Joel Kontinen
The coconut crab (Birgus latro) can weigh up to 4 kilograms. It has enormous claws with which it can pick up objects that are seven times heavier that it is.
Recently, scientists measured the strength of this crab. While humans have a grip strength of 300 newtons on average, a coconut crab weighing 2 kilograms almost reached 1800 newtons. Hence, the researchers suggested that a fully-grown coconut crab “could thus be expected to exert a crushing force of more than 3000 newtons,” New Scientist says.
While the Darwinian explanation for the crab’s Hercules-like grip invokes dietary demands, just how many crabs passed away before evolution’s blind watchmaker finally thought of a solution and gave the poor crab a chance to have a coconut for lunch?
The mantis shrimp is another Hercules: it beats airplane frames in strength.
Creatures like these challenge evolutionary explanations. They strongly suggest that teleology or goal-orientation was involved. This happens to be Darwinian heresy.
Design is so evident everywhere that it is actually difficult to to avoid goal-orientation even in evolutionary stories.
Source:
Klein, Alice. 2016. Coconut crab’s bone-crushing grip is 10 times stronger than ours. New Scientist (23 November ).
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