"'cause they're ugly!" - Part I

          I suppose that if any animal in the world should have an inferiority complex it might as well be the horseshoe crab.  You would think that a creature that has been around for considerably longer than Tyrannosaurus rex or bad customer service from commercial airlines would get some respect.  Alas, such is not the case.
            I suspect that part of the reason most people have a somewhat diffident attitude towards Limulus is because of their looks.  “Cute” is probably not the first word you think of in any face-to-face encounter with a horseshoe crab.  “Cute” is a word normally assigned to soft, furry critters like koala bears and those ever-present kittens on non-stop web cams.  Young kids and old ladies especially love cuddly creatures ‘cause you can turn them into stuffed animals or post pictures of them around the foyer of your house.  But, a picture of a horseshoe crab – no way, José!
          Dr. Jane Brockmann tells the story of the time when she was on a beach in Delaware.  As she was sitting there observing horseshoe crabs, she noticed a man and a woman walking down the beach.  The tide was coming in and a pair of horseshoe crabs (in some serious amplexis) began to crawl up out of the water.  The man walks over and looks at the spawning pair.  He then sees a nearby board, picks it up, and slams the animals as hard as he can…not once, but two or three times.  Brockmann was so taken by surprise and so incensed that she shot up and cried, “Why’d you do that?”  He turned to her, a look of defiance on his face, and replied, "’cuz they’re ugly."
          Imagine walking down the street in your town and some beefy motorcyclist comes up to you and slugs you right in the face with a good right hook.  After sufficiently recovering, you ask the heavily-tattooed individual, “Why the hell did you do that?”  And the heavily-tattooed individual replies, “’cuz you’re ugly.”  Really messes up your day!
          Throughout the research for the book Horseshoe Crab: Biography of a Survivor there was one question I would pose to almost every scientist, marine biologist, environmentalist, horseshoe crab enthusiast, or researcher.  That was, “Why should the average person care about horseshoe crabs?” or “Why should someone in the Midwest or on the West Coast care about horseshoe crabs when they are exclusively an East Coast species (specifically Limulus polyphemus)?”  I was particularly curious as to why folks in Minnesota or New Mexico or Oregon should have any kind of interest in this enigmatic creature when there were none around their “neck of the woods” for them to see.
            In almost every instance, the answer came back the same – “Because they are so much a part of our lives!”