Although they’re struggling at the moment, due to their blood being harvested for use in biomedical research.[1]. Although fortunately, there have been synthetic alternatives developed in the last few years, so hopefully their numbers should recover as that is phased in.
Edit: if this makes you feel overly sad, here is a palate cleanser(30 minute long, ideally listened to in one uninterrupted block). It’s one of my favourite things I stumbled across last year, and it makes me feel hopeful about the world. It made me cry, but in a good way.
[1]: Linked article has more info, but the TL;DR is that their blood clots in the presence of bacterial toxins, so it’s super useful in stuff like vaccine development and production. They capture the crabs, harvest the blood and return the crabs alive, and the stats that the system has on this says that only a small percentage of them end up dying as a result of this. However, given that we can’t see how many of them die or fail to reproduce in the weeks and months following their release, we can’t confirm that.
We do know that the numbers of a bird that feasts almost exclusively on horseshoe crab eggs have seen severe reductions over the last 40 or so years, so it seems likely that the impact of this harvesting on horseshoe crab populations is more severe than the official data suggests.
It’s unfortunate because they fall between the cracks when it comes to animal research ethics. For one, the research isn’t being done on them, so they probably wouldn’t be protected under most existing legislation anyway. But also, animal research legislation doesn’t tend to give much protection to invertebrates (with the exception of octopuses, which are smart enough that they get additional protections).
I think it’s a pretty interesting case study of a big gap in the legislation that protects the rights of animals — existing legislation focuses a lot on our duty to individual animals, but here, despite the harm to any one horseshoe crab seeming to be tolerably low, the vast scale at which we have been harvesting them has had an impact on the species as a whole.
My view is that an anthropocentric framework that puts humans above all other animals is probably harmful in general and something we should work to undermine, but that if we are taking that tack (which seems necessary for the utilitarian view of “harvesting these crabs’ blood has saved many human lives” that most people seem to take on this topic), then we must also accept that we have an ethical duty to be good stewards of the natural world. We can’t have it both ways and think of ourselves as so rational and smart, but not accept the responsibility that would come with that.
I find the legislative angle of it especially interesting, because most people I have told this to are shocked to learn of how they’re not protected, and they share at least some of my view that effective animal research ethics legislation should surely account for our duty to ecosystems as a whole. People far more learned than I in legal matters have struggled to think of ways we could effectively legislate this though. It’s possible that additional legislation isn’t the best way to handle this, and that we would be better served to aim to regulate in opposition to the economically extractivist ideology that seems to be the default setting nowadays (because horseshoe crabs are just an illustrative case study of the problem).
I apologise for info dumping in reply to your joyful comment with such downer info. I do feel hopeful about the progress of synthetic alternatives though. I also find it a fascinating topic to learn about, even if it is a bit depressing
Dude, I live with alligators, actual living dinosaurs. There’s an 8 footer in the pond directly across the street from us. His name is Rocky. He’s always basking on the bank on a sunny day.
Sorry to disappoint but alligators are not closely related to dinosaurs even though they have existed for a long time. Birds on the other hand are dinosaurs.
Horseshoe crab. These things existed before DINOS! AND ARE STILL AROUND!
Although they’re struggling at the moment, due to their blood being harvested for use in biomedical research.[1]. Although fortunately, there have been synthetic alternatives developed in the last few years, so hopefully their numbers should recover as that is phased in.
Edit: if this makes you feel overly sad, here is a palate cleanser(30 minute long, ideally listened to in one uninterrupted block). It’s one of my favourite things I stumbled across last year, and it makes me feel hopeful about the world. It made me cry, but in a good way.
[1]: Linked article has more info, but the TL;DR is that their blood clots in the presence of bacterial toxins, so it’s super useful in stuff like vaccine development and production. They capture the crabs, harvest the blood and return the crabs alive, and the stats that the system has on this says that only a small percentage of them end up dying as a result of this. However, given that we can’t see how many of them die or fail to reproduce in the weeks and months following their release, we can’t confirm that.
We do know that the numbers of a bird that feasts almost exclusively on horseshoe crab eggs have seen severe reductions over the last 40 or so years, so it seems likely that the impact of this harvesting on horseshoe crab populations is more severe than the official data suggests.
It’s unfortunate because they fall between the cracks when it comes to animal research ethics. For one, the research isn’t being done on them, so they probably wouldn’t be protected under most existing legislation anyway. But also, animal research legislation doesn’t tend to give much protection to invertebrates (with the exception of octopuses, which are smart enough that they get additional protections).
I think it’s a pretty interesting case study of a big gap in the legislation that protects the rights of animals — existing legislation focuses a lot on our duty to individual animals, but here, despite the harm to any one horseshoe crab seeming to be tolerably low, the vast scale at which we have been harvesting them has had an impact on the species as a whole.
My view is that an anthropocentric framework that puts humans above all other animals is probably harmful in general and something we should work to undermine, but that if we are taking that tack (which seems necessary for the utilitarian view of “harvesting these crabs’ blood has saved many human lives” that most people seem to take on this topic), then we must also accept that we have an ethical duty to be good stewards of the natural world. We can’t have it both ways and think of ourselves as so rational and smart, but not accept the responsibility that would come with that.
I find the legislative angle of it especially interesting, because most people I have told this to are shocked to learn of how they’re not protected, and they share at least some of my view that effective animal research ethics legislation should surely account for our duty to ecosystems as a whole. People far more learned than I in legal matters have struggled to think of ways we could effectively legislate this though. It’s possible that additional legislation isn’t the best way to handle this, and that we would be better served to aim to regulate in opposition to the economically extractivist ideology that seems to be the default setting nowadays (because horseshoe crabs are just an illustrative case study of the problem).
I apologise for info dumping in reply to your joyful comment with such downer info. I do feel hopeful about the progress of synthetic alternatives though. I also find it a fascinating topic to learn about, even if it is a bit depressing
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I love them! Little cute babies with their scuttling legs and long spike!!
Litteral little living roombas.
Hmmm if they would get along with cats?
Dude, I live with alligators, actual living dinosaurs. There’s an 8 footer in the pond directly across the street from us. His name is Rocky. He’s always basking on the bank on a sunny day.
The chicken I ate last night is more closely related to dinosaurs then the alligator.
Sorry to disappoint but alligators are not closely related to dinosaurs even though they have existed for a long time. Birds on the other hand are dinosaurs.
He looks pretty dinosaury to me.
We also look very monkey. We have a comon ancestor with monkeys but arent monkeys ourself. The same thing goes for crocodiles and aligators