Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale . Use or Importance of Horseshoe crab blood
Horseshoe crab blood runs blue and opaque, like antifreeze mixed with milk.
And for what exactly do humans need the blood of a living fossil? A sort of witchcraft, you might say,
for it literally keeps people alive. Horseshoe-crab blood is exquisitely sensitive to toxins from bacteria.
It is used to test for contamination during the manufacture of anything that might go inside the human body:
every shot, every IV drip, and every implanted medical device.
Hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) are bled each year to produce a substance
called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL). LAL is used to test intravenous drugs and medical equipment for the
presence of bacteria and endotoxin, a poison found in many bacteria. Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale.
Horseshoe crabs use hemocyanin to carry oxygen through their blood. Because of the copper present in hemocyanin,
their blood is blue. This amazing blue blood contains a special clotting agent called LAL (Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate)
which is used to test the purity of medicines.
Buy Horseshoe Crab Blood Online
The blue color comes from copper in the blood. But that’s not its most interesting feature. The blood contains a special clotting agent.
It’s used to make a concoction called Limulus amebocyte lysate or LAL. Before LAL, scientists had no easy way of knowing whether a vaccine
or medical tool was contaminated with bacteria. Like E. coli or salmonella. Scientists would inject vaccines into huge numbers of rabbits
and then basically wait for symptoms to show up. But when LAL was approved for use in 1970, it changed everything. Drop a minuscule amount
of it onto a medical device or vaccine, and the LAL will encase any gram-negative bacteria in a jelly cocoon. While it can’t kill the bacteria,
the jelly seal is like a fire alarm.
Horseshoe crabs aren’t bugs. They aren’t really crabs, either.
The prehistoric-looking creatures known properly as Limulus polyphemus are more closely related to spiders and scorpions than true crabs. The innocuous sea creatures are living fossils and have been scuttling about quietly pretty much unchanged for some 250 million years.
So who cares? As a primate who can think, you should. The primitive immune system of the horseshoe crab makes them medically quite useful to humans. Every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using the horseshoe crab derivative known as Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL).
The LAL extract made from horseshoe crab blood (which is bright blue, by the way), is used to test drugs and vaccine for possible bacterial contamination.
Horseshoe crab blood is worth an estimated $15,000 a quart, according to the Mid-Atlantic Sea Grant Programs/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site (www.ocean.udel.edu). Researchers have also found substances in the crabs that have potential as antibiotics as well as anti-viral and anti-cancer agents. Try to put a price on that untapped potential. Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
Whenever you get a vaccine, the crab’s life is linked to yours as a benefit from medical testing. That’s very good, because bad bacteria can be lethal. Gram-negative bacteria can be nasty stuff that cause life-threatening diseases like meningitis, typhoid, cholera, and toxic shock syndrome. Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
There are those who view the shelled creatures as bait or a nuisance; others see the lumbering critters as potential biters (they are harmless) and still others see the big picture. Horseshoe crabs are a natural wonder many take for granted. Horseshoe crab for sale at our venom store. Not so for migratory shorebirds that depend on horseshoe crab eggs to help fuel their own journeys to breeding grounds.”The crabs mate from late May to June from Long Island Sound along Connecticut and the north shore of Long Island. They are so innocuous,” said Catherine Ellis, curator, fish and invertebrates, Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, Mystic, where the staff has raised horseshoe crabs from eggs. “When I grew up we thought the tail was a big stinging tool, and it’s not.” Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
The spiky tail is used by the crab to flip itself over when it’s washed upside down by waves or travel. “They’re ‘detritovores’ – that means that they sift through sediments for food. They really are totally harmless.”According to www.beach-net.com, the Delaware Bay region is home to the “largest population of the American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), which is found along the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to the Yucatan. Another three species live in the coastal waters from Japan to Indonesia.” Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
Regionally, nature centers offer canoe and kayak outings to view the mass migration of the shelled sea creatures in late spring/early summer, providing a tourism/recreation aspect to the horseshoe crab population. With life cycles tied to lunar cycles, the crabs come ashore to mate and return to the sea in many locations on the eastern Atlantic coast of the United States. Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
Inside Mystic Aquarium, the critters are on display for in-house education. Others travel with science educators for outreach programs within a 75-mile radius.
So are there enough horseshoe crabs out there to continue to inspire curiosity from beach-goers on the Atlantic coast as well as answer the need for biomedical purposes? Money makes people do strange things. horseshoe crab blood for sale at our venom store.
Read Sargent’s book. Visit a touch tank with friends or family at an area aquarium to ask questions and see the crabs up close. (See listings under Resources, below.)
One last detail. Why the reference to a horseshoe for its name? Well, the animal was originally dubbed “horsefoot” due to its resemblance to a horse’s hoof. Horse Shoe Crab Blood For Sale
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