Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids from
Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take
questions from curious kids just like you, and we find answers.
If you've been listening for a while, you already know we love
field trips at But Why, when we get out of the podcast studio
I've created in my closet and go somewhere cool to make an
episode. Earlier this month, we got the chance to go to the
ocean to learn more about a very unique creature, one that's been
around since way before humans. In fact, this creature has been
alive and living mostly like it does today for well over 400
million years, and we got to go see them! So to get you in the
mood for the episode, as we get started, I want you to close
your eyes and imagine you're along on this field trip with
us.
We're on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. If you've never
heard of Cape Cod or you can't picture it, see if you can find
a map of the United States. All right, I guess you can open your
eyes for that. Cape Cod is out at the eastern tip of
Massachusetts, and it's shaped kind of like how your arm would
look if you bent it up to show off your bicep muscles. We're
heading out to a beach not far from where your elbow would
be--just above your elbow, but not near your wrist. It's a
little too early to swim; the water is really cold, although
it's always pretty cold in this part of the Atlantic Ocean. But
it's a beautiful, sunny day, and when we arrive, it's almost high
tide, and we can see what look, from afar, kind of like big
rocks in the water. But as we get closer, we realize those
rocks are moving. Some of them are in the shallow water, and
some of them are already up on the sandy shore. But these
aren't rocks. They've got long spikes for tails, and although
some of them are covered with barnacles and mussel shells,
they're very much alive themselves. They're horseshoe
crabs!
Benicio: I'm Benicio. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm
nine years old. Why are horseshoe crabs called horse
shoe?
Amir: My name is Amir. I'm nine years old, and I live in
Limerick, Ireland. My question is: why are horseshoe crabs
called horseshoe crabs?
Eva Rose: Hi, my name is Eva Rose, and I'm eight years old,
and live in Vancouver, Canada. Why are horseshoe crabs called
horseshoe crabs if they don't look like crabs?
Jane: You've sent us a lot of horseshoe crab questions, so
it's a good thing we've met up with a scientist who studies
these incredible arthropods, because she can answer them all.
Sara Grady: I'm Sara Grady. I'm the senior coastal ecologist for
Mass Audubon. We are at a little tucked away beach.
Jane: I see what looks like a little hump of something heading
towards the shore. Is that a horseshoe crab?
Sara Grady: That is a horseshoe crab. They're coming into the
shore as the tide is coming in, so that they can lay their eggs.
Jane: And that's what we're here to see. So that's very exciting
to me. Is it exciting to you as a horseshoe crab expert?
Sara Grady: It's always very exciting. What's most exciting
is when you see a pair of them, because they form these pairs of
a female and a male, and they walk around together.
Jane: Oh, wait, there's three here.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yeah. So they this is a pair of crabs. So
there's a larger crab in the front, that's the female, and
then there's a smaller crab in the back that is a male, and
then there's a second male that has been attracted to the action
that's going on and is trying to maybe get involved.
Jane: Just to be clinical about this, the horseshoe crabs are
mating, and it's how they make more horseshoe crabs.
Sara Grady: So what happens is the female will dig a nest, and
actually, that female is doing that right now, so she's digging
in the sand. She's going to lay her eggs, and then they're going
to move forward a little bit, and then the male will fertilize
those eggs, and in about two weeks, those eggs will hatch
out.
Jane: I read that a female horseshoe crab can lay 80 to
100,000 eggs a year.
Sara Grady: Yep, yep. They are pretty much a walking box of
eggs, actually. And the eggs are a really beautiful, greenish
blue color. They're very tiny, about two millimeters, so about
the size of maybe the end of a pencil lead. And yeah, they lay
them in little clusters in the sand.
Jane: So the female is moving forward right now, apparently
dragging both of these males. So she she's already laid some
eggs?
Sara Grady: She may have laid some eggs already. Yeah, yep.
Jane: There looks like there's another male coming along for
the chase now.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yes. There are usually a lot more males than
females. So if there's a female, she almost always has a male
attached to her, and then there will be other males that are
coming along for the ride.
Jane: I see another male over there. It's like they're all
racing to get to this one female.
Sara Grady: Yes, yeah. And when we see a pair that is not buried
in the sand, we can pick them up, and I can show you.
Jane: There might be a pair over there.
We waited in the shallows to where we saw two crabs scuttling
towards the edge of the water. Sara picked one up so we could
get a better look at this unique creature.
