I’m in a science mood. Wanna know how this little guy has saved billions of lives? Horseshoe crab are so cool

So these little arthropods are more closely related to spiders then to crabs and have been on the planet for a long long long ass time and they have evolved some interesting adaptations.

One of which is blue blood, due to large amounts of copper. This blue blood is only found in 1 of the 4 horseshoe crab species. This species is found along North American eastern coast lines.

This blue blood contains some special substances that causes the blood coagulate in the presence of small amounts of bactiaral toxins. A very useful skin when you have an open circulatory system.

But how is that useful to us? Well we’ve been using it for years to test the sterility of medical equipment and most injectable drugs, most importantly vaccines!

I’ve grown up along the jersey shore and I’ve seen plenty of these guys. They are harmless but don’t disturb them too much. Their tails are mainly used to flip themselves over if they are turned up slide down. If you want to pick one up, do it by the sides and not by the tail.

Their undersides look super cool too

Star Wars joke: real blue milk comes comes from horseshoe crabs

Thank you for reading, here is my end