Sunday, September 10, 2017

Horseshoe Crab_September 2017, Coney Island, NYC, Brooklyn, USA

Today I took a subway to Coney Island (Brooklyn, NYC) and I was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean! :-) In the evening, just before the sunset, I noticed a horseshoe crab on the shore. First of all, the horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) is not a crab! It is more related to spiders and scorpions, and it is a relative of trilobite. The horseshoe crab have been on the planet for 450 million years, and it is known as a living fossil. Interestingly, blood of horseshoe crabs can be used to detect bacterial poisoning in humans. Intriguingly, horseshoe crab has 10 eyes and it is a known model organism for vision research. Horseshoe crabs are mating in May and June, I am already excited about it! hopefully I can record their mating behaviours! ;)





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