Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Horseshoe Crab Blood

Transcript

Short Stuff: Horseshoe Crab Blood · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck and there's Jerry over there, and this is short stuff,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: so we should probably get talking about this right away.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: What are we talking about right now, Chuck? We're talking
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: about an ancient primitive animal, a beast that was around
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: before dinosaurs, that survived ice ages, and that has been
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: virtually unchanged since they made their way onto the scene.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: It's a little horseshoe crabs. Little horseshoe crabs still around,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: still kicking, still virtually unchanged after I think I saw
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: about four hundred and fifty million years. Yeah, and still
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: when you're when you have a child or when you
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: were a child, when you go to the beach and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: you see one for the first time, the question what
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in the world is that? To your parents? Yeah, and
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: they say stop asking questions. They're crazy looking. They really
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: are crazy looking. It looks like, um, how do you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: how do you describe a horseshoe crab? Do you think
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: it looks over a wooden bowl and gave it a tail? Okay, great,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: we'll go with that. But it also has like a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: it's really tough exoskeleton. It's got six legs. If it's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a male. The front two legs or hooks, because it
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: uses those for mating, and the legs look like, you know,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: little crab claws. Yeah, And so it looks like a freaky,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: scary little thing. Even though it's called the horseshoe crab,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: it's actually much more closely related to spiders and scorpions.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And once you realize that number one, what it looks
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: like makes sense number two, it becomes maybe the most
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: terrifying thing you've ever seen in your life in person.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: They're not gonna hurt you, though they're friendly. They are,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: they're fine. They don't want anything to do with you.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: There too, they're they're old souls. They've been around too
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: long to mess with you. But we humans like to
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: mess with them. And there's a reason why. The reason
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: is because they have a very peculiar kind of blood.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: It's copper based actually, so it's blue. And back in
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the fifties a guy named fred Bang. Frederick Bang figured
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: out at you can use horseshoe crab blood to identify
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: whether there's harmful bacteria is present, and say like a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: biological sample, a medical device, UM, a vaccine, a new drug,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and UM. With that I think twenty years later it
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: got FDA approval to use it for that use. It
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: just began a horseshoe crab harvesting bananza. All right, so
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: we'll explain how that all works here in a sec.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: But um, let's talk a little bit more about the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: body of these guys and gals. Like we said, they
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: have a big head. It's called a prosoma, and in
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that head is the brain in the heart, which is
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: super cool. You already mentioned the six little claw legs. Uh.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And in the males, the very first pair are like hooks,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and they used to clamp onto the female during mating.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And uh, this is how that happens. The ladies dig
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a hole in the sand lay had several thousand eggs,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: and the ale hooks in clings to her back and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: fertilizes these eggs. And the coolest thing about all this
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: is there are other males sort of in the area,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: kind of hanging around, and they're like, hey, if you know,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: if you've done, if you've done your thing, maybe give
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: me a shot. Right that guy he was he was
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a real jerk, wasn't he. I'm a nice guy. They're
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: called satellite males. Yeah, but this you know, the females
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: can do this a few times per night for several
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: nights in a row, and all in all, a breeding
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: female can lay out about a hundred thousand eggs a season,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: which is great to be like, great, we're in the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: horseshoe crabs the world, is say, fantastic, But they also
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: um are a delicacy for shore birds who fly up
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and down the the eastern coast to the of North
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: America of the Iraq, and they eat tons of these eggs.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So even though a female might might um have like
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: ten thousands of these and there might be a million
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: mating pairs of horseshoe crabs in a single place, a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: lot of the get eaten by birds. Yeah. I mean,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: if you've ever been to Delaware Bay or seen pictures
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of just type in Delaware Bay horseshoe crabs, it's like
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a beach made of horseshoe crabs during mating season, right,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: so remarkable. So the horseshoe crabs can deal with the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: shore birds. It's fine. They've they've been around for a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: very long time um and shorebirds have to so they've
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: learned to just kind of live with it. The problem
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: is is we humans have a big impact on horseshoe
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: crabs as well. We like to catch them and use
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: them for bait, and we also develop in the areas
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: where they mate and reproduce, and so we eat up
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: their habitat. So when you put those together with shore
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: birds eating thousands and thousands and thousands of of eggs
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: that could have been a little tiny new horseshoe crabs,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: their population has um. It's under strain. And that's just
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the population of the United States. It's actually far worse
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: in Asia. Yeah, and you know what, let's take a break.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit about how they benefit the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: humans and what's going on in America with this research
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and in Asia. Right after this m m okay choke,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: we're back. So I think I mentioned that you can
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: actually use horseshoe crab blood to um in the biomedical industry.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: It's it's virtually priceless, although there is a price for it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It's just really expensive. It's dollars a court, making it
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: one of the most valuable fluids on Earth. And this
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: is specifically the clotting agent that's that expensive. It's called
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: l A l uh limitless or lime less amba site
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: LI sate and it is in their blue blood, and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: it is a preme clouding agent, as it turns out. Yeah,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And the reason why it's a great clouding agent is
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: because that's how horseshoe crabs fend off infection on their
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: own um and your body. You have white blood cells,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and you have all sorts of veins that your body
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: can kind of close off and surround a foreign invader
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: or pathogen in right, Well, blood just flows freely all
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: throughout the horseshoe crab. The blood vessels, they don't. It's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: just kind of moves through their tissues and their organs
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and everything. It's just it just slashes around everywhere and
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: they're pick one up and shake it. You'll hear it
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: just plain Now. I don't do that. But the the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: fact that the blood can just move around very easily
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: means that they have to have a very specialized type
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of blood cell that can do everything. So I guess
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it's a generalized type of blood cell if you think
