Crab Crossing

Every year before Christmas, a vibrant red carpet covers Christmas Island, northwest of Australia. The ground literally crawls with festive color, as red crabs—millions of them—leave their solitary lives in the forests and migrate en masse to the Indian Ocean to breed.

For a month or two, they’re everywhere. The males head out in the first wave, followed a little later by the females. After mating, the males return to the forests in another wave of red. The females stay at the water another two weeks to release up to 100,000 eggs each, and then they return. A month after that, millions of baby crabs emerge from the ocean to make their own migration into the forest.

photo courtesy Gary Tindale

It’s a visual feast. The crabs take the same routes each year, following programming the Creator somehow buried in their DNA so they would time their migration with the right ocean conditions for spawning. The carpet of crabs is so dense that officials on this small island must post “Road Closed” signs everywhere. As for the human residents, they take it all in stride, respectfully stepping over the crimson creatures as they obey God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.