- [Coyote] Mark.
- [Mark] What's wrong?
- Are you ready to see an alien?
(suspenseful music)
- [Coyote Voiceover] Like clockwork, it's a guarantee
that twice a day the tide will rise and the tide will fall.
As it recedes, we have all learned that an incredible world
of underwater marine animals become temporarily exposed,
allowing any curious adventurer the opportunity to find
and admire all sorts of bizarre creatures.
In Harpswell, Maine, we came across one animal
that we had been hoping to feature on Beyond The Tide
since the series launched.
But before we get to that alien-looking water beast,
let's take a look at something
that is going to make your skin crawl.
- Dude, Mark.
Come here, check this out.
- [Mark] What is it?
- Dude, this grass is, like, full of little tiny fleas
or something jumping.
Look at that.
Woah, I'm standing--
Oh, jeez.
Look at that.
Listen.
- [Mark] You hear that?
- [Coyote] That's like popcorn.
- [Mark] Sounds like rain.
- [Coyote] I think those are sand fleas, let me grab one.
- [Mark] Does he bite?
- [Coyote] Uhh, I believe so.
All fleas, as far as I know, bite.
I can't grab one, they're too small and fast.
Jeez, jumping all over me.
Here, come over here, look at this.
Let me check this grass, this might be better.
Point your camera down right here.
This is the exact same sort of seaweed, dried up seaweed.
Ah, see, look at that.
I just stepped on 'em and they're everywhere.
Watch, ready?
One, two.
Oh my gosh!
Look at that!
- [Mark] Put your hand in there.
- [Coyote] Put my hand in there?
Alright here, let me peel back some more.
(insects rapidly jumping)
- [Mark] What's that like?
- [Coyote] That feels really weird,
but they're not biting me.
They're just jumping on me.
Here, let me peel back this a little bit more.
Look at that.
- [Mark] There are, like, millions of them.
- [Coyote] Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
(insects rapidly jumping)
Got one.
Look, look, look.
Right there, you see his little head sticking out?
I believe that's a sand flea.
That is creepy.
Alright, note to self, don't lay on this beach.
I'm just gonna disperse some of this dead seaweed back out
and cover up the sand flea city.
I've never seen anything like that.
Millions upon millions of sand fleas.
Alright, let's head this way down the coastline
and see what else we can find.
- [Coyote Voiceover] As we continued down the coastline,
we soon realized it was unlike any low tide scenario
we had explored before.
I carefully examined potential hiding spots
where animals may be waiting for the tide to return,
but so far, beside from thousands of fleas,
I wasn't seeing a single living creature.
The sun was getting low in the sky,
when all of a sudden our luck took the perfect turn
and put us right in the midst
of an animal we had always hoped to get up close
for the cameras.
- Oh, it's a turtle.
Oh no, it's a horseshoe crab.
- What?
- Look at this.
- [Mark] Is it alive?
- Oh, it is alive, look at that.
Wow, I thought that was a turtle.
Oh my gosh, I just saw the lump,
I thought it was a carapace.
Alright, let's do this.
I'm gonna gently lift it up out of the grasses here.
Let's see, oh, it's strong.
Look at that, wow. - What an alien.
- Look at its tail go.
Here, back up a little bit so I'm not sitting in the water.
Woah, look at that, oh my goodness.
That is a horseshoe crab.
What a bizarre-looking creature.
Now you may be thinking,
Coyote, is that thing going to pinch
and bite you like crazy?
No, they actually just have a little tiny mouth
right in the center.
And they have no stinger, no fangs, no teeth.
Look at that back tail there.
Now, they've gotten a bad reputation because of the tail.
People think that that's venomous.
It actually is not.
Ow, ow, ow, but the side little spikes there
are definitely very, very spiny.
Let me see if I can get it to just
lay in the palm of my hand.
Oh, that feels really, really creepy.
Now it's called a horseshoe crab,
but it's not actually related to crabs at all.
It's more closely related to spiders and scorpions.
This is one large arthropod.
Now, wait, it is pinching me a little bit.
They do have these front pedipalps up front
that they use to harvest food off of the basin of the ocean.
Wow, I am so excited right now.
Hold on, I gotta compose myself because I did not think
we were gonna come across a horseshoe crab out here.
Now if you look straight on,
where it gets the name, horseshoe crab,
let me hold it like that.
Looks just like a horseshoe, right?
- [Mark] Totally.
