Nature Talk on Horseshoe Crabs

Fun facts??

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- Latin name for Horseshoe crab: Limulus Polyphemus

- A lot of eyes, but a photo-receptor right in the middle

[[attachment:_20200914_162915Horseshoe_crab_eyes.jpg]]

- Copper makes their blood a blue color when it is exposed to air

- Copper pipes "oxidize" in air, turning from gold/copper color to greenish blue

- Same with the blood of horse shoe crabs

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- Horseshoe crabs are actually most closely related to spiders

- Oldest evidence of a creature like horseshoe crab in fossils? 450 million years ago

- Horseshoe crabs are called "living fossils" because they existed in such a similar form long enough ago to leave fossils

[[attachment:_20200914_163952Ordovician.jpg]]

- Thousands of dollars

- Bacterial toxins cause their blood to clot or become close to a solid

- Used to detect bacteria in medical tool and medicine manufacture

- Before, used rabbits, had check rabbit every 30 min for hours to see if they got a fever

- Possible to make synthetics, but it's been hard

- Harvesting of horseshoe grabs near NYC has drastically reduced their population

- The live in North America and Asia, but only on the East coasts,

- They don't live in Europe or on the coasts of Africa

- They breed in the same sand where they were born

- No one knows why the do this, or how they know which sand they were born in

- Do you remember the place you were born in? Well enough to go back their to give birth to your kids?

- Gondwana

- Evidence for the continents from this period come from the spread of fossils around the world

- We know this because of where we find fossils from this period