Oh, horesshoe crabs. We've all seen their exoskeleton on the beach or seen them in the touching area of an aquarium. They are great reminders of earth's history as they have changed seemingly little over the past 445 million years.
Contrary to what you might think based on their name, these arthropods are more closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. In fact, and old name for them was "sea scorpions." Which I think makes some sense when you look at them.
There are couple of really interesting things about them:
1. Their blood has been extremely useful for medical research. They are often used to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Their blood also contains no hemoglobin (no iron on blood molecules) which gives it interesting chemical properties, and might be used to diagnose lukemia, as it reacts to to red and white blood cells, identifiable to medical experts.
But don't worry, they'll live. When little blood is extracted, their levels quickly return to normal once re-entering the ocean. And in fact, the medical worth a horshoe crab might provide over its lifetime is roughly $2500. there are a lot of other medical uses, like being an option to combat bacteria resistant to penicillin, but I won't go on for now.
2. From a conservationists perspective, they demonstrate relationships very well. Loggerheads (turtles) and Red Knots (shorebirds) depend on healthy crab populations for food. When these diminish, you quickly see the others diminish. Every year, hundreds of thousands of crabs surface on beaches in the deleware bay for spawning,then return to the seas. This is been consistent for as long as people have known about them, and it occurs over the course of a couple weeks in may/june. So consistent that the red knots expect them to be there in certain numbers, and various other places along the coast. If they don't show up, they obviously can't eat them. Uh-oh! It's one of the well-understood creatures that we can directly tie to the survival of specific species through research. Every year, volunteers count the crabs in the bay around now to try to get an idea of whether or not the crab population is doing ok.
Speaking of, you can go see them this weekend! And perhaps the tail end of it over the next couple weeks. Just look for nature centers in Deleware Bay and they'll likely point you in the right direction for best locations and times to see this spawning event (pictures in the bottom 2 pictures).
Contrary to what you might think based on their name, these arthropods are more closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. In fact, and old name for them was "sea scorpions." Which I think makes some sense when you look at them.
There are couple of really interesting things about them:
1. Their blood has been extremely useful for medical research. They are often used to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Their blood also contains no hemoglobin (no iron on blood molecules) which gives it interesting chemical properties, and might be used to diagnose lukemia, as it reacts to to red and white blood cells, identifiable to medical experts.
But don't worry, they'll live. When little blood is extracted, their levels quickly return to normal once re-entering the ocean. And in fact, the medical worth a horshoe crab might provide over its lifetime is roughly $2500. there are a lot of other medical uses, like being an option to combat bacteria resistant to penicillin, but I won't go on for now.
2. From a conservationists perspective, they demonstrate relationships very well. Loggerheads (turtles) and Red Knots (shorebirds) depend on healthy crab populations for food. When these diminish, you quickly see the others diminish. Every year, hundreds of thousands of crabs surface on beaches in the deleware bay for spawning,then return to the seas. This is been consistent for as long as people have known about them, and it occurs over the course of a couple weeks in may/june. So consistent that the red knots expect them to be there in certain numbers, and various other places along the coast. If they don't show up, they obviously can't eat them. Uh-oh! It's one of the well-understood creatures that we can directly tie to the survival of specific species through research. Every year, volunteers count the crabs in the bay around now to try to get an idea of whether or not the crab population is doing ok.
Speaking of, you can go see them this weekend! And perhaps the tail end of it over the next couple weeks. Just look for nature centers in Deleware Bay and they'll likely point you in the right direction for best locations and times to see this spawning event (pictures in the bottom 2 pictures).
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