I present to you:

Wired.com’s Absurd Creature of the Week

Enormous Hermit Crab Tears Through Coconuts, Eats Kittens

So yeah that pretty much covers it!  During our pre-trip googlefest we stumbled upon what we now know as coconut crabs.  3′ long monster hermit crabs that live in trees. How could anyone NOT be excited about this?! “Token overly excited guy” made this his new goal in life to see one of these things.  Luckily for him they exist on Diego Garcia and double luckily for him, our little foray into the jungle would take us to where they usually hang out. Excellent.

While it would have been exciting/terrifying to see one that large, the ones we did actually manage to find were pretty much normal crab sized.

Looks like the small ones hide inside the coconut shells for protection until they’re large enough to protect themselves. Imagine that… a thing that you can kill and eat and then live inside of… Kind of reminds of of Luke Skywalker cuddling up inside of the Tauntaun only way less smelly. Either way, there’s your daily dose of science.