The headline left out something important from the article and posed a false dichotomy, a minority of harvested crabs are being used to develop medicines, and most of those are released and survive. The vast majority that are killed are being harvested for use as bait in commercial fishing. Seems like that’s the obvious thing to cut back on to save the humans, the crabs, and the birds.
Even worse, there is already a synthetic available, which is approved in Europe
Obviously, that’s the one that’s off the table. The choice is strictly between developing medicine or saving a species.
And I think we all know the birds are the ones who will have to go.
- Capitalism
The horseshoe crab is a bird? Lol wat? Anyway why isn’t it possible to create the blood in a lab or breed the crab/bird?
There is already a synthetic version approved in EU. US just refuses to use it. NPR article about it
Horseshoe crabs not blue crabs
Horseshoe “blood” is blue, and it’s not actually blood it’s hemolymph. It is blue crab blood. Blue blood from a crab.
Blue blood from a horseshoe crab yes. Blue crabs are also a thing and horseshoe crabs are always referred to with the word horseshoe in front. So calling them just crabs with the word blue in front is a poor choice if one cares about communication.
horseshoe crabs are always referred to with the word horseshoe in front
They weren’t in this case, so that “always” seems to be a stretch.
if one cares about communication.
It’s made clear in the article. If one cares about communication they’re reading past a headline.
Ideally we should find a replacement for that horseshoe crab blood or perhaps a way to raise them in captivity. Maybe someone could come up with something to give the crabs to offset the damage caused by taking the blood. The issue might not even be primarily due to the blood with everything else happening climate change wise.
There might be ways to improve things for the birds but animals with super specific niches just kinda run the risk of becoming extinct. I feel similar about Pandas and Koalas.
Already have
“A synthetic alternative was later invented and has since been approved in Europe as an equivalent to the ingredient that requires horseshoe crabs. But in the U.S., the blood harvest isn’t shrinking. It’s growing.” - source
