Sunday, March 13, 2011

Daily(?) Facts 7

Long time no facts. Sorry, lots of problems in the old life atm...

New fact!

What animal has saved the most human lives?
Nope, sorry boy, not you.

It's this little guy. The horseshoe crab. Technically not a crab at all, but whatever. Their blood is used to create LAL which is used as an artificial kidney of sorts, that clots when harmful bacteria like diseases are introduced to it. This allows scientists to test drugs and immunisations on the blood. If the blood clots, its not working, if it doesnt;
        GREAT SUCCESS!

This LAL sells for $15,000 a litre and, due to a haemoglobin count of 0 is BLUE. No not just 'blue' like unoxygenated blood 'blue' but full on NEON blue. Not only that but they are the oldest living form of life on earth, their species is 445 MILLION years old. They also have 10 eyes and can go a year without eating.

Crazy crabs :3

8 comments:

  1. Do they die when we anal-probe them like in the last picture? Or can we extract what we need and set them free? Not that I give 2 shits about the horseshoe crab, but I'm just curious....

    Thank you, Mr Crabs!

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  2. they will outlive us.... :(

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  3. wow, really interesting. who could've imagined? :s cool post dude, very informative.

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  4. @Lost.in.Idaho:
    They migrate by the thousands into nets placed by scientists, they then do a kind of blood-drive and extract about their equivalent of us donating blood, then the scientists send them back for another year, and give plenty of R+R before extracting more blood.

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  5. that is gross and interesting at the same time

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  6. That is very interesting... I had no idea crabs could be used for kidneys.

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  7. Holy potatoes! Didn't know anything of that! ;o

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