[music playing]
NARRATOR: If Amelia did
survive on this island,
there would be no avoiding
this formidable creature.
Up to three feet across and
weighing in at over nine
pounds, coconut crabs
are the largest on earth,
and many thousands of them
team over at tiny Nikumaroro.
SCIENTIST: They're just amazing.
Their pinchers are so strong
that they can climb trees
and grab a bird and kill it.
NARRATOR: They are also
voracious scavengers,
as demonstrated by Tiger in
2007 with half a pig carcass.
TOM KING: This
creature was laid out,
and they set time-lapse
cameras in the trees.
And the results are
about the most disgusting
thing you've ever seen.
But it is very enlightening.
NARRATOR: With help from their
smaller strawberry hermit crab
cousins, they devour the
carcass within a week,
carrying the bones every
which way into their lairs.
The scientists are
now thinking something
similar would have happened
to whoever died at the ren.
SCIENTIST: So right now
the biggest hypothesis
is to see if we can
find a crab burrow
with the remains of some
human right at the site.
That would be like,
[whistles],, unbelievable.
NARRATOR: As they unleash the
dogs to sniff out remains,
they've already found
some tantalizing clues
here over the
decades, suggesting
that person was Amelia.
