this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] mononomi@feddit.nl 57 points 3 days ago (10 children)

And then humans came along to mess with em

human in protective clothing harvesting horseshoe crab blood in a lab

[–] ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 20 points 3 days ago (6 children)

I find it hard to understand, what special thing the blood has, that is not synthetically manufacturable. With most foodstuff companies trying to synthetically manufacture as much of the food as they can, what makes this "Near Threatened" animal, so important to harvest?

[–] Dave2@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I googled it for you, there is LAL which is a blood clotting agent (that exists only in the blood of horseshoe crabs) that reacts with the bacterial capsule which makes it important for vaccine safety tests. Alternatives do exist but ya know, money is more important to corporations than some animal's life.

[–] ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

So they'll use alternatives once the crabs go extinct.
Well... 😶

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