Oooooh, with lots of pictures. I hope you're into chitin and legs.
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This is a sad trend. Mary picks these out, you know, and lately there's been a notable lack of chelicerae, chitin, slime, and compound eyes in this series, and now she's found red pandas to be irresistible. If she doesn't stop, you're going to think this is Jerry Coyne's blog or something.
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I love arthropods. These horseshoe crabs are awesome!
Here in Thailand, they eat the eggs in a spicy salad. They're kinda chewy. Apparently, though, there's at least one similar-looking species whose eggs can kill you, so you gotta know how to identify them.
A few weeks ago, PZ had a post about spider sex. It looks like those crabs do it the same way as spiders.
I imagine it must be pretty amazing to witness some of these crawling out of the sea, totally unexpected!
A few weeks ago, PZ had a post about spider sex. It looks like those crabs do it the same way as spiders.
The thing is, they're not crabs at all and are, in fact, much closer to spiders than to any crustacean. Horseshoe crabs are chelicerates (as are spiders), members of the class Xiphosura.
If you have horseshoe crab sightings, don't forget to list them officially.
@Jason: (#4)
i've had the carapace of the cephalothorax of a pretty large horseshoe crab for quite while. a bunch came up on the shore of our local waterway here when i was a kid, and i collected it then. i haven't seen one since. very odd. if i had a date, i'd add it...
Ugh. I had a dream recently that i had horseshoe crabs crawling over me.
These little guys are wonderful little biochemical magicians. When they are injured, their amoebocytes surround the wound and trap bacteria in a viscous gel. In my field of analytical chemistry, we use the limulus amoebocytes from their blue blood to detect the endotoxins of gram-negative bacteria.
Analytical chemists used to test injectible drugs for batercial endotoxins by injecting rabbits with it. If the rabbit got a fever, the product wasn't sterile. The poor rabbit had to endure the injection, the possibility of fever, and worst of all, frequent anal temperature measurements. Limulus has probably saved many a rabbit much misery.