.....

>>73527611
Another day at the runt farm

I don't know what I'm looking at

Those things blood is blue because their oxygen carrying molecule is based on copper instead of iron like most other animals. Pretty cool huh?

What are they doing to those poor facehuggers?

>>73527631
Keep /brit/ in /brit/ rorke

>>73527661
>>73527696
Extracting their blood, it's extremely valuable

>>73527661
Milking trilobites i think. Appearently its impossible for them to get sick so they are trying to find the source for this in their blood IIRC

>>73527746
With milking I meant extracting their blood

>>73527746
These are horseshoe crabs you fucking reprobate

Great thread

>>73527710
Yanksheed

>>73527611
IFLScience logo
ADVERTISMENT

How Horseshoe Crab Blood Saves Millions Of Lives
200.1K SHARES
PLANTS AND ANIMALS
How Horseshoe Crab Blood Saves Millions Of Lives
PBS. Horseshoe crab blood being drained for use in checking the sterile state of medical equipment.
BY STEPHEN LUNTZ

01/09/2014, 03:49
ADVERTISMENT

You don’t survive for 450 million years without learning a trick or two. In the case of horseshoe crabs, one of those is developing blood with remarkable antibacterial properties. Humans haven’t been around nearly as long, but we learn fast, including how to harness those properties in ways that save our lives, but aren’t so great for the crabs.

The most obviously unusual aspect of crab blood is that it is bright blue, a consequence of using copper-based hemocyanin to transport oxygen where vertebrates use iron in hemoglobin. Instead of white blood cells to fight infection, many invertebrates have amebocytes, and Atlantic horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) have evolved these to such a peak of refinement that they are of enormous medical value.

Horseshoe crab amebocytes coagulate around as little as one part in a trillion of bacterial contamination. Even better, the reaction takes 45 minutes, not two days as with mammalian equivalents. Coagulan, the chemical that makes this possible, is used for testing medical equipment and vaccines prior to use, without which many more people would die from infections. Unfortunately, coagulan synthesis is in its infancy so a quarter of a million crabs are harvested each year for their blood

>>73527661
they are drinking hawaiian blue, which is believed to make their meat tender (same mechanism as beer making wagyu tender), before they are served as sushi.

>>73527665
Hemocyanin, instead of hemoglobin

>>73527611
those poor turtles ;______;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8KlAmtIu1E