That's great, but what about crabs?
AI is certainly on the move right now, but so are crustaceans. The annual crab migration on Christmas Island is a natural phenomenon so amazing that Sir David Attenborough reportedly once called it one of his greatest television moments when he visited the site in 1990.
Every year, millions of crabs emerge from the forest and swarm across roads, streams, rocks and beaches to reach the ocean, where each female can lay up to 100,000 eggs. It takes the surviving tiny crabs about nine days to return inland to the safety of the plateau.
As Google seeks environmental clearances for its undersea cables, timing could prove delicate for Christmas Island's most famous residents. According to Australian ParksThe island's annual red crab migration has already begun in 2025, with a major spawning expected in just a few weeks, around November 15-16.
Sir David Attenborough explores the huge red crab migration on Christmas Island.
During periods of peak migration, sections of roads are closed at short notice as the crabs move between the forest and the sea, and the island has built special crab bridges over the roads to protect the migrating masses.
Parks Australia notes that although the migration occurs annually, few baby crabs survive the journey from sea to forest most years as they are often eaten by fish, manta rays and whale sharks. Successful migrations, which occur only once or twice a decade (when large numbers of hatchlings actually survive), are critical to maintaining the island's red crab population.
How Google's cable infrastructure can coexist with 100 million marching crustaceans remains to be seen, but environmental measures are reportedly being taken. Judging by the scale of the annual migration, it seems clear that this is a crab's world and we are simply living in it.
This story was updated on November 6, 2025 at 10:49 pm ET to include a statement from Google. An earlier version of this story, based on a Reuters report, said Google was planning to build an artificial intelligence data center for military purposes on Christmas Island.
