People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — A Monster Crab. [ARTICLE]

A Monster Crab.

The titan of the land crab family is Birgus latro, commonly called the “purse crab,” a resident of the island! of the Indian and South Pacific oceans. Mature adults are frightful looking creatures, fully two feet in length and from eight to fourteen inches across the back, capable of “rearing back” and pinching a man hip nign when acting in defense, which they are not slow to do if molested. The pinchers are, of course, in the first pair of legs, which are large and powerful; the second and third pairs are armed with but usingle claws, while the fourth pair (which are much smaller than either the second or third and not one-tenth as strong as the “pincher carriers”) are provided with a pair of weak little nippers. A fifth pair of legs, but so small as to simply be useless rudiments, are attached to the body near the abdomen.