Can one of these guys: 
save a bunny? The answer is yes, and not only do they protect cute, fluffy bunnies from lab-testing deaths, they may also save yours.
Apparently, horseshoe crabs have super-powered-bacteria-fighting blood, which makes it incredibly valuable to scientists (with a rough value of about $15k/qt).
Because of their murky ocean environment, whenever a horseshoe crab gets a cut it is immediately covered in bacteria. To prevent it from lethal infection, the blood in horseshoe crabs actually carries compounds that make it clot incredibly fast when exposed to air, and it also has some antibacterial properties.
So how does this help bunnies and humans?
Until recently, the only way to test vaccines sterility was to inject them into lab rabbits and other animals and observe them for side effects. However, scientists have found that when blood from a horseshoe crab is added to a non-sterile batch of vaccine it turns into a clumpy mess. When added to a sterile mixture of vaccine, the entire solution remains a liquid.
So, horseshoe crab blood saves time and money for the labs in testing vaccine batches, and also saves lab animal (and possibly even human) lives.
The silver lining?
It doesn’t harm the crabs. Scientists collect the crabs, wash and “disinfect” them thoroughly, mark them, and then insert a tube into the crabs to extract the blood. They extract 25-33% of the blood from each crab and then release them back into the ocean the next day. There have even been reports at some labs of the same crabs being caught and “harvested” successfully multiple times.
Hope you found this as interesting as I did.
That just adds another thing to the list of what makes horseshoe crabs so awesome. That is actually really cool how we can do so much with the blood from a crab. I’m glad this super blood was discovered because now many lives can be saved because of it. This article here explains all the medical uses of the horseshoe crab’s blood. http://www.horseshoecrab.org/med/med.html
Isn’t science just great?
Hey Dane!
Wow I never would have guessed that horseshoe crabs could save lives. Nor did I know that they possessed that type of blood-clotting characteristic. Some more fun facts of horseshoe crabs can be found here!
http://myfwc.com/research/saltwater/crustaceans-marine-arthropods/horseshoe-crabs/facts/