If you click the BI link under the image [0] and watch the video they say they're still alive, and that they try to only drain 30% of their blood before putting them back in the ocean. But (paraphrasing) up to 30% don't survive the process and "no one really knows if they even recover down there".
If the answer is a hard no, then you could fully bleed out just 1/3 of the crabs. My naive assumption is that this would help guarantee a stable population, which would probably be beneficial to the bleeders.
It is tricky to get correct information here, as many of the organization that are related to the conservation of the species are funded by the main producers of LAL based endotoxin tests (and hence bleeders, or procurers of Horseshoe crab blood).
At this point, Horseshoe crabs are critical infrastructure in qualityquality control for Pharma and medtech.
Source: Co-founded biotech startup in the horseshoe crab space that had to fold.
Horseshoe crabs aren't crabs. They're distantly related, although both are arthropods. Not much brain activity going on there. But honestly pain and suffering are so hard to nail down outside the tetrapods. I'd say the fact that until we started harvesting their blood more sustainably, they pretty much all died is enough of a reason to harvest them more sustainably, regardless of how we define the ability to suffer. They're an important food source for a lot of different animals and we shouldn't be damaging their numbers when we can get the same product without killing them.
Also, they like to hump fishermen's boots during breeding season, which is absolutely hilarious and I think well worth preserving the species.
Depending on whether you were a bug nerd as a child, horseshoe crabs are either incredibly fascinating to look at or face hugger-level terrifying to look at.
Perhaps luckily for us all, vinegaroons don't seem to have any medical applications.
You'd think they'd use some kind of chromatography to test each batch, right? And also test the reactors for contamination, after all bacterial toxins require bacteria. Don't they do this sort of QC?
Doesn't work that way with organic chem as I understand it. You'd just see spectral lines for carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and whatever else atomwise is in the toxin, but it isn't those atoms themselves that make it toxic, it's their arrangement in reference to each other. You need the right enzyme to produce a chemical reaction to measure to get an affirmative result; an enzyme being a molecular structure optimized to lower the activation energy of a particular chemical reaction by making the ideal physical conditions for it to take place. Chromatography requires either stratifying the mixture in a fluid, or vaporizing it, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Yet more evidence Organic chemistry is God's way of saying he hates Chemists.
Well there is gel chromatography, electrophoresis, light based techniques etc, but I don't know how well they fare for molecules of this size, sensitivity and relative concentrations.
They're absolutely fascinating prehistoric creatures, this is just another reminder why we don't want species to go extinct. Nature is the biggest inventor on this planet, not humans.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 33.4 ms ] thread[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-horseshoe-crab-blood-exp...
It seems like it would be pretty easy to find out. I guess there isn't much motivation to open that can of worms.
At this point, Horseshoe crabs are critical infrastructure in qualityquality control for Pharma and medtech.
Source: Co-founded biotech startup in the horseshoe crab space that had to fold.
Can they suffer? That's an interesting question. It's probably their size throwing you off, would you feel the same about a cricket in that position?
Also, they like to hump fishermen's boots during breeding season, which is absolutely hilarious and I think well worth preserving the species.
I do, sometimes I'm in a room with a few other people bleeding red into pouches.
I do not find it upsetting, naturally.
I don't suspect the crabs have any real understanding of what's happening so the morality of it is ambiguous, but your analogy isn't really analogous.
Perhaps luckily for us all, vinegaroons don't seem to have any medical applications.
Yet more evidence Organic chemistry is God's way of saying he hates Chemists.