Sara Grady: The crab has three parts to its body. So it has
this front rounded part, it's called the prosoma. And then
this part here, this sort of, I don't know, trapezoid shaped
part, is called the opisthosoma, and it has these little spines
on the side. And then this long, pointy part the tail is called
the telson. So they have these three body parts.
Jane: One of the main questions that we've gotten from kids is,
why are horseshoe crabs called horseshoe crabs?
Ivy: My name is Ivy. I'm six years old. I live in Gilbert,
Arizona. And why does horseshoe crab start with a horseshoe?
Jack: My name is Jack. I'm seven years old, and I live in
Belfort, Pennsylvania. Where do horseshoe crabs get their name?
Sara Grady: Well, if you look at the front shape of the horseshoe
crab, it looks like a horseshoe. It's a U shape, and that's
that's it, yeah.
Jane: And the horseshoe part that, that big armored part
really helps protect a lot of their organs, right?
Sara Grady: Yeah. So they're really well protected both on
the back of their shell, the formal name being a carapace,
for the crab. They're also really well protected
underneath, for the most part. If you look on the underside,
they have all of these different claws here, and they're
different on a male in particular. So we know that this
is a male horseshoe crab because his front claws look like boxing
gloves. So those are called boxer claws, and then the rest
look like scissors. If this was a female, all of the claws would
look like scissors. They also have these special rear claws
that actually are more like ski poles,
Jane: Yeah, they have like five little appendages that come out
of it. These are wild looking!
Sara Grady: Yeah. So this, you know, just like a hiking pole or
a ski pole, helps the crab push themselves forward as they walk
Jane: How many claws does one crab need?
across the mud, and then these two tiny claws here are called
chelicerae, and that's how they push their food into their
mouth. So this is the horseshoe crab's mouth, this spiky hole
here. So they use these claws to kind of push stuff down in there
so that they can eat it.
Sara Grady: I know, right? So let's see. Let's count them. So
we've got our two special front claws on the male. Then we've
got another 1, 2, 3, on each side, so we're up to eight. And
then we've got these pusher claws. So that brings it up to
10, right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and these little tiny
ones don't really count. So, yeah, 10 claws. Their most
sensitive part are these flaps here, which are their gills.
Jane: So the reason they're called horseshoe crabs is
somewhat self explanatory. The main carapace looks like a
horseshoe. But why are they called crabs? They're not really
crabs, are they?
Sara Grady: Right, well, most people, I think, when they see
something that has claws and is walking around in the ocean,
will think that it is a crab of some sort. Most crabs that you
see are going to walk sideways. Horseshoe crabs are walking
forward. They are more closely related to spiders and
scorpions. And in fact, these little claws, if you were to
look up close on a spider, you would also see those on a
spider.
Jane: So they're sort of named crabs, not by mistake, but by
humans just making assumptions.
Sara Grady: Right, right, just like, you know, there are other
marine creatures that are misnamed, like starfish and
jellyfish, neither of which are fish, right?
Jane: Let me just pause here for a second. Did you know that
horseshoe crabs aren't really crabs? I didn't. They're more
closely related to spiders and scorpions, as she said. So we've
been calling them the wrong thing all along. At least we got
the horseshoe part right.
Emilio: My name is Emilio. I'm six years old. I live in
Columbus, Ohio. How did horseshoe crabs live before
dinosaurs, and how are they still alive today?
Jane: How long have horseshoe crabs been alive?
Sara Grady: They've been around for about 450 million years.
Yeah. So they're one of the oldest living creatures walking
around here. Yeah.
Jane: How did they survive that long? How did they survive when
dinosaurs didn't and I mean, what's the secret of the
horseshoe crab?
Sara Grady: There have been a lot of extinctions between the
time that the horseshoe crab evolved and now and they
survived by being tough. And I think really finding the right
body shape. Crabs tend to do really well in general, even the
later crabs in evolution. So it's a good body to have. They
really don't have a lot of natural predators when they're
in the water, and so they can just keep going.
Jane: Does this one need to stay wet?
Sara Grady: That's a great question. So part of coming into
spawn is that they often will end up out of the water, and
they have these special gills called book gills, and they're
almost like the pages of a book. So there's these flaps on top,
but then within each of the tougher flaps, there's pages
almost and so those book gills will allow the crab to breathe
as long as those can stay wet, so the they can pull oxygen out
of the air through the water that's on their book gills.
Jane: So their book gills will stay wet for a little while, at
least, even if they're out.
