06/21/2025
Oh we owe so much to the horseshoe crab. I remember seeing them doze their way up the Jersey Shore when I was a kid. They’re harmless, they look angry, and nowadays they have a right to be.
They’ve been scooting along the sand for no less than 440 MILLION YEARS (that’s a while, like pre-dinosaur, pre-permian extinction) and now they’re endangered.
BUT—they’re endangered for a good reason! Their blue, copper-based blood has some chemicals in it that forms oozy walls around bacteria. So in 1970, scientists used it to form LAL, which is a substance that detects bacterial infections around medicines in labs. Before that, people who tested drugs had to inject lab bunnies with their pharmaceuticals to see if anything was contaminated.
Now people harvest about 600,000 horseshoe crabs a year, tap their blood and return them to the sea—some of which actually survive the process!
Because of their sacrificial blood, the IUCN has put these ancient creatures on their list of vulnerable species.
❓⏰What other articles do you think are in the Coastal Times? Let me know in the comments! (I’ll go first).
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