This animal is the horseshoe crab, also known as the horseshoe crab. Its blood is different from that of ordinary creatures, it is blue, and it is also an ancient creature that has existed on earth for a long time. It is also called a “living fossil”. ?
I believe that when many people watched TV as children, they would have this idea under the influence of movies and TV series: blue-blooded creatures or other colors are alien creatures. Even though blue blood seems magical, the principle is actually very simple. Just like the blood of mammals is red, the blood of horseshoe crabs is blue because their bodies are rich in copper, so the blood appears blue, and our blood is rich in iron so it appears red.
In recent years, the number of horseshoe crabs has been significantly reduced, as people hunt them in large numbers in order to obtain their blood. According to the reScientists have found that the blood of horseshoe crabs contains a substance called horseshoe crab amoeba-like cell lysate. This substance is the LAL that we commonly use today to detect endotoxins.
If this were the case, horseshoe crabs would not be hunted in large numbers. Another very important reason is that the meat of horseshoe crabs has practical value and relatively delicious taste. Many people hunt and kill horseshoe crabs to sell them for money. This once made horseshoe crabs endangered, but now there are artificially bred horseshoe crabs, so the situation has been greatly improved. Additionally, there are many types of horseshoe crabs, such as the one in China. However, this type of horseshoe crab contains certain toxins in its body, which will cause harm to the human body after use, so it is still necessary to distinguish them. which ones can be eaten and which ones cannot. ?
Jellyfish don't have brains. Its body is just a double-layered structure, like a plastic bag (cortex) inside another plastic bag (stomach layer), and the two layers are held together by a similar glue to a gel (mesoglia). With such a simple structure, jellyfish have survived on this changing earth for over 600 million years. Before humans ruled the earth with their brains, jellyfish dominated the fathomless oceans without the need for brains or complex neural structures.
Jellyfish may seem weak, but they are predators that are not easy to play with. Zooplankton, shrimp, and fish are all prey for jellyfish. Most jellyfish have long, soft tentacles covered in stinging cells. Besides jellyfish, corals, sea anemones and hydroThey also have stinging cells and are therefore classified among the cnidarians. However, because jellyfish have a wider range of activities than other cnidarians, they often float on the sea surface and are pushed offshore onto the beach by waves. More and more people are being accidentally injured and their mortality cannot be underestimated...so., when many people think of cnidarians, the first thing they think of is jellyfish.
The stinging cells in jellyfish tentacles are tiny and contain nematocysts that store the stinging threads. When the stinging cells are physically stimulated, a small number of stinging cells release the stinging threads in the nematocyst within a very short period of time and move toward the prey. Body fluids exuded after the prey sting will stimulate more stinging cells to emit stinging threads throughchemical reactions. The stinging threads inject the jellyfish's venom into the prey, paralyzing it. Finally, the jellyfish's tentacles draw the prey into its mouth for chemical digestion, providing a feast to provide the energy needed for survival.
Not only is the hunting efficiency astonishing, but the shapes of the barbed wire are also diverse. There are hollow barbed wires like injection needles, there are also barbed wires that are wound like springs to increase the ejection force, and there are also sticky barbed wires with a surface full of mucus, etc. However, these deadly weapons of jellyfish, stinging cells, are disposable and will be thrown away after use. At the same time, the constant renewal of stinging cells allows the jellyfish to maintain its fighting capacity. Different jellyfish have different degrees of mortality. Most jellyfish stings do nott not fatal, but some are feared, like the box jellyfish (which, as its name suggests, is shaped like a square box), can kill an injured person in minutes with its venom. Take as an example Chiropsalmus quadrigatus, a box jellyfish common to Okinawa in summer. After a person touches a jellyfish on their breasts, they will feel pain similar to an electric shock. In severe cases, people may faint or even die instantly. This is one of the adverse reactions caused by jellyfish cnidotoxin entering the human body.