Being blue blooded in the human world ensures a safe passage through life. But it is this blue blood which has put a creature more ancient than the crocodile at risk of being exterminated today.
Horseshoe crabs are not crabs but belong to the spider and scorpion family. They have been around since before the dinosaurs came on stage and would have outlived the Homo sapiens if not for their blue blood.
Horseshoes have this blue coloured copper based blood which has amazing properties of fighting off bacteria. Millions of years of evolution ensured that in the absence of an immune system (meaning, its body was not designed to be able to generate anti-bodies to fight off infections), any bacteria that came in contact with the horseshoe was dealt with by generating coagulating fluids around the bacteria, thereby inactivating it. This simple system of gelling around the bacteria, viruses and fungi formed a physical barrier against further entry and spread of infection, while the damage from initial infection recovers, thus ensuring the survival of the horseshoe in the bacterium rich waters that it resides in. This works even on endotoxin bacterium, the kind which survive even steralisation.
And this is the magical property that humans discovered in the 1960's and started using it to meet their own end. Today, the pharma and medical devices industry claim that using the horseshoe's blood for testing for contamination is the most reliable and easy way, meaning it is the cheapest way of ensuring contamination free products.
Horseshoes are caught from their habitats in millions and brought to labs, where a needle to the heart forces a donation of 30% of its blood. The horseshoes collected from all over the place is then released in one go at a place. As if the abduction and heart piercing were not traumatic enough, horseshoes released at a place other than where they were picked up plays havoc with their breeding pattern, as like turtles the horseshoes go back to the beaches where they were born to deposit their eggs. The mortality rate of this entire exercise is around 15%. Add to this, the further damage due to breeding disturbance and habitat loss and the risk is truly 'species threatening'. The survival rate of horseshoes in a 'non human interfering scenario' is just 30 hatchlings out of a million eggs making it into adulthood. How will the horseshoe recompense this loss? How will they make up for the sudden fall in numbers when it took iterations over millions of years to get the survival rate to as high as 30 in a million? A species that lived since before the dinosaurs came along are at the brink of extinction today.
The Horseshoes are just one example of our selfish drive. Why does everything that we humans touch turn to dust? When are we going to realise what irreversible, irreparable damage we are doing to nature all around us? There are indications everywhere of the imbalance that we have caused and yet we continue to look confounded with the cause and effect staring in our eyes. We are the only species that destroys the very surrounding on which our life depends. Everything in nature is linked to one another, what goes around comes around and our turn is coming.
We continue to bicker about and procrastinate decisions to address climate change. We are finding newer ways of laying the forests and mountains around us waste. We cannot seem to give up our 'comforts', no matter what the cost, (am thinking of the trend of picking up one polythene per vegetable at the departmental store). Just imagine, something so limited like petroleum being turned into polythene with no sight of an alternate energy source.
You just wait it out Horseshoes, the writing on the wall is pretty clear, we are going to self destruct very soon, it might take about a couple of centuries for earth to recover and then you can carry on with your lives with the homo sapiens gone the way of the dinosaurs.
And this is the magical property that humans discovered in the 1960's and started using it to meet their own end. Today, the pharma and medical devices industry claim that using the horseshoe's blood for testing for contamination is the most reliable and easy way, meaning it is the cheapest way of ensuring contamination free products.
Horseshoes are caught from their habitats in millions and brought to labs, where a needle to the heart forces a donation of 30% of its blood. The horseshoes collected from all over the place is then released in one go at a place. As if the abduction and heart piercing were not traumatic enough, horseshoes released at a place other than where they were picked up plays havoc with their breeding pattern, as like turtles the horseshoes go back to the beaches where they were born to deposit their eggs. The mortality rate of this entire exercise is around 15%. Add to this, the further damage due to breeding disturbance and habitat loss and the risk is truly 'species threatening'. The survival rate of horseshoes in a 'non human interfering scenario' is just 30 hatchlings out of a million eggs making it into adulthood. How will the horseshoe recompense this loss? How will they make up for the sudden fall in numbers when it took iterations over millions of years to get the survival rate to as high as 30 in a million? A species that lived since before the dinosaurs came along are at the brink of extinction today.
The Horseshoes are just one example of our selfish drive. Why does everything that we humans touch turn to dust? When are we going to realise what irreversible, irreparable damage we are doing to nature all around us? There are indications everywhere of the imbalance that we have caused and yet we continue to look confounded with the cause and effect staring in our eyes. We are the only species that destroys the very surrounding on which our life depends. Everything in nature is linked to one another, what goes around comes around and our turn is coming.
We continue to bicker about and procrastinate decisions to address climate change. We are finding newer ways of laying the forests and mountains around us waste. We cannot seem to give up our 'comforts', no matter what the cost, (am thinking of the trend of picking up one polythene per vegetable at the departmental store). Just imagine, something so limited like petroleum being turned into polythene with no sight of an alternate energy source.
You just wait it out Horseshoes, the writing on the wall is pretty clear, we are going to self destruct very soon, it might take about a couple of centuries for earth to recover and then you can carry on with your lives with the homo sapiens gone the way of the dinosaurs.
