Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Megan Nolette and I'm Bruce gulland Spotlight uses a
special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter
where in the world they live. The night breeze cools the shore of the
ocean. Waves crash against the rocks. A full moon is in the sky,
its light shines off the water. You notice a strange looking animal coming
out of the water. From far away. It looks just like one of
the rocks, but as it gets closer you notice its long tail and nine
eyes. This is a horse crab. It has come up from the water
to bury its eggs in the sand. Many people may never see this strange
creature, but this horseshoe crab is one of the most important animals in the
world. Its strange blue blood may even save your life. Today's Spotlight is
on the amazing horseshoe crab. There are only four different kinds of horseshoe crab.
Most live in waters around Asia. One kind lives in the Atlantic Ocean.
They spend most of their lives under water, but they do come to
the surface to mate and to place their eggs on land. Horseshoe crabs are
also a very old kind of animal. Scientists have found fossils of horseshoe crabs.
Some scientists suggest these fossils may be four hundred and fifty million years old.
They look quite a bit like today's horseshoe crabs. The animals have not
changed much over all that time. But horseshoe crabs are not just interesting,
they are also very important for the medical industry. Every year, companies catch
thousands of horseshoe crabs. They transport them to laboratories. There, they collect
the crab's blue blood in bottles. Then the companies release them back into the
sea. This may seem cruel, but it may be necessary. For many
years, horseshoe crab blood was the only way to make sure medicine was safe.
This is because a horseshoe crab's blood contains a special chemical called limitless ammabokite
lisate or loal lal reacts in the presence of dangerous bacteria called Gram negative bacteria.
Gram negative bacteria are a very big problem in medicine. To be safe,
medicines need to be free of disease. Medicines and vaccines go through a
long process to make sure every batch of medication is safe. But Gram negative
bacteria are very hard to get rid of. They do not die under high
heat like other bacteria, they resist normal cleaning methods, and they contain a
poison that can harm people even after the bacteria is destroyed. For a long
time, scientists at medical companies did not have a good way to test for
gram negative bacteria. Instead, they would test new medicines on rabbits. They
would inject the rabbits with new medicines. If the rabbits lived, the medicine
was safe, but if these got sick, the scientists would need to try
again. Medical companies needed to keep thousands of rabbits for this process, and
the test was not always correct. But the discovery of LAL in horseshoe crab
blood changed this. Fred Bang and Jack Levin were scientists from the United States.
In nineteen sixty five, they created the lal test for new medicines.
It used horseshoe crab blood to test for gram negative bacteria. It was safer
and much faster than other tests. The test results were almost always correct.
Soon the low test was used in most countries for developing medicine and every test
used horseshoe crab blood. Barbara Brummer leads the Nature Conservant in New Jersey.
She told National Geographic magazine. All medical companies around the world need these crabs.
When you think about it, your mind is amazed by how much we
depend on such an ancient creature. If you have ever had medical work or
received a vaccine, horseshoe grabs were involved. If their blood has not saved
your life yet, it probably will in the future. However, harvesting horseshoe
crab blood may be more dangerous to the survival of these crabs than scientists first
thought. Most medical companies do not kill horseshoe crabs when they harvest them.
They only take about a third of the animal's blood. Then they release the
crabs back into the ocean. At first, scientists believe that this would keep
the population healthy, but in the nineteen ninety horseshoe crabs began to disappear.
When Watson is a scientist at the University of New Hampshire. He believes that
horseshoe crabs are dying out because of blood harvesting. Horseshoe crabs are used to
living in cool water, but they can survive on land for several days.
However, most people harvesting them do not keep them in water. They do
not keep them cool. This laboratory treatment may cause permanent damage. Horseshoe crabs
that return from harvesting do not give birth to as many babies, and almost
a third of them die soon after their stay in the laboratory. Watson spoke
to the magazine Popular Mechanics. Name me another sea creature who breathes under the
water, who can survive on land the way they can. You cannot do
that with a fish. You cannot do that with a lobster. Horseshoe crabs
are very strong, but I think they lose a lot because of it.
Horseshoe crabs are also hurt when the places they live are destroyed. People use
them as bait to catch fish, and in some countries people consider them a
special food. But there is hope for the horseshoe crab Dingjeekling is a scientist
at the National University of Singapore. In the year two thousand, she created
a new test. It comes from horseshoe crab genes. It also identifies gram
negative bacteria, but it does not need horseshoe crab blood to make the new
test is just as safe as LAL. Today, many people use Cheeklings test.
Lonza is a medical company from Switzerland. In twenty twenty, they work
together with Moderna to create a vaccine against COVID nineteen. To test their vaccines,
they used cheek Ling's new method. Still people continue to harvest horseshoe crabs.
Some do not believe that jake Ling's test is as good as the Lal
test. Some make a lot of money harvesting horseshoe crabs. They do not
want to change, but jake Ling's tests are easier to make. They take
less effort than fishing for thousands of crabs. There may even come a day
when harvesting horseshoe crabs may no longer be necessary. They will be able to
go back to their lives on the bottom of the ocean, and they will
live in peace, just as they have for thousands of years. You can
leave a comment on our website or email us at Radio at Radio English dot
net. You can also comment on Facebook at Facebook dot com, Slash Spotlight
Radio. The writer and producer of this program was Dan Chrisman. The voices
you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were
adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program
again and read it on the internet at www dot Radio English dot net.
This program is called The Amazing Horseshoe Crab. You can also get our programs
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We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Good Bye,