If you were to come across a horseshoe crab for the first time you might think so. With it’s tail that looks like a spear you would think it would use it for a weapon or that it might contain poison.
Actually, horseshoe crabs don’t use the tail as a weapon at all and there is no poison to be found here. The tail which is called a telson is just used to help it navigate and to turn itself back over should it get knocked onto it’s back.
Limulus Polyphemus has also been known as horsefoot, king crab, or saucepan. Some people call the horseshoe crab a “helmet crab”, but this common name is more frequently applied to a true crab, a malacostracan, of the species Telmessus cheiragonus. King crab is also more usually applied to a group of decapod crustaceans.
Limulus means “odd” and Polyphemus refers to the giant in Greek mythology. It is based on the misleading idea that the animal had a single eye.
Former scientific names include Limulus cyclops, Xiphosura americana and Polyphemus occidentalis.
The horseshoe crab or Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) is a marine chelicerate arthropod. Despite its name, it is more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs.
Horseshoe crabs are most commonly found in the Gulf of Mexico and along the northern Atlantic coast of North America. A main area of annual migration is Delaware Bay, although stray individuals are occasionally found in Europe.
The other three species in the family Limulidae are also called horseshoe crabs. The Japanese horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus) is found in the Seto Inland Sea, and is considered an endangered species because of loss of habitat. Two other species occur along the east coast of India: Tachypleus gigas and Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda. All four are quite similar in form and behavior.
I received this picture along with this email a couple of weeks ago. Take a look….
Photo of a horseshoe crab molting
This is the letter that she sent.
“We found a horseshoe crab on the beach (Buckroe Beach in VA) While
observing the crab on the beach it looked very odd. So I took a couple of pictures.
After looking at a number of websites I still cant understand what I am looking at as all the pics on the sites don’t show anything like what I see.
I have recently gotten a email asking if horseshoe crabs are poisonous. While horseshoe crabs can look intimidating they are totally harmless. They cannot bite and their tail is not used for defense, but instead they use it to navigate and to turn themselves upright should they get turned over.
The only defense that a horseshoe crab has against predators is it’s hard shell. What they do is bury themselves in the mud or sand which makes it difficult for predators to turn them over or to get a good hold of them.
This would all depend on the type of horseshoe crab and also the age and where it is from.
There are four known species of horseshoe crabs still in existence; the one that I’m familiar with is the Limulus Polyphemus. This type is found on the entire east coast of North America and in the golf
of Mexico.
These typically get up to 19″ in size and weigh in at about 3 to 5 pounds, at least the ones that I have found. There really isn’t much to these animals and even their shells do not add much to the
weight.
While I’ve never tried horseshoe crab myself, they are edible.
They are served in Asia, although it’s not really all that popular. I’ve been told that they taste a little like king crab. I’m not too sure about that, after all they are more closely related to spiders than to crabs.
Another thing is there is really not much on them to eat. The legs do not get that big, although if you don’t mind working for you meal they are bigger than say crawfish.
I think I’ll keep them off of my menu.