Biomedical bleeding affects horseshoe crab behavior
Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - 06:31
in Biology & Nature
Collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes causes short-term changes in their behavior and physiology that could exacerbate the crabs’ population decline in parts of the East Coast. Authors of a new report examined this issue as well as possible solutions to its problems. Each year, the U.S. biomedical industry harvests the blue blood from almost half a million living horseshoe crabs for use in pharmaceuticals -- most notably, a product called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), used to ensure vaccines and medical equipment are free of bacterial contamination. This lifesaving product can only be made from horseshoe crab blood.