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The horseshoe crabs are valuable because their blood can be manufactured into limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, that is used to detect pathogens in indispensable medicines such as injectable antibiotics.

Last summer, as coronavirus infection rates continued to rise, a group of researchers from Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Roche-Genentechpublished a research report that compared the two products — limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, which is made from horseshoe crab blood, and the synthetic product, called recombinant Factor C assay, or rFC.

Scientists harnessed nature’s ingenuity, using crab blood to make so-called amebocyte lysate endotoxin tests which, by the 1970s, began displacing tests on rabbits that were injected with medicine then monitored for fever.

“Basically, anything that comes into contact with the blood is tested using LAL,” or “litmulus amebocyte lysate,” said site manager Christina Lecker.

The crab goes through a bleeding process in a lab where 30 percent of its blood is removed to harvest a chemical compound called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, which is used to detect biological contaminants in drugs, vaccines and intravenous devices.