Buzz
For over 80 years, Amelia Earhart's vanishing act during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe has intrigued both historians and conspiracy theorists alike. Now, one group suggests that her fate might have been determined by giant crabs.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) posits that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan might have landed their plane on Nikumaroro Island after failing to locate their intended destination, Howland Island. They believe the island's native crustaceans could have played a role in the continuing mystery.
According to National Geographic, there are several pieces of evidence backing TIGHAR’s hypothesis. Nikumaroro’s coastal reef is ideal for emergency landings, and in 1940—just three years after Earhart vanished—British colonists discovered 13 human bones beneath a ren tree. These bones were sent to Fiji but were later lost. The colony's administrator, Gerald Gallagher, speculated in a telegram that the remains might have belonged to Earhart. In 2001, researchers found U.S.-made artifacts near the ren tree, including a jackknife, a woman’s compact, a zipper, and glass jars. The mystery deepened in 2017, when four forensic bone-sniffing dogs all indicated human remains were present at the site, but no additional evidence was unearthed.
If those 13 bones found beneath the ren tree did belong to the ill-fated castaway, where are the remaining parts of her body? Tom King, former chief archaeologist at TIGHAR, suggests that coconut crabs may hold the answer to that mystery.
Nikumaroro is home to thousands of these gigantic creatures, which can grow up to 3 feet in width and weigh as much as 9 pounds. Known as robber crabs due to their habit of stealing items that smell like food, they will consume nearly anything—coconuts, fruit, birds, rodents, other crabs, their own discarded limbs, and carrion.
Given their feeding habits, it isn’t far-fetched to believe that coconut crabs could have devoured Earhart’s remains and carried her bones back to their burrows. In one experiment to investigate this theory, TIGHAR researchers placed a pig carcass on the island and documented the results. With the help of small strawberry hermit crabs, coconut crabs stripped the pig’s body down to the bones within two weeks. After a year, some bones had been moved as far as 60 feet from the original carcass location, and some were never recovered.
King theorizes that the 193 missing bones from Earhart’s body could be concealed in the burrows of various coconut crabs. Like the pig experiment, the crabs may have carried some of Earhart’s bones far from the original site, though not all of them—after all, forensic dogs detected bones near the ren tree that have yet to be found. Currently, TIGHAR is collaborating with the Canine Forensics Foundation to continue exploring the area.
As we await further answers, explore these other theories regarding Earhart’s mysterious disappearance.
