An alien\u2019s bumper car. Weird bulging eyes staring back. No plasma engines. No anti-gravity. Just ten spidery legs you barely see.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been churning the seas for eons. We called it the horseshoe crab<\/em>.<\/p>\n Lazy name. Failure of imagination, really.<\/p>\n The sword on its tail? Fierce-looking, sure. It\u2019s just a rudder. Steer with that, and you\u2019re good. I didn\u2019t know this. Picked one up by the tail, once.<\/p>\n Bad move.<\/p>\n Luckily it swam off. Unscathed.<\/p>\n Before we go further.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider subscribing to help ensure the future of impactful science journalism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It lays soft, pale green blobs of eggs. Red knots eat them. The birds get full. The crab doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n Here is the kicker. The blood? Bright blue. It flags germs like nothing else on Earth.<\/p>\n Limulus polyphemus<\/em>. That\u2019s the name scientists use. Survivor of two mass extinctions. Unchanged for 250 million years.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t improve on perfection, can you?<\/p>\n Or so the joke goes.<\/p>\n Once I saw them mating. Hundreds stormed the shallow end of a high-tide beach. A chaotic swarm. Two or three males clinging tightly to every female.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t romantic. It was biology, raw and loud. The tide came in. They vanished into the deep, ancient rhythm of things we barely understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An alien\u2019s bumper car. Weird bulging eyes staring back. No plasma engines. No anti-gravity. Just ten spidery legs you barely see. They\u2019ve been churning the seas for eons. We called it the horseshoe crab. Lazy name. Failure of imagination, really. The sword on its tail? Fierce-looking, sure. It\u2019s just a rudder. Steer with that, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nScience needs money, too<\/h3>\n
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The blood that saves lives<\/h3>\n