- And if you look right at the front of the face there,
you see these little spots?
Those are compound eyes.
Actually, this animal has nine eyes in total.
The two right here,
five light-sensing eyes on top of its carapace,
and then on the underside, two simple eyes
that they actually use to kind of sense their environment.
And scientists think that the eyes on the underside
are actually just leftover
from when they were in a larva stage.
- [Mark] So wait, those are eyes on the top of that?
- [Coyote] Yes.
And it actually looks like a face, doesn't it?
You see that?
- [Mark] I always thought that that was just a helmet,
like a shell protection.
- Well the top of this animal is called the carapace,
just like a lot of other arthropod species.
This is a very dense, very hard exoskeleton.
They don't actually have an endoskeleton,
you know, bones and cartilage like a human.
But on the underside, look at that.
Looks just like a scorpion or a spider.
- [Mark] Woh, can I touch the top of it?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally safe.
- Is it tough? Oh, wow.
- Yup, exoskeleton.
- It's just like a turtle shell actually.
- Yeah, well I thought it was a turtle
when we first walked up.
And look, you've got some sort of a barnacle growing
up on top of it.
It's covered in a little bit of algae and seaweed.
Now here's something that you may not know.
It's something very cool.
Let me turn it like this
and just hold it in the palm of my hand.
That is me holding a living fossil.
The ancestors of the horseshoe crab have been on the planet
for over 450 million years.
And this species right here is the Atlantic horseshoe crab.
There's only four horseshoe crab species in the world.
This is the only one that can be found off the coast
of the United States.
And this one specifically, this design,
the Atlantic horseshoe crab has not changed
in over 230 million years.
That dates back to the Triassic Period.
So this creature was crawling around on the basin
of the ocean during the time of the dinosaurs.
How cool is that?
Now they do get quite a bit bigger than this
and I'm guessing this is a female.
The females are about 25% larger than the males.
Wow, it's almost impossible to hold on to.
Look at the underside.
- [Mark] It does look like a stinger.
- It does, and that's why people are afraid of these things.
They think they're gonna get stung.
Look at this, nope.
This tail is actually just used like a rudder,
although it does have all these barbs.
It's very intimidating, but it cannot hurt you at all.
In fact, if a horseshoe crab gets flipped
on its back like that,
see, it tries to right itself up?
It actually can't.
And that's a big misnomer that these arthropods are capable
of flipping themselves back over.
There's actually a conservation effort
that was launched in the 80s called Just Flip 'Em.
And the Just Flip 'Em concept is that if you're walking
down the beach and you see a horseshoe crab
that's flipped on its back like this,
from, like, a crashing of a wave,
what you're supposed to do is just gently grab the carapace
and flip it right-side up.
Now, you don't wanna pick it up by its tail
because you can actually injure the animal
if you hold it like that.
Look at that, Mark, it's coming right toward you.
- [Mark] Do they ever come on land for anything
or are they just purely aquatic?
- Well, between June and August,
they come very close to shore to breathe.
And the way that they do that is
the female will kind of nestle down in the rocks
and the male will come in and latch himself
onto the back of the female.
Horseshoe crabs can breathe underwater or out of the water
because a lot of the time when breeding's taking place,
sometimes they're caught as the tide goes out too quickly
and it can actually breathe air.
Wow, I have really wanted to feature a horseshoe crab
on Beyond The Tide
and it's kind of being in the right place at the right time
that we came across one of these giants.
Look at that thing.
That's as big as my face is.
Woah, I do have to watch out for that tail though.
I don't wanna get stabbed in the eye by it.
Well, how cool is this?
Coming across one of the most bizarre creatures
you can ever stumble upon in the tide pools,
the horseshoe crab.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave.
Stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.
Alright, let's let her back off into the ocean.
- [Coyote Voiceover] Despite its angry appearance,
intimidating spike tail,
and creepy set of legs and pinchers,
the horseshoe crab is one of the friendliest marine animals
you can stumble upon.
If you see one in the wild,
simply admire it from a respectful distance.
If you see one flipped on its back,
have no fear when it comes to picking the animal up
and gently setting it back into the water.
If you thought getting face-to-face
with the horseshoe crab was fascinating,
make sure you go back and check out the time
we encountered an octopus.
And don't forget, subscribe, so you can join me and the crew
on our next Beyond The Tide adventure.
- And one really cool feature about the octopus
is its ability to camouflage with its environment.