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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."
But you'd have to ask a vegetable if it feels pain.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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..
We're the dominant species on this planet. Why the fuck would I care if I hurt a crab? It's not as though pain has any special value to it, it's only arbitrary.
To have a study that says that the sky is blue.
If the study was saying that they were unable to feel pain - then it would be news.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The Crab People are not going to be happy about their weakness being discovered.
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http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Better nuke site from orbit to be sure...
They still taste good, and that's far more relevant than if they feel pain.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Stop giving a damn about anything with it's skeleton on the outside. I'm sure fire ants dislike having boiling vinegar dumped on them but I can't really bring myself to care much about anything that far removed from any sort of intelligent thought or attractive physical features. Also does anyone else really hate that crabs have 8 legs, it's like they're basically armored spiders.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
This isn't surprising at all. Any mobile animal will need to avoid aversive stimuli. That's what pain is for. You'll find the same thing if you look at roaches or spiders. If you've ever stomped on one of them, then you really shouldn't feel any sympathy for crabs either.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That screaming sound from the pressure cooker is just steam leaving the crab's shells. The crabs aren't actually screaming....
At least that's what I tell myself to feel better, because that sound is damned unnerving when I think of how much it would suck to be steamed to death. This article just makes it more awkward.
Ahhh nevermind, I'll feel better when I'm full.
I don't believe its selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish.
What is this "girl" creature you speak of?
What about the pain I would experience not being allowed to eat sweet, delicious crab?
I guess ill have to be careful when I pick them off my bush...
From David Foster Wallace's now-classic essay in Gourmet :
thought plants already cried for help when injured
and I think rocks can in a way....think piezoelectric effect.
Newsflash: most animals can feel and remember pain. We still eat them and don't give a damn.
It's called being on top of the food-chain. We are omnivorous and don't really care what we eat, where it comes from and how it died. We just want it in order to survive.
In the last few decades there have been some improvements on how cattle is treated and the way they are killed in the factories, nevertheless the average cow, pig or chicken has quite a hellish life before it ends up on your plate.
Compared to that most crab have a wonderfull life, they mature in open sea. Get fished up and a few hours later killed almost instantly.. Not bad if you look at the way animals are treated in industrial cattle farms.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
The amount an animal feels pain is proportional to how tasty they are!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Girls feel pain?!
So if you would attack its weak point for MASSIVE damage it would actually hurt them a lot?
Checking the link from this story shows other work this scientist has done in the field of pain.
Let's look at this:
The scientist advocates better treatment of "lower" animals because they appear to possess the "memory" or feeling of unpleasant stimuli (pain).
This same scientist's career is based upon inflicting said stimuli on innocent creatures to see what happens...
Hmm
I find it genuinely scary how little the majority of commenters here feel for the way in which animals are killed / whether they feel pain. Fine, we eventually eat them, and I agree that the method of killing is of little consequence: but why is it necessary to give them an extremely torturous death prior to that?
If they do indeed feel pain (which I think they must: The excuse that they don't is just an excuse for a quick and easy + cheap method for executing them) I hope this study helps push more humane methods for killing crabs (and lobsters), because after watching them boil alive in tins etc. it makes you squirm thinking of the millions of these organisms facing their last minutes on this planet in blinding pain :(
My "vegetarian" sister and her child say that they refuse to eat meat, then they will turn around and gobble down a fish or some shrimp. Whenever I ask them what the difference is between a beef steak and a salmon steak, they never can come up with a satisfactory answer. I only get, "Well it's too much to think about! We need our protein!" and other similar lame excuses. I've been told by these "caring and intellectual" people, however, that animals like fish experience it "differently".
Of course animals other than humans feel pain. I'm certain that plants have some sort of pain system. After all - how else would they know that they have been hurt so that the healing process can begin? And how different can pain be? Perhaps their sensitivity to pain is GREATER than ours, they just have fewer options to do something about it so there isn't as drastic a reaction as you might find in a human.
