Sint Eustatius: Purple Land Crab
I didn’t even know to expect these on top of the volcano – the world’s second largest land crab lives here – Purple Land Crab. Gecarcila Ruricila in Latin, these crabs are fully terrestrial and can’t even swim. They only go to the sea to span once a year in what used I be massive migrations. The famous biologist and explorer Carl Linnaeus describe these migrations in 1758. Nowadays the crabs are too few remaining in some isolated islands in the Caribbean. They are also nocturnal so I was lucky to bump into one. He was right at the top, on the rim of the crater, on a new vertical steep path.