Sara Grady: Yeah, about two days.
Jane: Oh, that's a long time.
Sara Grady: Yeah. They they're okay for about two days or so.
Of course, when they're on the beach, they are more vulnerable.
A gull--
Jane: Sara, watch out. There's something coming for you, right
behind you. Look out behind you.
Sara Grady: Oh, look what we have right here. Yes, another,
another crab. This one looks a little bigger, so I'm gonna see
maybe it might be a female. Nope, another male.
Jane: One of the other things I notice about this one that
you're holding is that there are some things attached to it,
other shells, other creatures attach themselves to horseshoe
crabs and get a ride.
Sara Grady: Yeah, so they have these slipper shells that are on
the back of the crab. Sometimes they'll have barnacles. This one
has some algae on it. And horseshoe crabs actually have a
flatworm that lives on mostly their gills. It's called a
Limulus leech. Limulus is the genus, scientific name, for
horseshoe crabs, and it only lives on horseshoe crabs, and
it's actually a flatworm. It's not a leech.
Luisa: My name is Luisa. I'm four years old. I want to know
if horseshoe crabs pinch. I'm from Lynn, Pennsylvania.
Jane: Do horseshoe crabs pinch?
Sara Grady: They don't. Nope. I'll show you right now that you
can put your finger right in the claw.
Jane: I'm gonna do it too.
Sara Grady: Yeah, you can pick a claw, any claw, and stick your
finger in there. If you can get it.
Jane: It won't even grab me. It's trying to grab the
microphone. It's like, "What are you doing?"
Sara Grady: Yeah, they're, they're, they're very friendly,
actually. You wouldn't think so, but, but yeah, one of my
favorite things to do, actually, is if you kind of put your hand
right in the middle of them, they kind of will give you a hug
with their claws. Oh, I think it just poked your microphone with
its tail. So one thing I will say, if you are picking up a
horseshoe crab, is they do like to fold in half, so don't put
your fingers between the two halves of the shell, because
that is the one way they can pinch you.
But they're not doing it to be mean.
Jane: Should we be picking up horseshoe crabs? Is it okay to
No, they're just folding in half and you happened to have your
hand in the wrong place.
be picking them up and making them give you a hug?
Sara Grady: That's a really good question. I think if you're
Jane: That's sort of upside down, then.
interested in looking closer at a horseshoe crab, it's a good
idea to pick it up and get to know it a little bit. Make sure
you put it back in the water. Don't ever pick a horseshoe crab
up by its tail. You want to pick it up by the front, by that
rounded horseshoe part, and you can hold it just like a bowl of
cereal in your hand. So that's gonna keep it
Sara Grady: Upside down. And they like to, they like to fold
up in half. So you can just hold the crab like that. And you
don't want to disturb any crabs that are actively mating.
Gray: Hi, I'm Gray. I'm five years old. I live in Wexler,
California. Why do horseshoe crabs have the pointy thing on
the bottom?
Jane: Tell us a little bit about this very long tail on the
horseshoe crab.
Sara Grady: If you imagine that the crab has ended up on its
back and it's stuck on the sand or maybe in a little bit of
water, it needs to kind of pole vault itself back over. So
that's what that tail is for it. It kind of will twist and plant
the end of that in the sand or the mud and flip itself over.
Jane: But it's so long and you're not supposed to pick them
up by it. Do they get ripped off or lost?
Sara Grady: They do sometimes, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it will
get caught and stuff, and then you'll just see they have a
little stub or something like that.
Jane: We know that horseshoe crabs don't pinch but can they
sting you with that tail?
Sara Grady: Nope, nope. They are not gonna sting you. They're not
gonna try to hurt you with that tail. They don't have any sort
of venom or anything like that.
Quinn: My name is Quinn. I'm five years old. I'm from Rocket
Center, New York. What do horseshoe crabs eat?
Jane: What do horseshoe crabs eat?
Sara Grady: They eat a variety of little creatures that live in
the mud.
Jane: So they're carnivores.
Sara Grady: They are, yes, yep. They eat little worms. They will
eat small shrimp, like animals called amphipods, that live in
the mud. And they also will eat small shellfish. And in fact,
that's kind of what got horseshoe crabs in trouble for a
while with people, because everybody thought that the
horseshoe crabs, especially on Cape Cod where we are, were
eating all of their clams, and they got really upset with the
horseshoe crabs. And you could actually kill the horseshoe
crabs, and you would take their tail to the town hall and they
would pay you a nickel.
