The Food Web_ Shorebirds and Horseshoe Crab Eggs

Hi, I'm Jared. Welcome to Fun Science Demos here on location on the sunny, sandy beaches of Delaware. Take a look. What do you see? It looks like we're being invaded by horseshoe crabs. Not really. The big idea today is that horseshoe crabs lay eggs. But that's only part of a bigger story. If you take a look behind me, you'll see lots of seagulls and shorebirds. What do you think they're doing? They're eating. They're looking for food. What are they eating? Horseshoe crab eggs. So these red knots and other shorebirds eat these horseshoe crab eggs. What do they look like? Well, the horseshoe crabs come up onto the beach where they dig into the sand and the female horseshoe crabs lay their eggs. What kind of eggs? Take a look. We're going to zoom in so you can see what horseshoe crab eggs look like. These tiny green eggs are horseshoe crab eggs. Green eggs and sand all clumped together. These eggs will be buried under the sand about 10 centimeters and they're only a few millimeters big. Some of these horseshoe crab eggs will come to the surface where shorebirds will eat them. And some of the eggs will get washed into the bay where other animals will eat them. And some of the eggs will even turn Kind of seems like everything's connected, huh? Well, scientists call it all of that connectedness. The food web. There's a very special type of bird that makes a long, long trip and that bird needs those horseshoe crab eggs for the energy to make that trip. What kind of bird is it? The red knot. Wonder why they call it the red knot? Take a close look. It's red. So what kind of trip does that red knot make? Take a look at this. The red knot starts out in the southern tip of South America and it flies all the way up to the Arctic. The red knot starts in the southern tip of South America and flies for about 2,000 miles where it makes its first stop. And then it flies 7,000 more miles until it comes right here in Delaware so it can eat all the horseshoe crab eggs that are all over this beach. It gets enough energy to make its final flight up to the Arctic. 10,000 miles. If you want to learn more about horseshoe crabs, there are green eggs in the sand, and shorebirds in the food web, check out our links in the video description or check out this book, Horseshoe Crab Shorebirds the Story of the Food Web by Victoria Crenson. Science is so cool, so are green eggs in sand. Thanks for watching!