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: about it. And that's what they have. And these blood cells,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: when they encounter a pathogen, they clock like crazy around
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that thing because that is their immune response. They basically
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: sequester it in a big gob of goog a gobba goom. Right,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So we figured out that we could use this l
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: a l. And the way that we originally um started
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: harvesting this was from rabbits, because I guess rabbits have
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I don't think as much, right, Well, they don't have
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: specifically the same thing, and we didn't harvest it from him.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: We would just inject them with a drug that we
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: were testing and see if they got an infection, and
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: then whether they did or not, we just kill them
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: when we were done with them anyway, gotchas. So the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: fact that we are able to use horseshoe crabs has
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: saved rabbit lives. Yes, we can feel good about that
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: on one hand, Um, but here's the deal. Horshoe crabs
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: can survive about four days out of the water. So
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: if you want to harvest this crab blood or this
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: spider scorpion blood, you pick one of these horseshoe crabs up.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: They like females because they're much bigger. I don't think
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we said they can be UM much much larger than
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the males, like by half I think, yeah, larger. And
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: so they bring them out, they bring them to the lab,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: they chill them for an hour, put them on ice.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Then they mount them to Iraq and keep in mind
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: they're alive this whole time, and they insert a needle
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: around the heart into that tissue and they drain about
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: thirty of the blood from these horseshoe crabs and try
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and get them back in time to survive. Um, it
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: looks like, like I said, four days out, they can
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: survive I imagine, probably less in a traumatic situation like this,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: But they like to get about a what survival rate,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, they want even higher than that. But what
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it washes out too, is that they have about about
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a third, about thirty of the horseshoe crabs that they
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: harvest and put back end up dying. And they think
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that it's not the blood lighting process. They've got the
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: blood the bleeding process down pretty well down to a science. Basically,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: it's how how they're caught, transported and handled during this
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: process that can kill them. That they think that that's
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: usually what kills them. UM. So, if you're if you're
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: talking about like six hundred thousand horseshoe crabs being harvested
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: every year in the United States alone, of that, that's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of dead horseshoe crabs that would otherwise still
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: be alive. That and this is the point I mean,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: aside from the fact that we're killing horseshoe crabs for
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: our own purposes. Um, if we if those things survived,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: they regenerate their blood and we can bleed them again.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: It's not like a once in a lifetime thing. And
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: they tag them so that they don't over bled them
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: too much. But um, the you know, thirty percent of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: them dying, that's a that's a big problem because that's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: just a big loss of that blood market down the line. Yeah,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that's about a hundred and eighty thousand a year in
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the US that are not surviving. Uh. And we mentioned
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: before the break that it's worse in Asia, and that's
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: because in places like Singapore they do the same thing,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: except when they bleed them out, they then sell them
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: as food, so they don't return them to the ocean
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: at all at all. They eat. Um. There was an
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: expert on this who said that at this rate, in
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a decade, the other three. That's so North America has
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: one species of horseshoe crab. The other three on Earth
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: all live in Asia, and those species may be extinct
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: within a decade because of those practices. Yeah, and this
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: is interesting. I don't know anything about these kind of processes,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: but um, they are making synthetic L A L. They've
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: been doing it for about fifteen years. But there's only
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: one company and one facility that was doing this. And
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I never knew that that was a big deal, but
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: it makes sense now if you're if you're a biomedic company,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and there's only one facility producing this, you can't just say,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: all right, we're scrapping all of the harvesting because we're
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: gonna use some synthetic L A L. Only what if
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: something happens to that company, you're back to square one
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: exactly well exactly for sure. And I think that's that's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: wise because from what I understand, if if L A
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: L just the supply of L A L right now,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like the biomedical industry would just stop because they have
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: to test this stuff. You can't put like a pacemaker
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: inside a human being with it potentially covered or infected
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: with some sort of bacteria that could kill the person
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: who received the pacemaker. So you have to test some
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: of this stuff in the way that they tested by
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: exposing it to this L A L. So if you
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: don't have the L A L, people don't get their pacemakers,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and the whole industry is grinds to a hall. So
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it would definitely make sense because if you have one
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: factory producing this stuff and the thing gets hit by
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a hurricane or tornado or something like that, that's it.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: But more and more people are starting to make the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: synthetic L A L. So it looks like within just
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a few years the horseshoe crabs might start to be
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: left alone. Yeah, which is good for them. That'd be great,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I think so too. Let's push for it, Chuck, we'll
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: make it an s Y s K initiative. Let's create
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a hashtago save the horseshoe crab. That's a long hashtag. Okay,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: but you two can save a horseshoe crab. If you're
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: ever walking along the beach. They have something called a tellson.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: That's our little spiky tail that they use to flip
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: themselves over if they have flipped over the wrong way,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: which would be legs up. If you happen to see
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a horseshoe crab alive though, and their little arms are
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: wiggling and there Tellson's not flipping them over. Do so yourself.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Don't grab him by the telson that should be a
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: stuffs in that t shirt. Grab him on the sides.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Just pick them up on the sides, flip them over.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Uh maybe in the water, and they will be eternally grateful.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine they would be. They'd be like, thank
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you so much. And then they swim about five ft
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and someone grabs them and takes them to the horror
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: show for the blood lighting. Well, maybe at least you
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: did your part. Yeah, that's good advice, Chuck. And since
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: we don't have anything else to say about horseshoe crabs,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: then this short stuff is out Adios. Stuff you Should
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: favorite shows. H