Crab attack!

My favorite part: they are lining up to take their turn. (Via Illustrateurs)

Mean Monkey Monday

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

Bruce Campbell?
Rotwang

He probably deserves it! Those crabs were just minding their own business, then Mr. Clubby comes along and starts something…
BB

Good PSA for not sleeping around.
cory

I see the Dark Tower angle has been adequately covered.

No, it’s not the actual illustration from Drawing of the Three, but it might as well be.
Anonymous

The angry white man tries to kill everything,
but because everything tries to kill the white man (to stop his killing rampage),
the white man keeps on trying to kill everything.

So, ultimately, nobody wins.
addlepated

Dad-a-chum?
Anonymous

They believe this is how Amelia Earhart died.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Funnily enough, the person who first told me about coconut crabs was a friend of Amelia Earhart.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    It needs to be said: you move in interesting circles.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      My mother’s longtime companion grew up in Boston. When he was a child, he used to hang out at the airport where Ms. Earhart kept her plane and ended up befriending her while she was working on it. He also lived on an iceberg for a while during WWII while he was doing some kind of electronic spy job.
lewisjamieson

There is this whole niche market for books based on killer crabs and there is one author running a monopoly on it!
In fact comedian Robin Ince (plus full time humanist and Carl Sagan fan, co-hosts the BBC radio 4 show ‘Infinite Monkey Cage’ with the beautiful Brian Cox) has already had some successful stand up shows based around these hilariously bad but good books.
I went to the book launch for his ‘Bad Book Club’ at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was a hilarious show with loads of great stand up talents like Stewart Lee, Josie Long and Kevin Eldon.
I highly recommend this book!
Daemon

I don’t really see this as “attacking one at a time” so much as “only one is attached to him right now”.

Also, I choose to interpret the airborne one as performing some form of jump attack.

Because that would be cooler.
millrick

i wonder if this fellow is an ancestor of the cop who pepper-sprayed that baby squirrel
– fighting to the death in a situation you could walk away from might be a family trait ~ or possibly it’s just a guy thing
- rrot
  
  For the win!
endymion

Just stand up and walk away?…
Anonymous

Are you sure this isn’t some kind of metaphorical picture illustrating how it feels to have the crabs?
Chuck

Ahaah. So Stephen King plagiarized.
bcsizemo

Seriously no has mentioned Leonard Part 6 yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCJ2gFSwPMc
- Nash Rambler
  
  Man, I wish Leonard Part 6 would get eaten by vicious crabs. Or nuked. Or imprisoned in some kind of spinning mirror and cast off into the cold vacuum of space. Look, LP6 just sucks and I hate it. Thanks for dredging it up.
Mister44

Maybe he’s just hungry.

And coconut crabs can be considerably larger than that.
Quiet Wyatt

Coconut crabs ripped my flesh!

RZZZZZ!
gwailo_joe

You laugh.

Inexorable. . .they come.

Do you have perhaps a machine gun? 1000 rounds later. . .they come.

At night as you sleep. Climb a tree; they wait.

Slowly. . .so slowly

they come…FOR YOU!!!
seadigs

Worst case of crabs, EVER.
Anonymous

Those look like coconut crabs! Anything that can rip open a coconut with its bear hands, er, claws is not to be trifled with!
- wookiedingleberry
  
  I’ve been told they are delicious. Imagine,coconut fed crab…
Islington

Dad-a-chum?
- Bubba
  
  Bravo,
  my thought exactly.
eatingbeets

is this an illustration from The Dark Tower series?
Anonymous

looks like someone decided to illustrate the scene in Stephen King’s ‘Drawing of the Three’ where Roland fights off the Lobtrosities.
planettom

Needs the woman in the red blouse!

I have to reference this page from an 1887 book SEA AND LAND (My grandfather owned the book; I scanned in that page. I’d scan more, but the book is crumbling).

http://planettom.livejournal.com/279012.html

Note the giant crab almost pulling a goat off the ground from a tree!
- nehpetsE
  
  I also have my grandfathers copy of “Sea and Land” Serious proto-mondo-culture! It was one of the definitive books of my childhood.
Anonymous

Faux pas – one is supposed to use a lobster cracker.
Editz

Looks familiar:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/07/more-mean-monkeys.html
lknope

This needs to be a caption contest!
- Pliny the Elder
  
  Even if it was a caption contest, Islington already won with “Dad-a-chum?”
Baron Karza

“Quick, Robin! The Bat-Garlic Butter!!!”
BrendanBabbage

This is real, REAL cool!!!