Jane: Wow.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yep. So they do eat some little clams and
things like that, but it's not a huge part of their diet.
Jane: So now we know they're not actually eating all the clams
that the humans would like to be eating?
Sara Grady: Yes, that's right, yeah.
Jane: What eats horseshoe crabs?
Sara Grady: Not a lot. But something that's really
important that they do is feed migratory shorebirds. So when
horseshoe crabs lay their eggs, not all of the eggs end up
buried under the sand where they're going to turn into new
horseshoe crabs. Instead, some of them end up closer to the
surface, and there they can provide lots of food for shore
birds like the red knot, which is a bird that migrates all the
way from Argentina, from the Tierra del Fuego, way way south,
all the way up to the Arctic.
Jane: Shall we look at some more horseshoe crabs and put this guy
back and let him get on with the process of finding someone to
mate with?
Sara Grady: Sure, sounds good.
Jane: Coming up: we know what horseshoe crabs eat and what
eats them. But do we eat horseshoe crabs? And if not, why
are people catching them?
BREAK: BREAK
Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids. I'm Jane
Lindholm. We're on a field trip to Cape Cod with scientist Sara
Grady, a coastal ecologist who works with Mass Audubon. Sara is
teaching us all about horseshoe crabs and answering the many
questions you sent in for us to ask her. In the spring, you can
sometimes find these arthropods--who, remember,
aren't really crabs at all--close to shore. They
usually live a little deeper out, spending most of their
lives on the sea floor, away from human eyes. But in May and
June, they gather in big groups at the edge of the water to mate
and lay eggs. You can see them all up and down the eastern
coast of the United States, and the best time to spot them
mating is high tide, when there's a full moon or a new
moon. On the day we were visiting Cape Cod to see them,
there was a citizen science project going on where
volunteers were counting as many crabs as they could to try to
keep tabs on how these ancient arthropods are doing. As we were
talking, we spotted a whole bunch of horseshoe crabs in the
shallows around our feet. They actually seemed pretty curious
about us.
Here's the whole train of them here.
Sara Grady: I just want to show you, we'll put these right back,
but I can pick them all up at once.
Jane: She's so much bigger than the male.
Sara Grady: She's very big. Yes.
Jane: How big do they get?
Sara Grady: Well, the biggest ones are down in Delaware Bay.
They get bigger as you go south toward that area, and then they
get smaller again as you go down toward the Gulf of Mexico. They
can be over a foot across, plus. Yeah.
Jane: So this one's big, but she's not big by...
Sara Grady: Shes pretty big. She's pretty big for horseshoe
crabs in Massachusetts. I'm gonna put these three back. And
as you notice, the tide has come in since we've been talking,
yeah, so that's what they're following, the incoming tide.
Jane: So why do they want to lay their eggs up here, sometimes it
looks like not totally out of the water, but and sometimes out
of the water here up at high tide?
Sara Grady: Well, it's a place where, once those eggs are
buried in the sand, they won't get washed away as often, right?
So if they were to make their little nest under the water,
every time there was a wave, it would be kind of messing that
nest up. This way, it's up at the edge of the water, and the
water will get there, but not as often. And they also in places,
especially like, again, down in the mid Atlantic, they really
prefer to lay their eggs around the highest high tides. So those
would be the tides that occur when we have a new or full moon,
called a spring tide. And so that way that nest isn't going
to really have water on it for two weeks, which is just about
the amount of time it takes for the eggs to hatch.
Jane: How tiny are the babies when they hatch? What do they
look like?
Sara Grady: They are called trilobite larvae, and they look
like a mini horseshoe crab. They're only, again, I mean,
they're just a little bit bigger than the egg they were in, so
they're only about two or three millimeters across, and they
look exactly like a tiny horseshoe crab, except they
don't have a tai. And the reason they don't have a tail is it's
usually not a good idea to have something sharp and pointy
inside your egg.
Jane: True. I hadn't thought about that.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yeah. So grow that part once you're, you know,
safe outside the egg.
Jude: Hi. My name is Jude, and I'm five years old, and I live
in Vancouver, Canada. Do humans eat horseshoe crabs?
Jane: Do humans ever eat horseshoe crabs?
Sara Grady: Not really. There's a very small market for eating
the eggs. Very, very small, just like, you know, if you've ever
ordered sushi with fish eggs on the outside or something like
that, it's similar to that, but that's mostly the Asian
horseshoe crabs. It's not like we're exporting American
horseshoe crab eggs to to Asia.
