{"id":99729,"date":"2025-10-23T17:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/99729\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:48:09","slug":"tens-of-millions-of-red-crabs-begin-annual-migration-on-christmas-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/99729\/","title":{"rendered":"Tens of millions of red crabs begin annual migration on Christmas Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tens of millions of red crabs are making their way to the ocean as part of their annual migration on Christmas Island, where a much smaller human population uses leaf blowers and garden rakes to help them on their way.<\/p>\n

Christmas Island National Park acting manager Alexia Jankowski said on Thursday there were up to 200 million of the endemic crabs, also known as Gecarcoidea natalis, on the tiny Australian island territory in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

Up to 100 million were expected to make their way from their forest burrows to the shoreline where they breed.<\/p>\n

\"AustraliaRed crabs cross a road during their annual migration on Christmas Island, Australia (Parks Australia via AP)\n<\/p>\n

The start of the Southern Hemisphere summer rains last weekend triggered the annual odyssey.<\/p>\n

The crabs seek shade in the middle of the day, Ms Jankowski said, but early mornings and late afternoons bring about a vast, slow march that sees them move to the coast over roads and gardens.<\/p>\n

Their 1,200 human neighbours on the island generally do what they can to clear the red carpet of crustaceans off the roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people might think they\u2019re a nuisance, but most of us think they\u2019re a bit of a privilege to experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re indiscriminate. So whatever they need to get over to get to the shore they will go over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you leave your front door open, you\u2019re going to come home and have a whole bunch of red crabs in your living room.<\/p>\n

\"AustraliaRed crabs during their annual migration on Christmas Island, Australia (Parks Australia via AP)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people if they need to drive their car out of the driveway in the morning, they\u2019ve got to rake themselves out or they\u2019re not going to be able to leave the house without injuring crabs.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the shores, the male crabs excavate burrows where the females spend two weeks laying and incubating eggs.<\/p>\n

The females are all expected to release their spawn into the ocean at high tide on November 14 or November 15, during the last quarter of the moon.<\/p>\n

The young spend a month riding the ocean currents as tiny larvae before returning to Christmas Island as small crabs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they\u2019re little babies only about half the size of your fingernail, we can\u2019t rake them, because you\u2019d crush them. So instead we use leaf blowers,\u201d Ms Jankowski said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo about a month after the spawning occurs, we\u2019re down on the coast looking pretty hilarious actually wearing these backpack leaf blowers and blowing all these tiny little crabs off the road to try to reduce the impact of cars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of millions of red crabs are making their way to the ocean as part of their annual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-99729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}