Horseshoe pubic louse might look like a prehistoric relic from a bygone age , but this 450 - million - twelvemonth - erstwhile species wager a surprisingly important role in innovative medication   and could shortly find themselves as a key player in the development of a Covid-19 vaccinum .

Unlike the branding iron - ample blood in us and other mammalian , Atlantic horseshoe crabs ( Limulus polyphemus ) have bull - rich blood that ’s arctic blue angel in color . Instead of ashen blood jail cell , their blood is filled with cells known as amebocytes , which areextremely efficient at detectingbacterial endotoxin . Even at levels less than one part per trillion , amebocytes spark the formation of coagulation , turn the roue into a jelly substance .

This trait has been tap by solid food producer and pharmaceutic companies for decade to test whether their product , such as their vaccinum , are free from bacterial contamination . Wild populations of Atlantic shoe crab have longbeen under pressurethanks to their moneymaking roue , lead conservationists to press pharmaceutical companies to opt for human - made alternative .

The disputation has recently been given more fuel due to foretell demand for crab blood in the development of Covid-19 vaccines , according toThe New York Times . After all , rolling out a Covid-19 vaccine would mean millions , if not billions , of vaccinum to undergo endotoxin examination .

Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition ( HCRC)–which includes the National Wildlife Federation , Defenders of Wildlife , and many other conservation organizations – has recently called on pharmaceutical companies to switch to a semisynthetic equivalent weight called recombinant Factor C ( rFC ) .

“ It is inauspicious that biomedical enquiry still relies on the harvest of a vulnerable wild animal universe when there is a simple , effective , sustainable refilling that could survive in plentiful supply , ” Ryan Phelan , co - founder and executive director of Revive & Restore , say in astatement .

While the wallop of profligate harvest time on the wild Atlantic horseshoe crab populations is quarrel , theIUCN Red Liststates the species is currently vulnerable to extinction and continue to   reject . The species can be find off much of the Atlantic coast of America , from the Mexican coastal regions of Yucatán Quintana Roo to   the US coast as far north as Maine and New Hampshire .

Despite their name , they are not actually crabby person or even crustacean but go to a radical get laid as Xiphosura that has scarce alter in hundreds of trillion of year . The early dodo shoe crabs are roughly 450 million years old , signify these unusual creatures were around 200 million yearsbefore the dinosaurs .

They ’ve managed to survive a smattering of quenching events , but could humans be their precipitation ? It ’s incertain for now , but the few years in advance will sure turn up the hotness on   this vulnerable species .