Giant Land Crabs Of the Pacific

Dinner out for a coconut crab. Image source: Cracked.com (I think.)

The picture above has not been Photoshopped or retouched. It's a coconut crab, the largest terrestrial invertebrate on Earth, and it poses an important question to me: Why are we releasing damn PYTHONS in the wild and not THESE things? They are large, slow-moving and DELICIOUS, so much so that they've been rendered extinct anyplace there's a significant human population, which fortunately for them, is not yet EVERY island in the Pacific.

Unfortunately for them, they are also considered an aphrodisiac by some Asians, which as we all know is a death knell for any species in Asia and even some outside Asia. (Georgia black bears have been threatened by poaching because Asians valued their gall bladders for some damn stupid reason.) So far land crabs are not on the endangered species list, but they've been looked at hard for inclusion.

My solution: raise them here in the US. They eat garbage and have no natural predators other than humans so not exactly a hard animal to raise, and they need a moist environment, which is most of the Southeastern coast. In the wild they've been found as much as four miles inland (they will actually drown if left in sea water for more than a day, but they have to return to the sea to breed).

Maybe we need to set up a few giant land crab farms here in Georgia and show those Asians how it's done! I mean, pythons are a tough customer to meet in the wild, but giant land crabs anyone can defeat, if they have enough drawn butter on hand.