paramaline:indifferent-century:Joseph Dalton Hooker says “mess with the crabbo, you get the stabbo.”
paramaline:indifferent-century:Joseph Dalton Hooker says “mess with the crabbo, you get the stabbo.” ..In our ascent we met with a kind of land crab, a short & thick set irascible looking animal…a reddish yellow with black eyes & a very large mouth. When angered it would take up a sheltered position, fix its savage eyes on you & throw out its claws & place them to its mouth in a menacing attitude as much as to say “I’ll eat you, if I can.” This was in Trinidad, in 1839. He seems to be talking about the hairy land crab, ucides cordatus. Image found here. Hooker’s journal from the Ross Antarctic Expedition can be found here!omg i found the bit from The Worst Journey in the World that I was thinking of earlier - on the way to their ill-fated antarctic expedition in 1910, the terra nova crew did indeed stop at this exact same island and had the exact same reaction to these apparently terrifying crabs. according to henry “birdie” bowers:“The land-crabs are little short of a nightmare. They peep out at you from every nook and boulder. Their dead staring eyes follow your every step as if to say, ‘If only you will drop down we will do the rest.’ To lie down and sleep on any part of the island would be suicidal. Of course, Knight had a specially cleared place with all sorts of precautions, otherwise he would never have survived these beasts, which even tried to nibble your boots as you stood — staring hard at you the whole time. One feature that would soon send a lonely man off his chump is that no matter how many are in sight they are all looking at you, and they follow step by step with a sickly deliberation. They are all yellow and pink, and next to spiders seem the most loathsome creatures on God’s earth.” -- source link