Blood
Unlike mammals, horseshoe crabs do not have hemoglobin in their blood, but instead use hemocyanin to carry oxygen. Because of the copper present in hemocyanin, their blood is blue. Their blood contains amebocytes, which play a role similar to white blood cells for vertebrates in defending the organism against pathogens. Amebocytes from the blood of L. polyphemus are used to make Limulus amebocyte lysate, which is used for the detection of bacterial endotoxins.
Harvesting horseshoe crab blood involves collecting and bleeding the animals, and then releasing them back into the sea. Most of the animals survive the process; mortality is correlated with both the amount of blood extracted from an individual animal, and the stress experienced during handling and transportation. Estimates of mortality rates following blood harvesting vary from 3% to 15%.
Read more about this topic: Horseshoe Crab
Famous quotes containing the word blood:
“Fit gravefellows you are for Lincoln, Brown
And Douglass and Toussaint. . . all whose rapt eyes
Fashioned a new world in this wilderness.
American earth is richer for your bones;
Our hearts beat prouder for the blood we inherit.”
—Dudley Randall (b. 1914)
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10:16.
“Yet love enters my blood like an I.V.,
dripping in its little white moments.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)