The lifesaving secret hidden inside a horseshoe crab's blue blood

The horseshoe crab story comes up on HN now and then. Typical media game, the crabs crawled out their appointed time slot in the media publishing calendar.

Here is a full disclaimer (from the trenches of startup land): I co-founded and ran a biotech startup that tried to disintermediate that particular supply chain. We even flew to SF to speak to some of the YC chaps, and talked to a strategic buyer. Our technology R&D failed to deliver, unfortunately. And the market is fairly small. But I learned a great deal re that particular business, and a lot of more general lessons. All in all, a crazy run with so many crazy stories, I need to write them down one day.

Horseshoe crabs are truly fascinating animals in respect to their physique, lineage and behaviour. But these things one can read up on Wikipedia.

We had quite a bunch of them in our lab (and living room). They were supposed to be voracious predators to all things they can eat, but ours developed a rather expensive habit in captivity by only eating the most expensive of goods from the local fish market. They would not eat anything else.

If you follow the whole process from the point of view of the horseshoe crab it is disturbingly similar to the stories many people who claim to be alien abduction victims tell.

Few things look more cruel and dystopic than the rooms where they harvest the blood of horseshoe crabs

There is an episode in Elementary that involves the Horseshoe, its extraction and conservation. It is just a regular episode, but the visual presentation of the extraction was fascinating. I hope they are real. :)

Go crabs go!

Most horseshoe related posts on HN come complete with abysmal amount of ads in the articles. Wonder why…

Has anyone on HN gotten the horseshoe crab pin and can share the story?

I vote for stem cells extraction from babies in a same way crab blood is extracted.

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