Every meat eater I know thinks along the lines of, "Yeah, they can feel pain, that's why we kill them quickly." That's a lot more sensible as far as I'm concerned. A lot of these "But I'll Eat Fish!" vegetarian people are giant hypocrites.
Love sees no species.
Of course vegetables feel pain.
Fruitarians are here!
Or... somewhere... out.. ummm... there. Bellow the trees, in the orchards... waiting.
Heroically preserving plants (and by their eating habits - the rocks too) by eating only "dead" fruit, like some kind of vegetation-vultures.
Keep an eye out for any local fruitarians. When the civilization collapses, we will breed them for their meat and hide.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...we should stop boiling them alive and ripping their legs off to devour them. Admittedly though, once the boiling is complete, the leg ripping is a bit of a moot point.
that a number of studies have suggested this before, and every time, new evidence rips the studies apart. I really do wish that a DECENT study was done that really showed one way or another if they feel pain. But it appears that one group really does not do the work, while the other group really does not want to know. I have to say that I now prefer the preferred approach to cooking lobster (cold water, turned hot), since it appears that peta and others claim little chance of that being felt. Who knows. Perhaps, they will show that it is the most inhumane and a simpler approach would be better. Perhaps a simple knife to settle the spine.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't know any personally to find out, but I read on wikipedia that they do.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The researchers seem to be using a defination that means "reacts to and learns from" which to me is not only obvious it is also pointless [...] unless you can demonstrate that the crab has a stream of thought that goes something like "Ow! that freakin hurts, better not do that again"
What they call "reacts to" you call "Ow! that freakin hurts". What they call "learns from" you call "better not do that again". So the only difference is the presence of some "stream". Are you asking for thought to be serializable? I don't think even human thought has a perfect serialization.
When one loses her virginity there is a little bit, but I feel it's quite justified, and immediately so at that.
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..if you define pain as a physiological response to damaging stimuli. Animals need that in order to survive.
The question is does their form of pain "hurt"? We'll never know that. After all, we don't even know why pain hurts for us humans; all we know is that it does indeed hurt and is not something we like to experience (unless you're masochistic).
This problem is at root a philosophical one. It's impossible to know how things are through the eyes of another. See qualia. I don't know what red looks like to you, nor do I know how a flame touching your finger feels like to you. I can guess, because we have similar physical and mental faculties, but it's still just a guess.
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
Get ready to belly up to the gravel bar because some kooks answered this question in the 70s!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants
-- Hail Eris
It is crucial that all this crustacean cruelty be crushed! Free-range crab is the best crab for people and for crab-kind. Cruel food is less nutritious and less tasty. So take all your crabs and let them roam free on the range!
...it is now considered cruel to throw Paris Hilton into a large pot of boiling water.
Listen up, brothers and sisters Come hear my desperate tale I speak of our friends of nature Trapped in the dirt like a jail Vegetables live in oppression Served on our tables each night This killing of veggies is madness I say we take up the fight Salads are only for murderers Cole slaw's a fascist regime Don't think that they don't have feelings Just 'cause a radish can't scream {Refrain} I've heard the screams of the vegetables, scream scream scream Watching their skins being peeled, having their insides revealed Grated and steamed with no mercy, burning off calories How do you think that feels, bet it hurts really bad Carrot juice constitutes murder, and that's a real crime Greenhouses prisons for slaves, let my vegetables grow It's time to stop all this gardening, it's dirty as hell Let's call a spade a spade, it's a spade it's a spade it's a spade I saw a man eating celery So I beat him black and blue If he ever touches a sprout again I'll bite him clean in two I'm a political prisoner Trapped in a windowless cage 'Cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips By killing five men in a rage I told the judge when he sentenced me "This is my finest hour I'll kill those farmers again Just to save one more cauliflower" How low as people do we dare to stoop Making young broccolis bleed in the soup Untie your beans, uncage your tomatoes Set potted plants free, don't mash that potato, ah I've heard the screams of the vegetables scream scream scream Watching their skins being peeled fates in the stir fry are sealed Grated and steamed with no mercy you fat gourmet scum How do you think that feels leave them out in the fields Carrot juice constitutes murder V8's genocide Greenhouses prisons for slaves yes your compost's a grave It's time to stop all this gardening take up macramé Let's call a spade a spade it's a spade it's a spade it's a spade All we are saying is give peas a chance.
