Gills – respiratory organ which extracts oxygen from water.
Rudder – used for steering.
Toxin – a poison or substance which can cause harm to the health of a living thing.
Harvest – to gather or collect.
Migration – seasonal movement from one region to another.
Compound – composed of 2 or more separate elements.
Prehistoric – the time before there were written records.
Copper – a reddish-brown metal.
Antibody – a protective protein produced by the immune system in response to the presence of a foreign substance,
Pollution – the presence or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.
Fun Facts
A female Horseshoe Crab can lay as many as 90,000 eggs each season, usually in clusters of 4,000 – 5,000 at at time. However, only about 10 of those individual embryos will ever become adults. Before they get a chance to hatch, fish, sea turtles, and birds feed on the eggs.
Horseshoe Crabs are actually not crabs. They are more closely related to spiders.
Horseshoe Crabs have been around for 450 million years, predating the dinosaurs by more than 200 million years.
The blood of Horseshoe Crabs contains a protein that will clot upon exposure with bacterial endotoxin. In this way, preparations such as insulin or antibiotics can be tested for contamination before being used in people.