Jane: However, humans do capture horseshoe crabs and kill them
and use them. Why are horseshoe crabs important to humans?
Sara Grady: So right now, there are two reasons that horseshoe
crabs are harvested. One of them is for bait, and that's for the
whelk fishery. So a whelk is a giant snail, and
Jane: Which people do eat.
Sara Grady: Which they do eat, Yes, yep. And there's a market
for that. And so they love the smell of horseshoe crabs,
especially horseshoe crab eggs, so females will catch more
whelks. And so there's an industry for collecting
horseshoe crabs for bait. Fortunately, you're no longer
allowed to harvest horseshoe crabs while they are spawning,
which is going to help the population grow. The other
reason that horseshoe crabs are harvested is for their blood. So
horseshoe crab blood has a very special property there. They
have a really sensitive immune system, and so anytime any sort
of bacteria gets into a horseshoe crab, if you can
imagine the horseshoe crab getting a cut through that big
shell, it's able to immediately form a clot around that wound
and seal it up. And people discovered that you could
actually take that blood and get that particular chemical from
their immune system and use that to detect whether something had
bacteria in it. So, if you had a company and your job was making
things like saline that they, you know, you put in an IV or
maybe a vaccine, before you had to test to see if it had
bacteria in it or was contaminated by injecting it
into a rabbit and waiting to see if the rabbit got a fever. Now,
this compound from horseshoe crab blood, a small amount of it
can be used to test whether that is sterile. So that's been
really helpful, and there's an effort to find a synthetic
alternative so that horseshoe crabs don't have to be harvested
at all for that purpose.
Jane: When you say synthetic, you mean a human made version
that doesn't require killing any horseshoe crabs to get it.
Sara Grady: Exactly.
Jane: To take the horseshoe crab blood, crabs are captured and
some of their blood is drained out. The crabs are then put back
in the water. But not all of them survive that whole
procedure, so researchers are trying to figure out how to make
sure the crabs are treated fairly, and, as Sara mentioned,
they're trying to find ways to make a chemical that does what
the horseshoe blood does, so they don't need to endanger the
crabs at all.
Hazel: My name is Hazel. I'm eight years old. I live in
Gilbert, Arizona. My question is: what color is horseshoe
crabs blood?
Sara Grady: Their blood is blue. Yeah, it's a sort of a sky blue
color, I suppose, a lighter blue, and that is because the
molecule that's used to carry oxygen in horseshoe crab blood
is based on copper. It's called hemocyanin. And it's kind of
like the hemoglobin that's in our blood. So we have red blood
cells, our blood is red, and that molecule in our blood has
iron in the middle. So Jane, what color does iron turn when
it's exposed to oxygen?
Jane: Rusty red.
Sara Grady: Yeah. And what color does copper turn when it gets
too much oxygen?
Jane: Kind of a blue, which is confusing, because if you see a
penny, you think it's a copper color, which is like an orangy
metallic. But if you've ever seen a copper roof, after a long
time, it's kind of a sea blue.
Sara Grady: Yeah or the Statue of Liberty.
Jane: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yep. So that's why their blood is blue.
Jane: So are horseshoe crab populations in trouble?
Sara Grady: It depends on the place, and a lot of places they
have been over harvested, and a lot of people have worked hard
to try to protect them.
Jane: So what's the status now?
Sara Grady: They are increasing in some places, stable in others
and then there are other places where they have declined. So
it's kind of all over the place. Horseshoe crabs take about 12
years between the time that they hatch out to the time that they
come back to the beach to lay their eggs. And so that means
that anything that's done to protect them when they're laying
their eggs, we're not gonna see if the protections worked really
well until those crabs grow up and come back.
Sophie: My name is Sophie. I'm five years old. I live in
Delmont, Pennsylvania. How long can horseshoe crabs live?
Jane: So 12 years until they are adults, essentially, until
they're mature and can make new horseshoe crab babies. How long
do they live in total?
Sara Grady: It's hard to know, because unlike something like a
fish or like even a clam or a tree, you can't cut it and count
rings or count layers on various bones. They don't have bones
like that. So we have to kind of go by size, and also, to some
degree, by the things that are growing on the shell can also be
used to kind of get somewhat of an age.
Jane: You mean, like, you'd be like, "Look, dude, you have that
barnacle. That barnacle is at least seven years old, which
means you must be even older."