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.
seagulls have a tendency to carry them up high, then drop them. The shell cracks, the crab doesn't quite die, the seagull starts ripping pieces out and eating them until the crab does die. :x
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I spend time in a secluded fishing community where baiting crab pots and eating the rewards are a part of daily life. Not that this is special but they way the crabs are dispatched was different to me. They were "backed" and cleaned before cooking. I've never been completely comfortable with dropping a living crab into a pot of boiling water but assumed death was quick. After seeing live backing I don't know. From a crab prep point of view it was far easier to do it while they were living. From a crab's perspective I have my doubts. Tasted good though which is the real issue. If continue to prey on other species we live with the consequences and science may not provide comfort.
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.
Now would you please pass the melted butter and lemon?
Sig this!
The quote about protecting them because they feel pain almost dissolves their credibility for me when I read it. If Professor Bob Elwood and Mirjam Appel from the School of Biological Sciences at Queen's University, Belfast were working toward protections and regulations for crabs they'd be calling for sustainable harvest and healthy crab populations. They'd be talking to fishermen and doing see-bottom surveys. They'd be studying reproduction cycles and taking crab censuses.
Whether or not crabs feel and remember pain as we do is of interest to neurologists, behavioral scientists, etc.. The research is nifty enough on its own, for knowledge sake. There's no need to sound like a fruitarian over it. One might think Bob was just trying to make that "connection" between science and "the people" and didn't mean to come off sounding like a PETA zealot over what is essentially a giant bug. Either that, or somebody like PETA has some grant money...
Operator, give me the number for 911!
So if most hunters & butchers agree that the more sudden & less painful death is, the better the meat tastes; think how good crustaceans must really taste if we're torturing them to death now...
Whoever made the comment about vegetables is pretty moronic. It makes sense that crabs would feel pain as they have a neurological system. It makes sense vegetables would not as there are no nerves to carry any pain pain signal, or brain to process it.
And the angel of the lord came unto me. snatching me up from my place of slumber, and took me on High, and higher still until we moved through the spaces betwixt the air itself. and he brought me into a Vast farmland of our own midwest. and as we descended, cries of impending doom arose from the Soil. one thousand, nay, a million voices full of fear. and terror possessed me then. and I begged: angel of the lord, what are these tortured screams? and the angel said unto me: these are the cries Of the carrots. the cries of the carrot. you see, reverend maynard, tomorrow is harvest day, and to Them, it is the holocaust. and I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat with the tears of one million Terrified brothers and roared: hear me now, I have seen the light. they have a consciousness! they Have a life! they have a soul. damn you! let the rabbits wear glasses. save our brothers. can I get an Amen. can I get a haleluia. thank you, jesus.
I see how some people react when they get hit with something, but really I just think it's a stimulus response. I don't feel it when they are injured so what do I care anyway.
Here is a video of fish clearly feeling pain.
Do crabs stick to magnet?
:x
Don't fall for the trick that "octopi" can be found in some dictionaries.
It's a kind of third declension Latin term (from a Greek term) so it's like corpus or genus rather than campus or focus. The plural of genus is genera, the plural of corpus is corpora. I'd stick with the English pluralization, octopuses.
Whatever they're called, it's probably for the best that you avoid causing them suffering. I'm with you on that.
Not sure whether they experience pain, but they sure feel crabby.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
A huge pet peeve of mine is when some idiot says something about vegetables feeling pain. It's one of the most idiotic things you can say. There is no mechanism for it. No nerves, nor any nervous system (such as a brain) to interpret anything as "painful". It's not like they are there somewhere and we just haven't noticed them under the microscope. You can get metaphysical about it, but I'll just believe you are even more stupid.