Do you know what this is?
This is a “Coconut Crab” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab as described by a WW2 veteran to a pulp artist (Men’s adventure, “The Sweats”) who was doubtless listening in a conversation about “Wouldn’t it be cool to boil THAT lobster!?”

These things were largely unknown in America, but thanks to WW2 the Pacific GIs and of course Navy/sailors saw ‘em. (and ate ‘em) Most native cultures have it taboo to eat them, however.

So it’s a real animal but far away enough it might be a “Tall Tale”. And though they don’t attack unprovoked they are quite deadly. They get their name from cutting into coconuts with their pincers to eat the fruit. They also steal shiny objects to use like pack-rats for attracting mates. Genetically close to the “Hermit Crab”

At the same time they are an “Oppressive Pest” and perhaps “Endangered”.
Robyn

And they all appear to be pre-cooked.
GeekMan

For the fans of Clone High:

“YOU’VE GOT CRABS, ASS-FACE!”
Donald Petersen

The arthropods were trained like movie ninjas. They surround you en masse, but attack one at a time.
sockdoll

I think that I would be more focused on:

a. Getting myself to where the fierce pinchy coconut crabs weren’t.

b. Kicking or throwing the fierce pinchy coconut crabs away from me.

c. At a minimum, trying not to further piss off the fierce pinchy coconut crabs.

d. In a perfect world, learning their fierce pinchy language and making friends with them – and possibly acting as their manager and booking them into the fierce pinchy coconut crab vaudeville circuit.

NOT pinning one down with my hand and trying to pound on it with an ineffectual little stick, while the other crabs are fiercely pinching me into bite-sized portions.

It makes for a compelling pulp illustration, though.
- Anonymous
  
  It doesn’t make sense to fight them that way, so he’s probably after that one crab in particular. The others are then maybe trying to rescue it. Why he has a specific grudge against it, I don’t know, but maybe it’s a hit of some kind.
  
  The other option is he simply needs to kill a specific number of crabs. I hear that’s a good way to level up, although I’d consider buying better armor before trying.
- rks1157
  
  I’d stand and fight for one simple reason… Dinner.
  
  http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/coconutcrab.asp
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    That’s such a nightmare picture, although I’m pretty sure it’s a small kitchen trash can. Clocky, on the other hand, probably looks at that like we look at Superman.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      That’s such a nightmare picture
      
      Boy, you said it. If that’s the kind of critter that surrounds the Detention Centre, there’d be no need for any guards.
akbar56

Harvesting the young Gargons can be hard work. Lets take them back to the homeworld for TORTURE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJM-58Tq0xw
Derek C. F. Pegritz

Coconut crabs move at about the speed of pancake syrup dripping down onto your shirt. Yes, their claws can crack open a coconut and probably sever a human arm…but if you can’t outrun a coconut crab, you deserve to lose that arm.
Lobster

Hey, those are Coconut Crabs! Those things aren’t aggressive! Well, unless you’re a coconut I guess…
The Nakizo

C’mon even Solid Snake can’t defeat a crab! CRAB BATTLE!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mHKHKR8x6A
Anonymous

Nasty case of crabs there.
franko

get out of my head!
i was just wondering where the “mean monkey” series went to, and then you post THIS.
phlavor

That would make a great tattoo.
Anonymous

This kills the crab(s).
Anonymous

Immediately thought of Anatolij Dnjeprow’s short story “Krabi” (“Island of Crabs”, 1973) which is not about real crabs but autonomous robots being able to replicate themselves, and evolve. A german translation is here: http://www.bionik.tu-berlin.de/institut/skript/inskreb.htm, it was made into a german TV movie in 1975, but it seems it never found its way into english.
azaner

“Robert Conrad hates crustaceans!”
Anonymous

Mmmm, crab cakes!!!
Antinous / Moderator

fighting to the death in a situation you could walk away from might be a family trait ~ or possibly it’s just a guy thing

You really should rent William Shatner’s blockbuster Kingdom of the Spiders to understand how easy it is to be swarmed and killed by very, very slow-moving arthropods.