OCTOBER 2018 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 95
HORSESHOE CRABS:
BEACHY ANCIENT MIRACLES
By JUNGLE BOB
Anyone who has spent time on
our beaches has probably seen a
hideous-looking creature called the
horseshoe crab. This bizarre-looking
animal is one of the most successful,
important and spectacular species of
our marine life.
I was taught to respect my elders,
but respecting horseshoes takes
this sentiment to another level.
Long before dinosaurs roamed
the earth, before the first plants
blossomed, horseshoes thrived in
the primordial soup of the Devonian
period 420 million years ago.
Elders indeed! But they don’t get
much respect from humans who
don’t understand them.
For starters, they aren’t crabs. They
are classified as chelicerates and are
more closely related to spiders than
crabs. Second, they are harmless. Although
they have a menacing-looking
long, tapered, hard tail, it is not a
stinger and they don’t raise it in shallow
water hoping you will step on it.
It is used as a rudder when swimming
and as a lever to right themselves. If
turned upside down by a wave they
may perish from the heat or be killed
by predators who make an easy meal
of their soft underbelly.
Their populations have suffered
terribly in the last
100 years. They
arrive on our shores
in great numbers in the late
spring to mate and spawn, making
them easily caught.
In Long Island’s early farming
days, millions were mercilessly
scooped up, trucked and deposited
in fields as fertilizer.
Fishermen used crabs as conch
bait (aka scungilli ) and decimated
the population. The overharvesting
caused a ripple effect in the environment,
as the hundreds of millions of
eggs deposited annually
sustain fish, sea turtles
and shorebirds.
Recently, scientists
have wondered how
they survived so long.
Crabs are true
“ b l u e
bloods”: Their copper
rich blood turns blue when
oxidized, not red. Their blood has
amoebocytes that attack any foreign
bacteria, fungi or virus that enters
the crabs’ blood stream. Armed
with this, horseshoes never fall ill to
infections.
Their blue blood is now harvested
sustainably from the crabs for testing
human vaccines. If foreign bodies are
present, the blood quickly reveals
them, ensuring vaccines are pure and
free of toxins. The pharmaceutical community
is studying the blood’s properties
for a myriad of potential uses and
it is currently valued at $15,000 a quart.
So let’s look at horseshoes differently.
These creatures deserve respect for
how long they have lived, an apology
for our misguided actions, and a heartfelt
thanks for their contributions to
science.
Jungle Bob’s Reptile World is
located at 984 Middle Country
Rd. in Selden. It can be reached at
junglebobsrept ileworld.com
631-737-6474.
PRESS PETS
Horseshoe crabs predate the
dinosaurs.