Is it poison :(

It’s actually…

Aw noo that may actually be worse 😢

It’s not going in.

That’s far more liquid than I expected them to contain. I also expected them to be left alive, not drained dry. Wouldn’t it be more economical to feed them in a large tank for a few weeks, rather than killing them outright? I feel like fish food, by mass, costs 1/10th or less of live horseshoe crabs.

They don't take all of it, so if they're doing what they're supposed to, nearly all the crabs will be returned to the ocean within a few days and eventually be fine again. Some do die, though, and even if they don't, they're worse for wear after the process, and some companies have been accused of taking all the blood and then selling the dead crabs as fishing bait. There's an artificial alternative available, but regulators aren't all convinced it's as effective, so it isn't used universally yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab#Use_in_medicine

What does the blood do? Does it clot at any contamination or something?

Five companies along the East Coast — with operations in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland — drained over 700,000 crabs in 2021. That’s more than any other year since officials started keeping track in 2004.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/10/1180761446/coastal-biomedical-labs-are-bleeding-more-horseshoe-crabs-with-little-accountabi

that's what she said

It's used for the detection of bacterial endotoxins. We use it's version of white blood cells for it.

Yes, basically!

You seem quite immune to this meme.

LAL

This process is generally not lethal. They are returned to nature once this process is completed, although some do die in the process. Also I'm no expert but those containers might be a collection of multiple crab's worth of blood.

Not trying to defend or attack this process.

You wouldn't just need the fish food, you would have an aquarium large enough to keep them all alive and meet the legislative standards for wellbeing. That aquarium needs space, cleaners, inspectors, etc, which would drive up the cost considerably.

You nailed it. What’s upsetting is that it’s no longer necessary. A synthetic alternative exists.

That is not all from one crab and they generally try not to kill the crabs. There is some debate on how many actually die with the companies bleeding them claiming almost none and some other people saying up to 60%, so the truth is probably in the middle in there.

As far as keeping them alive in a tank it's not to hard. I have been working with them for a few years now and we have some at work. They mostly eat shrimp here not fish food. We have raised them from eggs. One of the big issues with raising them in captivity for the long term is we still are not sure how large chunks of their lifecycle works. For example while we have some ideas we do not have definitive proof of how they develop their sex. We think there are genetic factors but if I remember correctly there was a paper published a year or so ago that said there might be a temperature Factor, somewhat like turtles.

Fun fact, they will not eat micro plastics. We had an undergrad doing an experiment to see if they would eat micro plastics and how it would pass through their system but we were never able to get them to even ingest any.

I'm not sure it is unfortunate in all ways. There are more protections for horseshoe crabs now then there was before we had a medical need for them. While it would be nice to not bleed them at all anymore I worry that all their protection would be removed once we don't "need" them.
Ecologically they are very important to migrating birds but I don't see the current people in power caring about that. At least since they are needed they are somewhat protected.

For a creature so vital to the medical industry, you'd think they'd be spending millions on studying said life cycle to understand them better. Guess that's expecting too much out of a capitalist hellscape.

You said they eat shrimp. The micro-nanoplastics are in them.

And surprise, this is most prevalent in the USA.

Capitalism Breeds Innovation Blind Greed!

That's the blue mana they need to activate their ability and untap themselves!

pretty sure shrimp are just made entirely out of plastic.

Who is this upsetting? Not the crabs, certainly.

People who know: Blueberries create purple juice.

"Blueberries are fucking purple!!" - Randy Feltface

So they don't get a blueberry fruit juice shake before they go back to their home?

They get various fruit juices after a blood donation, much like a human would, but that’s not what’s pictured here. You can tell because blueberry juice is actually reddish-purple, not light blue.

I mean yeah but all species of horseshoe crabs only live in three places on earth. I can only speak for limulus polyphemus, which only lives on the East Coast of the US (from the Gulf of Mexico to Maine), but I'm not sure how much other species are even bled. Actually to be honest I'm not even sure they have the same extra cellular protein that is collected from the blood.... Possibly should look into that. Maybe I could get some funding to travel to Indonesia for blood samples.