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:
“In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Now it is time to call attention
to our bed, a forest of skin
where seeds burst like bullets.
We are in our room. We are in
a shoe box. We are in a blood box.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
Light—
The marrow in the bone
We dreamed was safe . . . the blood in the veins, the
sap in the tree
Were springs of Deity.”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)