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.
On god, no cap frfr str8 bussin.
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
*CRAB PEOPLE. CRAB PEOPLE. *
everything evolves into crabs anyway
Does that mean I can become a crab too?
Get to walking sideways and eating mud, friend!
I’m fine with hurting all wildlife.
Edit: if you realized this was satire, then congrats! If you didn’t, then congrats!
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.)
They’re actually being fed the blue milk from Star Wars 8
That was green milk. Blue milk is from Episode IV.
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.
Just like tmnt
For those who don’t know, the blue liquid is their blood
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.
🤓
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.
they catch, “milk” and release them, most of them recover from it. (weaker ones tend to die tho, with survival rate of around 80%)
