For those who don't know, the blue liquid is their blood
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Why are they draining it in this way? Poor things.
It’s catch and release so they let them go afterwards where they found them. Horseshoe crab blood is an essential biomedical tool that’s saved countless lives.
What are some example uses for the blood? I’m fascinated.
Thanks for the reply too.
It’s an anticoagulant and can detect the smallest traces of endotoxins in medicine. I’m sure I’m missing some details but there are some great medical journals that detail the process and help explain why it’s $60,000 a gallon.
$15.85 per ml, for a more at scale measurement.
How close is this stuff to HP’s Cyan?
With how much those things cost, I wouldn’t be surprised if some horseshoe crab blood was mixed in to really make the color pop.
I just snorted
It is not an anticoagulant, quite the opposite actually. The blood (limulus amoebocyte lysate) will coagulate at the slightest hint of gram-negative bacteria and their endotoxins.
It's most likely a defense mechanism against bacterial infections.
It's widely used in medicine to check for bacterial contamination of injectable pharmaceuticals.
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Where can someone find these horseshoe crabs?
And are they able to be bred in captivity?
Pls respond fast, I’m already driving to home depot to buy the largest above ground pool they have.
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The blood contains a coagulent which clots in the presence of bacterial toxins. It is extracted and used to ensure that medical equipent and stuff such as vaccines are sterile and safe.
The main use is to detect how much endotoxins (proteins that cause our immune system to react) are present in a sample. This is important because we often use bacteria/fungus/yeast to produce medicine and then remove the microorganism from that medicine. This checks for anything left behind in that process, far more sensitive than any other test or machine can do.
If it wasn't for horseshoe crab blood, creating medicine that is safe for injection would be a lot harder and potentially more dangerous.
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Here's a description of the bleeding process:
https://www.horseshoecrab.org/med/bestpractices.html
It's specifically non-fatal:
Bleeding horseshoe crabs to death is not an acceptable practice in the U.S.
The volume of blood taken is actually quite small, as most of the material in the collection jars is anticoagulant.
It may look uncomfortable to us humans, but keep in mind that horseshoe crabs are not human. What's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. Granted, it would be kinda weird to be hoisted from your home by a giant ape and forced into a blood drive. It's done as gently as possible though.
Unfortunately the practice often results in death anyway. 30% die in the process.
It also has unforseen consequences in the food chain, so by all means we should look for alternatives.
Thankfully alternatives already exist .
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Still, I was disappointed to find that a large percentage of released crabs die anyway. Can't find the number, but it's significant. 1/3rd?
Afair estimates put the portion of dead crabs between 10 and 30%. Some might also be unable to reproduce due to the bleeding.
Sadly a lot of the companies harvesting them will just kill and sell them for bait anyways.
Of those that are released, about a third die. Not to say about the decrease in overall fitness, which can lead to them falling prey more easily.
It's obviously a traumatic experience for the animal in the best case scenario and that is going to reflect on their ability to survive in the wild.
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Highest chance of survival/low stress
Edit: many do die still. I don’t want to say it’s safe, just safer
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Obviously didn't read the meme. It's a blueberry milkshake. Everyone knows blood isn't that color.
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People who know know that the crabs survive and are released back into the wild after their "donation"
If horseshoe crabs were to become less economically important, is that a good thing for horseshoe crabs? They ain't exactly Pandas, so will little Sally and Bobby care if horseshoe crabs become endangered? They're already in a precarious situation...
Horseshoe crabs have been existing for almost half a billion years, I would genuinely be sad if we endanger them to critical levels
Climate Change is warming the waters they spawn their eggs in. They're becoming endangered from that. Not because of a few we harvest blood from.
I didn't say that harvesting blood is the one thing endangering them, did I. Just that it would be a shame to see them go
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I think living to have your fluids harvested in factory farms is a worse outcome than going extinct.
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If you are any part of nature and also economically important, you get barbarically exploited until you go extinct. If you are not, you will be bulldozed to make room for the former. Capitalism is the best system of morality humans have ever, and will ever, come up with, and I truly cherish the utopia it has brought upon civilization.
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Trivia of the day, horseshoe crab blood is blue because it is copper based instead of iron based like our blood
They're actually being fed the blue milk from Star Wars 8
It’s a simple, nearly instantaneous test that goes by the name of the LAL, or Limulus amebocyte lysate, test (after the species name of the crab, Limulus polyphemus). The LAL test replaced the rather horrifying prospect of possibly contaminated substances being tested on “large colonies of rabbits.” Pharma companies didn’t like the rabbit process, either, because it was slow and expensive.
From https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/the-blood-harvest/284078/ (emphasis mine).
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This is the kind of shit you see right at the start of alien invasion type sci fi flicks.
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