Horseshoe Crab

"Seen in Orissa, India. Horseshoe crabs are said to carry a promising potential future cure for cancer, as a result of a compound in their blue blood. NASA is studying various facets of this interesting ancient creature for applications in space travel for human beings.

Horseshoe crabs are arthropods that live in shallow ocean waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms. Very rarely do they come to the shore, and this too is mostly for mating. They belong to Chelicerata and Family Limulidae. The entire body of the horseshoe crab is protected by a hard shell. They have two large compound eyes and multiple smaller simple ones atop the carapace. They have five pairs of legs for walking, swimming and moving food into the mouth. The long, straight, rigid tails can be used to flip themselves over if they are turned upside down, so a crab with a broken tail may die. During the breeding season, horseshoe crabs migrate to shallow coastal waters. Horseshoe crabs have hemocyanin to carry oxygen. Because of the copper present in hemocyanin, their blood is blue. Their blood contains amebocytes, which play a role similar to white blood cells for vertebrates in defending the organism against pathogens.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi @ vsnl.com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com."