With its armored shell, ancient anatomy, and 350-million-year
lineage, the horseshoe crab almost seems too inconspicuous to
stir up controversy. Yet this humble creature is at the very
center of a collision between three completely different
species. For many decades, humans have harvested the horseshoe
crab for use as fishing bait. Since the 1970s, we have also used
horseshoe crab blood for medical purposes. But we may have gone
too far. Horseshoe crab numbers have declined significantly
since the early 1990’s. And, naturally, so did their egg
numbers. This is especially important to a small shorebird that
is a global traveler of the most impressive kind. The red knot
makes one of the longest migrations of any animal — a journey
that takes it from one end of the earth to the other. To
accomplish this feat, it relies on the eggs of the horseshoe
crab. Without these eggs, the red knot is in danger. In the film
Crash: A Tale of Two Species, filmmaker Allison Argo tells the
story of nature’s amazing ability to c