What makes crab blood blue

Adult horseshoes serve as prey for sea turtles, alligators, horse conchs, and sharks. Horseshoe crabs are also extremely important to the biomedical industry because their unique, copper-based blue blood contains a substance called "Limulus Amebocyte Lysate", or "LAL".

This compound coagulates or clumps up in the presence of small amounts of bacterial toxins and is used to test for sterility of medical equipment and virtually all injectable drugs. Anyone who has had an injection, vaccination, or surgery has benefited from horseshoe crabs!

Additionally, research on the amazing and complex compound eyes of horseshoe crabs has led to a better understanding of human vision. Horseshoe crabs are also used in several fisheries. The marine life fishery collects live horseshoe crabs for resale as pets in aquariums, research subjects, or as educational specimens, and both the American eel and whelk fisheries use horseshoe crabs as bait along many parts of the Atlantic coast.

Threats to horseshoe crabs and research efforts Horseshoe crab numbers are declining throughout much of their range. Currently, with the help of the public, biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute are documenting nesting sites of horseshoe crabs throughout the state. If you see horseshoe crabs mating and would like to report a sighting, please visit the Report Sightings page for more information.

No, horseshoe crabs are in a class by themselves; they are more closely related to spiders, scorpions, and ticks. They are different from true crabs because they have no antennae and no mandibles mouth parts for grinding food. Like spiders, they have a pair of chelicerae small appendages for moving food into the mouth. Yes and no, that idea comes from the fact that million years ago, ancestors of horseshoe crabs were abundant. The anatomy of the species we have today is not much changed from those older forms.

The life span of an individual horseshoe crab is not millions of years, but they can live up to 20 years! Horseshoe crabs do not bite or sting. Despite the ferocious look of the tail, it is not used as a weapon.

Instead, horseshoe crabs use their tails for righting themselves if they are flipped over by a wave. They do have spines along the edge of their carapace, so if you must handle them, be careful and pick them up by the sides of the shell, not the tail.

The are not picky eaters, they eat almost anything. They feed on small clams, crustaceans, and worms; however, they will also eat other animals and even algae.

Because they have no mandibles or teeth, they crush hard food between their legs before passing it to their mouth. Inside Mystic Aquarium, the critters are on display for in-house education. Others travel with science educators for outreach programs within a mile radius.

So are there enough horseshoe crabs out there to continue to inspire curiosity from beach-goers on the Atlantic coast as well as answer the need for biomedical purposes? Visit a touch tank with friends or family at an area aquarium to ask questions and see the crabs up close.

See listings under Resources, below. One last detail. Why the reference to a horseshoe for its name? Visit www. Box , Old Lyme, CT ; Published by University Press of New England. A touch tank with lobsters, horseshoe and hermit crabs, barnacles, and oysters is located at the Bruce Museum Seaside Center, located on Greenwich Point. The center aim is to educate visitors about the ecology of Long Island Sound and environmental issues. There is no admission fee, but visitors need a beach pass to enter Greenwich Point.

Or call ;e-mail is info dpnc. Call ahead to confirm. Web site www. Located at 10 North Water St. In other words, this is the number of horseshoe crabs that may die from the bleeding process each year. The problem is, if the horseshoe crab population continues to decline, their species may be in trouble.

Without these sea creatures, the lives of many other animals in their ecosystem would be affected. Not to mention, without horseshoe crabs the medical industry could face some challenges. If the horseshoe crab blood industry continues to exist, there are some changes that can be made to decrease the fatality levels associated with the process.

As mentioned above, many dangers of the bleeding process actually occur during transportation. To avoid this, some changes that could be made include releasing any horseshoe crabs that appear unhealthy before transporting them. This would be beneficial as the animals that are already unhealthy have an increased risk of dying from the blood loss. Additionally, some have suggested capturing the animals at night. This would prevent the sea creatures from being in such high temperatures for so long.

Similarly, if possible, it could be beneficial to make transportation a more efficient process by cutting down travel time. In line with this is the idea to keep horseshoe crabs wet. This will allow them to breathe while being transported. Lastly, researchers have looked into some kind of supplement to help horseshoe crabs recover from the bleeding process.

However, there is an alternative to using the horseshoe crab population in the medical industry. What is it? In an attempt to study the immune system of the sea creature, Bang injected bacteria into horseshoe crabs and noticed the clotting reaction. Further, when Bang boiled the bacteria, the clotting still occurred. This indicated that the presence of toxins could be identified even if they are presumed to be gone, making this blood ideal for testing medical devices. Bang and his colleague, Jack Levin, eventually found an efficient way to separate LAL from the other components of the blood.

Flash forward half a decade and we come across Jeak Ling Ding. Ding wanted to make sure horseshoe crabs were no longer necessary for the medical industry. Specifically, she was looking for the gene that makes limulus clotting factor C or rFC. After many years of research, Ding had created a way to produce a synthetic version of rFC. This process was patented in but unfortunately has not been widely used by the medical industry.

There are a few reasons the industry has been hesitant to use this synthetic alternative. First, the new test has not been approved by regulators such as the FDA. This could cause issues in regard to litigation and other risk factors regulation may help companies avoid. Additionally, there is only one manufacturer for the alternative. Lastly, the horseshoe crab blood industry has quite a bit of money tied up in it. If this industry dies, many companies will lose money.

Despite these concerns, the U. Senate actually encouraged the FDA to approve alternatives to horseshoe crab bleeding in