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Description
In the forests of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, a female Christmas Island goshawk (Accipiter natalis) manages to take advantage of a rare occasion in which a young Abbott's booby (Papasula abbotti), just 5 to 6 weeks old and not yet able to fly, strays a bit too far from its treetop nest, allowing the hawk to swoop at the booby chick and knock it plummeting to the ground and being killed. As the goshawk flies down to the forest floor to feed on her kill, she finds that the smell of blood has attracted competition in the form of a large robber crab (Birgus latro). A powerful crustacean, the robber crab proves quite a strong opponent, and even as the hawk tries to injured the crab's face with her talons, the robber crab manages to fend off the goshawk and successfully drag away the dead booby chick for itself.

Drawing inspired after reading this paper which documents quite an interesting incident between a robber crab and a Christmas Island goshawk (you quite much read the whole paper here after scrolling down a bit). Also fitting that I get this drawn for National Endangered Species Day (May 20) since all the animals in this drawing unfortunately are endangered. And further, I had also been planning to draw a series of pictures involving large arthropods alongside small tetrapods to emphasize their size, and this is the second drawing of the giant bug series (this being the first ).

Christmas Island, a territory of Australia, is on the eastern Indian Ocean near Indonesia, with a rainforest habitat across much of it, and is best-known for its terrestrial crab species such as the red crab swarms and robber crabs. Like most islands, it also has an ecosystem made up of many endemic animals found nowhere else on earth, especially the birds. A population of goshawks is found on the island that is different from goshawks anywhere else, and the taxonomy of the Christmas Island goshawks is rather uncertain, having been proposed as endemic subspecies of either the brown or variegated goshawk, though it is also quite possible that they have evolved in isolation long enough to count as a distinct species. A small bird of prey, with makes being 30 centimeters long and the larger females at 40 centimeters, it hunts mainly small birds and insects. Unfortunately the Christmas Island goshawk is endangered, with maybe just 50 breeding pairs left on Earth (all on Christmas Island) as introduced yellow crazy ants pose a threat to their nests.

The largest terrestrial invertebrate alive, the robber crab (also called the coconut crab) can have a legspan of a meter, uses its powerful claws to break into coconuts, smaller crabs and even hunt birds on occasion, and to make it even more of a nightmare, it can climb trees. Found on many islands across the Indopacific region, the adult robber crab is entirely terrestrial, unable to swim and can drown, and has achieved its range because its larvae are released into the ocean and drift about. Despite its name, the robber crab isn't a true crab, but a huge hermit crab (yeah, those aren't true crabs), but due to its size a full-grown adult has no need to hide in snail shells (not like there are snails big enough for it anyways). The robber crab is unfortunately endangered as humans have overcollected it for food across its range, and it has become extinct from several islands.

Now, since a giant tree-climbing crab capable of killing birds and snapping off fingers isn't creepy enough, it gets more creepy in that it can displace even a raptor from its kill.There is one known incident occurring on 5 September 2005 on Christmas Island in which a female Christmas Island goshawk managed to kill a 5 to 6 week-old Abbott's booby chick by knocking it out of its nest. Afterwards, the goshawk flew done to eat the corpse, except a robber crab also soon arrived and a tug of war lasting 8 minutes occurred between the two animals for the dead bird, which the crab won due to its superior strength. Still unwilling to give up despite this, the hawk then directly tried to attack the crab's head, jumping onto it talons-first, but after around a minute of this the crab successfully warded off the hawk and managed to drag the chick into its burrow to eat. With such strong claws the crab could well have injured or even killed the hawk, but both hawk and crab ended up mostly physically unharmed. So yes, there is a giant crab that is strong enough to steal kills right from even a bird of prey, and does, at least on occasion.

Such incidents are probably not a common occurrence though. For one, an adult booby is quite larger than a goshawk and can well defend its chicks with its sharp beak, so the hunting of booby chicks as large as the hawk itself would not happen very often. The goshawk usually hunts smaller birds that it is able to carry away, so it could just easily fly away from the crabs with its usual prey, and only couldn't do so in this instance because a booby chick is too heavy for that. Still, the fact this ever happens at all really intrigues me.

Of course I had to draw this. I mean, the people that wrote the paper accounting the incident have photos of it but I still wanted to draw it anyways, so from a different angle.

