Horse Shoe Crab– An amazing Invertebrates

Horse shoe crabs are “living fossils” meaning they have existed nearly unchanged for at least for 445 million years, well before even dinosaurus existed.

There are four species of horseshoe crab still around today. Only one species, Limulus polyphemus is found in North America along the Atlantic and gulf coasts from Maine to Mexico. The other three species are found in southeast Asia.

Horseshoe crabs have a tank like a structure consisting of a front shell called prosoma, a back shell called the opisthosoma and spike like tail called ‘Telsen’.

Their body structure is extremely effective for survival, think, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Horseshoe crabs are also extremely important to the biomedical industry because they are unique, copper based Blue blood contains a substance called “Limulus Amebocyte Lysate”, or “LAL”.

This compound coagulates or clump up in the presence of a small amount of bacterial toxins and is used for to test for sterility of medical equipment and virtually all injectable drugs. That way, when you get a vaccine you know it hasn’t been contaminated by any bacteria.