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The horseshoe crabs are valuable because their blood can be manufactured into limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, that is used to detect pathogens in indispensable medicines such as injectable antibiotics.

Dr. Bicknell and his colleagues compared this ancient brain structure with that of Limulus polyphemus, a horseshoe crab species still found along the Atlantic coast, and noticed remarkable similarity.

Last summer, as coronavirus infection rates continued to rise, a group of researchers from Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Roche-Genentechpublished a research report that compared the two products — limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, which is made from horseshoe crab blood, and the synthetic product, called recombinant Factor C assay, or rFC.

The copper-based blood of the horseshoe crab contains the most sensitive indicator of bacteria ever discovered, limulus amoebocyte lysate.

When it’s over, the beach is littered with the helmet-shaped carcasses of Limulus polyphemus and trillions of its greenish eggs.