this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
68 points (95.9% liked)
Science
13200 readers
13 users here now
Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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