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For those who don’t know, the blue liquid is their blood
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.
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.
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 .
Last I read synthetic LAL was nowhere near scaleable. Bleeding Crabs is very expensive.
being bled is not my concept of normal for and species
Oh, I don’t mean the “blood donation” being normal. The person I was responding to asked why they were being drained “this way”. I assumed they were concerned about the folded-over positioning of the crab.
Also, counter argument (in good fun): plenty of animals get their blood drained regularly in nature. Mosquitos, ticks, leaches, and vampire bats are a few examples of things that drain blood from others. Maybe the crabs see us as giant pests?
Defo not the best arrangement for the crabs though. As others pointed out to me, apparently despite the optimistic wording in the link I shared the process is still fatal to some. I’m glad we’re working on alternatives.
Red Cross enters the chat.
Thanks for the link and info.
Not a reply directly to you, but to contrast the dominant view in the thread - what would it matter if even 100% of the crabs died? Sustainability considerations aside - a crab died for my delicious salad, who cares if they die for a life saving vaccine? Who cares if it’s painful and disorienting for the crab, it’s a crab. As humans, why should we prioritize crab life and well-being over our own?
Because we aren’t special and every time we make a stupid decision like that it has disastrous ripple effects.
Ripple effects, sure, I’m with you there, sustainability considerations, which I haven’t seen anyone mentioning ITT.
I completely disagree with you about the status of humanity. Is it really your view that the well-being of a crab has equivalent moral status to your own well-being?
I completely disagree with you about the status of humanity.
Why because we happened to evolve to think? Given enough time something else would of if not us. Given we may end up causing our species to go extinct due to careless disregard for our environment and even human life in general. We really are not that special and it would serve us to treat the ecosystems, which enable life on this planet to thrive and evolve, with respect if we want to live long enough too see other stars or at least leave the planet in a decent state for the next species if we all die from pointless wars like humanity seems to love doing regardless of if we treat our environment better.
If the crabs die out we lose the blood, from both sides its better to be as sustainable as possible.
I’d rather see a dead human than a dead non-human, to be honest… (with the exception of insects, those buggers freak me out).
Would you tell that to your spouse when the dead human was your kid?
Because we HAVE to kill a crab to eat it, we shouldnt be killing or harming other animals unless we “need” to. If theres a way to harvest blood without killing the animal, that is the ethically cleanest option. I do think we should prioritize helping our own species over others, but that doesnt mean ignoring the suffering or harm of other species
Highest chance of survival/low stress
Edit: many do die still. I don’t want to say it’s safe, just safer
That’s how blueberry is made Freeze some of this add some structure, let it set, then put it on trees
Because we as a species have decided its okay to torture others for personal gain
This is a necessary evil to save many many human lives. Alternatives are being worked on, but this isn’t just for money or food, it’s for lifesaving medicine.
At the expense of others, also we have synthetic versions of this now.
Obviously didn’t read the meme. It’s a blueberry milkshake. Everyone knows blood isn’t that color.
So this is basically like a blood farm from vampires? Shit, still surprises me what an evil species we really are.
I kinda agree with you but when you think about it it’s not that bad. They are released afterwards and we can use that blood to save countless people, like you and me.
Dp you enjoy the widespread availability of injectable medicine? The blood is used to detect impurities in injectable medicine.
A pint? That’s nearly an arm-full!
People who know know that the crabs survive and are released back into the wild after their “donation”
Noble sacrifices for the glory of mankind.
Most of them, yes.
So we only catch them, torture them as much as we want and then act like we do good because at some point we “release” them to torture them again in the future.
Do you consider giving blood to be torture?
Is the Red Cross a torture organization?
And don’t bring up “consent”. Horseshoe Crabs are incapable of consenting or not-consenting to anything because they don’t have an advanced enough brain.
they don’t have an advanced enough brain
So that makes it okay to torture them.
Is the Red Cross a torture organization? Torture might not mean what you think it means.
But this is only about the life and death of patients. Nothing important or anything.
And they literally and actually save hundreds of thousands of human AND animal lives by giving blood, which If you’ve never done it (Why Not?) Does not hurt a bit.
Trivia of the day, horseshoe crab blood is blue because it is copper based instead of iron based like our blood
Real talk I’m fine with hurting crabs for our own means. Straight up.
Whoa! That’s some Human Supremacist talk there.
Hell yeah. Whole point is to get the species off the rock, then out of the meat suit
Pretty sure I played a horror game with that concept once… SOMA?
I personally would like to become a conscious cloud of gas.
Or mammal supremacist. Or vertebrate supremacist. There are options
They’re chelicerates though, not crustaceans. But then again, apparently everything evolves into crabs anyway
apparently everything evolves into crabs anyway
And for those who can’t be arsed reading. Here’s a great video Crabs
everything evolves into crabs anyway
Does that mean I can become a crab too?
Get to walking sideways and eating mud, friend!
*CRAB PEOPLE. CRAB PEOPLE. *
I’m fine with hurting all wildlife.
Edit: if you realized this was satire, then congrats! If you didn’t, then congrats!
They’re actually being fed the blue milk from Star Wars 8
That was green milk. Blue milk is from Episode IV.
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).
Once it is fast and cheap, expect to see these alien fluid harvesting plants everywhere.
This is the kind of shit you see right at the start of alien invasion type sci fi flicks.
Or in China on a Wednesday.
(I am being a little sarcastic, but traditional Chinese medicine can have some really shitty practices.)
Just like tmnt
The crabs are released afterwards, it doesn’t kill them. Not saying it’s a perfectly ethical situation, but at least it’s not kill em en masse.
Stop all animal testing and torture
First off, this isn’t testing. We know exactly what we need Horseshoe Crab blood for, and it’s incredibly important.
Second, it’s probably not torture. The worst-case-scenario level of discomfort from bleeding them is fairly low, like a human giving blood. And that (incorrectly) presupposes them having as advanced pain-sensing as humans. The actual death rate is the bigger issue, but we are talking about saving lives and the medical community is trying really hard to change the status quo on this. Covered below.
Third, what you’re seeing in that picture saves thousands of lives per year. How much human suffering, how many human deaths, are you willing to accept to achieve those goals? What if one of those humans that has to suffer or die was your kid? There’s no plant-based alternative to this process at this time.
Let me clarify this. Using horseshoe crabs for this purpose is VERY EXPENSIVE. It’s only done because we don’t have an alternative yet, and the process is necessary for modern medicine. There is plenty of research going into either making this process less expensive (which probably involves a lower death rate for crabs) or finding an entirely different process to achieve the same goals. But none has been found (well, except that they used to use rabbits for this. I don’t know the details)
I can understand the desire to spare… um…shellfish some…uh… pain I guess. But NOT at the expense of human life and suffering. That’s just silly.
they don’t die tho
A lot of them do end up dying from this, yes.
around 20% which is acceptable… i think?
Just tortured their entire lives
Wondering when the land people will come to suck their blood again
It’s catch and release, not life long milking. Granted, the survival rate isn’t as high as I’d like (70-90% apparently), but I do also appreciate having safe injectable medicines. All things considered, with a species bias, I’d prefer dozens of humans live at the expense of a… Not crab. Unfortunate though it may be. I can’t also help but notice you’ve anthropomorphised them a bit. I’m certain these creatures respond to negative stimulus, but attributing fear and life long trauma seems to be giving their intelligence a bit of an unfounded boost.
🤓
they catch, “milk” and release them, most of them recover from it. (weaker ones tend to die tho, with survival rate of around 80%)
Honestly, of all the messed up shit we do with animals draining blood from a bunch of crabs for medical purposes seems like one of the less egregious ones.
