Hi fellow Hiveians,
The other day we got to check out some really awesome creatures that we were not expecting at all!
These creatures, horseshoe crabs, have been around for a hell of a long time! I think I read somewhere that they existed when the dinosaurs were roaming the planet (whenever that was, more on that if you'd like!) so they have maintained a presence through some crazy stuff.
I've always seen them dead on the beaches around us but we went out one day looking to do some fishing and I found this spot that I thought was fresh water but it ended up being salt water. It worked out though, we had some fun roaming around and we saw quite a few of these things! The horseshoe crabs are pretty wild to see, I wasn't sure what the heck was in the water for a moment until I realized what it was. I don't know specifically what part of the picture one is in below but we took it because there was one or two in there.
This picture here though you can see it perfectly! What was really interesting was that it was spawning season for them when we were out so it was a perfect time to check them out.
We had to be careful of ones that looked like this! The bigger one is the female and the smaller one is the male. The male attaches to the females tail thing and they just float along together. One of the people that was in the area with us was telling us that the female will roam around the ground until she finds a suitable spot to lay her eggs. The male will then fertilize all the eggs and they will go their separate ways. It was really awesome to see the spawning season of these creatures.
The little man had a lot of fun helping me try to grab one of the males! I was very careful not to hurt it as well as not get myself hurt. The tail is apparently very sharp but thankfully not poisonous. All I could think of was Steve Irwin (RIP bro! LOL) and the barb that killed him from the stingray. Didn't want that to happen to me so I maintained a healthy distance between my body and that dagger on it's tail!
What I found the most interesting was that medical science uses the horseshoe crabs here for research. I vaguely remembered hearing that many years ago but they were explaining to us that the crabs blood was very helpful in doing research for things and it costs $18,000 a pint of it! That's insane! Obviously the species is probably highly protected in the wild so that people don't try to just harvest them for their blood but in the particular area we were in, nobody was interested in capturing one that we could see. We were all enjoying seeing these little dinosaurs and watching them go along their way. The little man had a bit of fun capturing them on the mud and trying to pick them up, safely and gently of course, before giving up. We've had a lot of fun enjoying these completely random encounters and opportunities to learn things while we are just going about our normal day. Without our son, would we have done something like this? Hard to say but probably not! Kids are a wonderful thing for us adults to get in touch with the inner child and get back to learning things instead of just being in a rhythm all the time.
What about you? What have you stumbled upon that you weren't expecting at all but ended up having a lot of fun with and learning about? I'd love to know!
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