Horseshoe crabs were crawling along the shallow sandy bottoms of Earth’s oceans 200 million years before the first dinosaurs came on the scene. But some populations have declined dramatically with the rise of humans, raising concerns they may be headed toward extinction. One of the biggest drivers of their population collapse is their unsustainable harvest for their blood to be used in pharmaceuticals. Now, two major pharmaceutical companies, Amgen Inc. and Abbott Laboratories, have publicly announced they will shift toward synthetic blood instead. The copper-based blood of horseshoe crabs contains an enzyme called limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) that can help detect bacterial endotoxin contamination in vaccines, injectable drugs and many other pharmaceutical products. To maintain the safety of those drugs, thousands of horseshoe crabs are captured from the wild annually for their blood. The animals, which are more closely related to spiders than to crabs, are returned to the sea after their blood has been drawn, but many don’t survive the ordeal. Coastal development and habitat degradation are also taking a toll. Synthetic replacements for LAL were developed in 2016, but not widely adopted by pharmaceutical companies — until now. Amgen and Abbott Laboratories announced in February 2026 that they’re transitioning away from horseshoe crab blood for biomedical testing. Kendyl Van Dyck is a biodiversity associate with As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes corporate responsibility. She told Mongabay in an email that the pharmaceutical industry was slow to move away from harvesting horseshoe crabs, “because endotoxin testing is highly…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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