Effects of the Biomedical Bleeding Process on the Behavior of the American Horseshoe Crab, , in Its Natural Habitat.

Horseshoe crabs are harvested by the biomedical industry in order to create amebocyte lysate to test medical devices and pharmaceutical drugs for endotoxins. Most previous studies on the impacts of the biomedical bleeding process on horseshoe crabs have focused on mortality rates and sublethal impacts in the laboratory. In this study, we investigated the effects of the bleeding process on the behavior of horseshoe crabs after they had been released back into their natural environment.