Ultimate Swarms Page #4

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This one is a female.

You can see underneath...

Gosh, she's really skittish.

If I hold her very carefully

you can see underneath

that brown mass at the end of her

abdomen under her tail,

is something like 100,000 eggs.

The reason that the females are

a little more difficult to handle,

they're much more flighty,

is because all they've got

on their mind just now

is to get these eggs...

Ow! ..into the sea as fast

as they can.

So that's what she has to do now,

so I'm just going to let her...

Oh, if I can get...

..get on her way.

She knows exactly which way to go.

The Christmas Islands crabs follow

the same well-trodden route

for generations.

But the arrival of humans

on the island

has given them a few extra obstacles

to deal with.

But nothing can get in the way

of their epic journey.

In just over a week, the crabs

will cover up to six miles.

For a creature of this size that

spends most of its life underground,

that's like running several

back-to-back marathons

with no training.

So how do they do it?

Scientists have recently discovered

it's all thanks

to a special internal sugar reserve.

Powered by a massive sugar rush

once a year,

these laidback forest creatures

suddenly turn into long-distance

athletes.

Oh, my goodness! Look at this!

This is...

This is unbelievable.

There's just crabs as far

as the eye can see.

Every inch of this rock is covered.

Amazingly, after days of walking

and dodging obstacles,

tens of millions of crabs have

survived and made it to the beach.

Just in time for their next big

challenge.

Tonight's the night.

They've got to shed their eggs

on a pre-dawn high tide,

when the difference between high

and low tide is at the smallest,

because if they fall in the sea,

they drown, unbelievably.

Being land crabs,

they can't survive in the sea.

But they've got to get their eggs

in the sea.

They all have just one tiny

window of opportunity.

And according to my calculations,

that should be in about

six hours' time.

So, I'm taking my place with

the crabs and waiting for high tide.

It's 3am, and all around me

female crabs have just started

frantically scrambling

to the edge of the surf.

Well, this is it.

The annual mass spawning

has started,

and it is just one of the most

incredible things I've ever seen.

It's easy to forget how treacherous

this moment is for the crabs.

Many of them will get

washed away and drowned.

But it's a risk they have to take.

The crabs are actually spawning

all around me.

Every time they spawn, they put

their claws up

and they shake themselves,

and as they do that

they shed 100,000 eggs each.

So many trillions of eggs have been

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