Horseshoe Crab blood has several important medical uses. One of them is detecting pathogens. The blood of this crab has a sort of built-in immune system. Special proteins instantly activate when in contact with bacteria such as E. Coli, even tiny mounts of it in the parts-per-trillion. You can imagine the uses something like that would have.
The win-win here is that you can harvest the blood of these crabs without killing them. They are drained of some safe amount and thrown back in the ocean, left to wonder what the heck just happened to them for the rest of their lives.
Besides being useful, Horseshoe Crab blood is beautiful, sporting a translucent cyan color. The reason for the color is Horseshoe Crab blood uses an oxygen transporter based on copper, while our hemoglobin is iron-based. I guess you could say they have Patina blood.
1 comment:
They should get little donor cards. Waterproof of course.
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