Sara Grady: That's right. "You've had that jewelry for a
long time."
Jane: But I thought horseshoe crabs molted and got rid of
their shells.
Sara Grady: The molting slows down once they become mature, so
they can live up to about 25, 30 years, we think, yeah.
Jane: And how often do they molt in a lifetime?
Sara Grady: Oh, it's about 15 times.
Jane: So they get a new shell 15 or 16 times. But most of that is
when they're really young.
Sara Grady: Yeah, they molt six times in their first year, yep.
And they grow from being, you know, about the size of a kind
of a dull pencil lead, all the way up to being bigger than a
quarter.
Jane: Wow, in one year. That's a lot. I mean, it still sounds
pretty small, but if you're a crab, that's a lot of growth.
Sara Grady: Yeah, yeah, yep.
Jane: There's like, a ton of them over there.
Sara Grady: All right, let's keep moving. Oh, here's a pair
that's actually buried in.
Jane: Oh, yeah, wow.
Sara Grady: So she came in, she's dug this nest, she's
laying the eggs, and then they'll probably leave in about
an hour.
Jane: So they're out here on the very edge, where we can see them
right now, and there are so many of them. So cool, because I
never see horseshoe crabs, and I'm amazed. But where are they
normally?
Sara Grady: Well, when it's not time for spawning, they stay in
the deeper water, and they're just out there eating. Because
they're cold blooded, they do slow down in the wintertime, so
they'll kind of dig into the mud and stay there, and that's
actually when they get a lot of the barnacles and things on
them, because they pretty much turn into a rock for a while.
Jane: We figured we'd better let the crabs get on with their
mating and spawning. But I had to get Sara to do one more thing
while I had a microphone in her face. Sara has written a whole
song about horseshoe crabs. It's a specific type of song called a
sea shanty, and I sprung it on her as a surprise that I knew
about the song, and wanted to see if she remembered enough to
still be able to sing a verse.
Sara Grady: [SINGING] A little bird called the red knot can fly
so far, yes, quite a lot. From South America to the Arctic on
their migration. While they fly, they stop to rest. They think
that horseshoe crab eggs are best. For getting fat and
bulking up and reaching satiation. Feeding this little
bird is quite important, I'm sure you've heard. How these two
animals are strongly linked together. Their blood is blue.
That's because of copper. It clots up as an infection
stopper...it...[laughs]
Jane: I was liking that verse,
Sara Grady: oh yeah, I can't remember.
Jane: That was great. Yay yay yay. Clap.
I've had that song in my head ever since we got Sara to sing
it. Thanks to Dr. Sara Grady, senior coastal ecologist with
Mass Audubon, for sharing her deep knowledge of horseshoe
crabs with us. We're going to put some videos on our YouTube
channel and social media channels if you want to see what
these crabs look like. If you're lucky enough to see a horseshoe
crab, observe them very carefully. They are wild
animals, and they deserve to be treated with respect. They're
not afraid of people, and they may come right up to you.
Remember, they don't pinch and that tail doesn't have any venom
or any way to sting you. If you want to pick one up, though, be
very careful. Hold it like a bowl of cereal, and don't put
your fingers in between the two segments of the body, because
when they fold, you can get your fingers stuck where their body
parts hinge. And don't keep them out of the water for too long.
Put them back in when you're done observing, and make sure
they're not on their backs. And if you live near the coast,
there may be a survey happening near you. Have your adults help
you check with your state and local wildlife organizations to
see if you can get involved in horseshoe crab conservation
efforts.
That's it for this episode. If you have a question about
anything, have an adult record you asking it. It's easy to do
on a smartphone using an app like voice memos. If you are too
shy to talk or can't use your voice, you can always have an
adult email us a written question, and we can use that
too. Be sure to tell us your first name, where you live and
how old you are. Then have your adult email the file to
questions@butwykids.org. But Why is produced by Melody Bodette,
Sarah Baik, and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public and
distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo. Check
out our YouTube series, But Why Bites. We put out a short,
bite-sized video episode every other Friday, and we're about to
put one out about horseshoe crabs. Our theme music is by
Luke Reynolds. If you like But Why, please like and comment
wherever you listen and share with your friends. It really
helps other people discover us. And if you really like But Why,
you can get a But Why T-shirt, a But Why water bottle and other
cool swag at our website, butwhykids.org. We'll be back in
two weeks with an all new episode. Until then, stay
curious.