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Study Suggests Crabs Can Feel Pain
tritonman writes "A new scientific study suggests that crabs can feel and remember pain. From the article: '"More research is needed in this area where a potentially very large problem is being ignored," said Elwood.
Legislation to protect crustaceans has been proposed but it is likely to cover only scientific research. Millions of crustacean are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry.
There is no protection for these animals (with the possible exception of certain states in Australia) as the presumption is that they cannot experience pain.'
Perhaps soon there will be a study to determine that vegetables feel pain as well, then all of the vegans will only be allowed to eat rocks."
if they feel pain? Cattle defiantly do, we still eat them.. As, I'm sure, a wide variety of other food stuffs feels pain as well..
Actually, the study shows that crabs avoid electrical shocks. Do they experience it as pain? Who knows. Considering that the nervous system uses electrical impulses to transmit information, an electrical shock directly affects and interferes with the nervous system.
I think the point in all this is to determine whether or not killing a crab by dropping it into a pot of boiling water is less ethical than killing it in some other manner. The problem I see is that electricity and boiling water are not at all the same. Maybe they don't have pain receptors for heat, thus, to them, their body basically stops working when boiled, and that's that. On the other hand, an electrical charge will definitely negatively affect their nervous system, regardless of pain receptors, temperature receptors, etc, and that would be something they would avoid, if just because they don't want their nervous system to act all haywire.
So really the study doesn't match the actual "inhumane" conditions enough to be able to bring about change in the treatment of these animals.
Better known as 318230.
If we're discussing the ethics of inflicting pain, I think it would actually be on yourself to prove that concious thought makes pain worse, rather than others to prove that crabs have concious thought.
I think what is being argued is that crabs "feel" pain like my thermostat "feels" temperature. They both react to their environments and respond to external stimuli. But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Feeling pain and reacting to it are different then suffering. Even changing
behavior based on pain is different then acutally feeling the pain later. That requires
a certain level of empathy.
The real test to me is show a crab another crab being killed in a painful way. If
we can detect pain receptors firing in some way in the crab then I think we have to worry. Otherwise the crab is just saying "putting pincher in trap BAD".
Your dog for instance will get freaked out if he sees someone hurting you while a cow on the other hand will only freak out if it gets startled. I could strangle you in front of a cow and
it would just sit there eating unless we made enough sound as to scare it...but it would not be
scared of the strangling.
Bacteria react to injury, they remember the past, and they even predict the future. If you buy into the theory that causing pain is immoral then every cow is a walking Auschwitz. (not even to mention the problem of brushing teeth)
By the way, there is no philosophical reason why "it feels pain" is a better standard for deciding whether injuring something is cruel than any other arbitrary standard, see Hume
Looking for simplistic rules to guide your ethics is not really the answer.
I can understand the urge, though. There's lots of good eats out there that would suck to have to give up because we eventually figure out they suffer. But being morally responsible actually means doing the thinking that's involved to understand whether suffering happens, and taking the actions that you can to minimize it.
I just don't get how people can make this argument, most of the time justifying it saying 'it has only so and so few brain cells'.
I'm not a crab an neither is anyone saying crabs can't 'feel pain' like humans do. But I do know that there's lots of other animals that are not human, but that show without any doubt that they can suffer from pain much like humans do. Somehow most people who think crustaceans don't 'suffer' do agree that dogs or cats can suffer from pain, probably because they can identify with a suffering pet much more easily than they can identify with a suffering crab. The fact that you call assuming crabs 'feel' anything is 'unwanted' seems like you don't really care that much and feel better not thinking they might actually suffer.
For me, the fact that crabs have simple brains and no 'reason' whatsoever doesn't imply that they can't experience pain and suffer from it like other animals or humans. You only need nerve cells to transmit the pain stimuli, and crabs have these. So why not just assume that being boiled alive isn't exactly a pleasant experience for crabs and lobsters and swiftly drive a pin through their brains before boiling them?
City boy, are we?
Because while I can't swear to having said that kind of thing myself (having spent most of my very young days in a smallish town), I certainly remember hearing very similar comments from my little sister growing up in a village of maybe a thousand. A herd of cows would be taken right past the house twice every day on their way to be milked and back, and we'd sometimes walk down the road to where there was a flock of chickens we'd feed breadcrumbs. She knew perfectly well that the ultimate fate of those cows was likely to be hamburger, and I'm quite sure more than once we came back from feeding the chickens to find roast chicken awaiting us on the table at home.
If you've grown up with food animals being a regular part of the landscape, and knowing full well why they're there, well... then you don't consider it monstrous. It's perfectly reasonable and natural, and comments like the above are par for the course and actually kind of cute. What's monstrous is this gulf between a romantic idealisation of farmyard life, and the shrink-wrapped processed meat at the supermarket - the complete categorical disconnect between Babe and bacon.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
One dumb lobster trick is that if you hold a lobster with one hand on gripping its back it will struggle and twist to get free but if you move it close to you other arm or leg it will grab your arm and feel safe because it's feet are gripping something.
One dumb human trick when they see a tiger is trying run away. Of course they don't know that we tigers can run way faster than them and we always manage to catch them. The funny thing is that when you finally claw them they still try to fight! I, as a tiger, I am not entirely sure humans know they are alive, let alone feel pain. I think I'll have human steak for dinner tonight.
No sig is good enough for me.