The coconut crab (Birgus latro)

The coconut crab has been known to western scientists since the voyages of Francis Drake around 1580[6] and William Dampier around 1688.[7] Based on an account by Georg Eberhard Rumphius (1705), who had called the animal "Cancer crumenatus", Carl Linnaeus (1767) named the species Cancer latro,[8] from the Latin latro, meaning "robber". The genus Birgus was erected in 1816 by William Elford Leach, containing only Linnaeus' Cancer latro, which was thus renamed Birgus latro.[3]