Description
In the forests of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, a female Christmas Island goshawk (Accipiter natalis) manages to take advantage of a rare occasion in which a young Abbott's booby (Papasula abbotti), just 5 to 6 weeks old and not yet able to fly, strays a bit too far from its treetop nest, allowing the hawk to swoop at the booby chick and knock it plummeting to the ground and being killed. As the goshawk flies down to the forest floor to feed on her kill, she finds that the smell of blood has attracted competition in the form of a large robber crab (Birgus latro). A powerful crustacean, the robber crab proves quite a strong opponent, and even as the hawk tries to injured the crab's face with her talons, the robber crab manages to fend off the goshawk and successfully drag away the dead booby chick for itself.

Drawing inspired after reading this paper which documents quite an interesting incident between a robber crab and a Christmas Island goshawk (you quite much read the whole paper here after scrolling down a bit). Also fitting that I get this drawn for National Endangered Species Day (May 20) since all the animals in this drawing unfortunately are endangered. And further, I had also been planning to draw a series of pictures involving large arthropods alongside small tetrapods to emphasize their size, and this is the second drawing of the giant bug series (this being the first ).

Christmas Island, a territory of Australia, is on the eastern Indian Ocean near Indonesia, with a rainforest habitat across much of it, and is best-known for its terrestrial crab species such as the red crab swarms and robber crabs. Like most islands, it also has an ecosystem made up of many endemic animals found nowhere else on earth, especially the birds. A population of goshawks is found on the island that is different from goshawks anywhere else, and the taxonomy of the Christmas Island goshawks is rather uncertain, having been proposed as endemic subspecies of either the brown or variegated goshawk, though it is also quite possible that they have evolved in isolation long enough to count as a distinct species. A small bird of prey, with makes being 30 centimeters long and the larger females at 40 centimeters, it hunts mainly small birds and insects. Unfortunately the Christmas Island goshawk is endangered, with maybe just 50 breeding pairs left on Earth (all on Christmas Island) as introduced yellow crazy ants pose a threat to their nests.

The largest terrestrial invertebrate alive, the robber crab (also called the coconut crab) can have a legspan of a meter, uses its powerful claws to break into coconuts, smaller crabs and even hunt birds on occasion, and to make it even more of a nightmare, it can climb trees. Found on many islands across the Indopacific region, the adult robber crab is entirely terrestrial, unable to swim and can drown, and has achieved its range because its larvae are released into the ocean and drift about. Despite its name, the robber crab isn't a true crab, but a huge hermit crab (yeah, those aren't true crabs), but due to its size a full-grown adult has no need to hide in snail shells (not like there are snails big enough for it anyways). The robber crab is unfortunately endangered as humans have overcollected it for food across its range, and it has become extinct from several islands.

Now, since a giant tree-climbing crab capable of killing birds and snapping off fingers isn't creepy enough, it gets more creepy in that it can displace even a raptor from its kill.There is one known incident occurring on 5 September 2005 on Christmas Island in which a female Christmas Island goshawk managed to kill a 5 to 6 week-old Abbott's booby chick by knocking it out of its nest. Afterwards, the goshawk flew done to eat the corpse, except a robber crab also soon arrived and a tug of war lasting 8 minutes occurred between the two animals for the dead bird, which the crab won due to its superior strength. Still unwilling to give up despite this, the hawk then directly tried to attack the crab's head, jumping onto it talons-first, but after around a minute of this the crab successfully warded off the hawk and managed to drag the chick into its burrow to eat. With such strong claws the crab could well have injured or even killed the hawk, but both hawk and crab ended up mostly physically unharmed. So yes, there is a giant crab that is strong enough to steal kills right from even a bird of prey, and does, at least on occasion.

Such incidents are probably not a common occurrence though. For one, an adult booby is quite larger than a goshawk and can well defend its chicks with its sharp beak, so the hunting of booby chicks as large as the hawk itself would not happen very often. The goshawk usually hunts smaller birds that it is able to carry away, so it could just easily fly away from the crabs with its usual prey, and only couldn't do so in this instance because a booby chick is too heavy for that. Still, the fact this ever happens at all really intrigues me.

Of course I had to draw this. I mean, the people that wrote the paper accounting the incident have photos of it but I still wanted to draw it anyways, so from a different angle.