Horseshoe Crabs

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Horseshoe crabs are harmless!
Horseshoe crabs are not poisonous and they do not use their tails (telsons) to sting or stab people, they use them to help flip over when thSey get caught upside down.
Horseshoe crabs have been in existence for approximately 450 million years. That’s twice as old as the dinosaurs!
There are four species of horseshoe crabs – one American species and three Asian species.
In the United States horseshoe crabs are only found along the eastern coast from Maine to Florida and along the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
Horseshoe crabs have copper-based blue blood and ten eyes.
Horseshoe crabs are more closely related to scorpions and spiders than they are to crabs.
Horseshoe crabs are in danger from overharvesting for use as bait, for the use of their blood in the biomedical industry, and because of coastline development which diminishes their spawning grounds.
Since the late 1970s horseshoe crab blood has been used in the biomedical industry to test for bacterial endotoxins in nearly every pharmaceutical drug, vaccine and surgical implant used by humans.
Horseshoe crab blood is used to test the purity of the COVID 19 vaccines.