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9 things to know about horseshoe crabs

American horseshoe crabs have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

They’re a common sight along Florida’s coastline.

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Here are 9 things to know about the creatures, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission:

1. They’re not actually crabs. They’re more closely related to spiders and other arachnids than they are to crabs or lobsters.

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2. Horseshoe crabs are known as “living fossils,” meaning they have existed nearly unchanged for at least 445 million years, well before even dinosaurs existed.

3. There are four species of horseshoe crabs still around today. Only one species, Limulus polyphemus, is found in North America along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Mexico. The other three species are found in Southeast Asia.

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4. Some people think horseshoe crabs are dangerous animals because they have sharp tails, but they are totally harmless. Really, FWC said, horseshoe crabs are just clumsy and use their tails to flip themselves back over if they get overturned by a wave.

5. The crabs are especially sensitive to light. They have 10 eyes, a pair of compound eyes on the prosoma, and “photo receptors” in other areas, primarily along the tail.

6. Horseshoe crabs are known to gather in large nesting aggregations, or groups, on beaches particularly in the mid-Atlantic states such as Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland in the spring and summer.

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7. Horseshoe crabs can nest year-round in Florida, with peak spawning occurring in the spring and fall.

8. Many fish species as well as birds feed on horseshoe crab eggs in Florida. Adult horseshoes serve as prey for sea turtles, alligators, horse conchs, and sharks.

9. Horseshoe crabs are also extremely important to the biomedical industry because their unique, copper-based blue blood contains a substance called “Limulus Amebocyte Lysate”, or “LAL”. This compound coagulates or clumps up in the presence of small amounts of bacterial toxins and is used to test for sterility of medical equipment and virtually all injectable drugs.

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Sarah Wilson

Sarah Wilson, WFTV.com

Sarah Wilson joined WFTV Channel 9 in 2018 as a digital producer after working as an award-winning newspaper reporter for nearly a decade in various communities across Central Florida.