend’s house on the island earlier today.
Here’s hoping their journey is a successful one and they all make it safely down to the sea and back!
Image credit: Max Orchard
