A frozen horseshoe crab at the beachSubmitted by Spooky_Noodle_ t3_zv8mro in mildlyinteresting
pusillanimouslist t1_j1pp3kt wrote
Reply to comment by Saoirsenobas in A frozen horseshoe crab at the beach by Spooky_Noodle_
Not sure who downvoted you, but you’re half right. We do harvest them for blood for medical purposes, but they’re supposed to return them and the expected fatality rate is pretty low, and the total numbers taken for blood is way less than those taken for bait and food.
That being said, the process of collecting their blood is in decline. There are synthetic alternatives that are beginning to replace the crab blood route.
Saoirsenobas t1_j1q9pdr wrote
I worked in a lab researching this a few years ago.. our studies found fatalaty rates of bleeding and transport around 33% at the time. Also the amount of blood you can collect is proportional to their size so companies were deliberately collecting females which are larger, causing extremely skewed sex ratios in the surviving wild populations (10 males: 1female). Also the synthetic substitutes are nowhere near commercially viable but the research is promising.
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