Obviously there is an order to things. It's more cruel to rip the legs off your pet dog (or eat a dog... China...) than it is to rip the legs off of a spider. It's more cruel to kill a cow than it is to kill a chicken. When you get down to things like ants, it's hard to view it as cruel. When you get up to things like octopuses, elephants, dolphins, cats, dogs, primates, or even ravens which all show complex thought... it's hard not to call it cruel. The question is where do you personally draw the line...? What level of cruelty are you comfortable with? Do you draw the line at insects, or do you draw the line at pigs?
In general, you may disagree that meat is murder... but it's hard to disagree that meat is animal cruelty. You either support that or you don't. How much do you need to eat a burger, anyway? Is your meal so important that it supercedes an animal's right to life? Who are *you* anyway? To me, it's arrogance and ego as well as a lack of empathy, thought, and logic.
But don't go around trying to claim plants feel pain. It's unscientific. It's stupid.
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.
Let's see. You whine about the lack of emotional intelligence without apparently being able to coherently explain why there's a problem. Physician, heal thyself.
Acting 'as if its in terrible pain' is not the same thing as being in terrible pain.
I'll have to remember that if I ever come across you acting as if you're in terrible pain.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I don't know what red looks like to you
In Soviet Russia, red looks like you.
Something like that. Had to do it. My apologies to any Russians on Slashdot, I know it's not Soviet Russia anymore. Etc.
Are they suggesting we should stop boiling them alive? Preposterous!
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
My PC has what, 10 or 100 billion transistors?
Yes, it's not the same thing. PCs don't have a soul. If you think your PC is haunted or hates you, maybe you shouldn't have installed Vista.
I should look into humans...Must b
Holy shit, you must have been hungry.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can write a computer program based on well known operant and classical conditioning principles that can "feel" and remember pain too. Big Deal! Does that mean that my program is conscious? Nope. Sure, it would act like if "feels" pain too, whatever "feel" means, but conscious pain? I don't think so.
Does my thermostat feel pleasure when the temperature decreases after it turns the AC on? Does it feel pain when the temperature goes up past 75 at which point it turns the AC on? I don't think so. Where do we draw the line? Unless one can prove to me that a crab is conscious in a way that differentiates it from a thermostat, I will continue to eat crabs, shrimps, crawfish, lobsters and other animals.
I am a "vegetarian" that eats fish and seafood for exactly that reason. Its NOT about how the animal dies. Most animals have always died in horrible ways killed slowly by predators. ITS ABOUT HOW THEY LIVE their entire lives, not about how they die in the last minutes of their lives. Im sure the fish I eat had a full, free life, had sex, kids, etc and wandered arround in open seas until it was killed. *Being killed is part of normal life* On the other hand, suffering through your entire life being treated horribly, abused and possibly in a cage all your life (and who knows what they feed them), is just so horrible to me, that I cant understand why most people simply close their eyes to that huge issue and think that its fine to eat whatever they want. I wont go on coz this is almost offtopic, but ive convinced many people to stop eating cows and chicken with just this argument. Just think about all the suffering that u are made of i.e. what you eat and what you cause. Its NOT the fault of the factories that grow and mistreat the animals, its YOUR fault for financing them and asking them to give you that. (and yea, i know that some seafood is farmed, but I avoid that too.)
I'm just amazed that anyone would think that animals don't feel pain.
Are they really that stupid, or is it just a convenient excuse to allow them to carry on with selfish behaviours?
Also as others have already mentioned, electrical shocks are not the same as boiling water.
If they felt pain they would scream, and I hear no screaming in this.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Our species is hopeless. Hopeless.
I am vegan and have been for many years. I do not believe plants feel pain, and if they would, it would be in a different way than we do. We have a central nervous system that transmits sensation (e.g. pain) to our brain, although this is not the only function of the central nervous system. The brain reacts in many ways with the consequence that we will take action to avoid the pain. I, and many other vegans, will do our best not to eat, wear or use anything that comes from an animal that has a central nervous system. You can consider this as my choice of a "boundary". A crab is a relatively advanced crustacean and obviously has a central nervous system, hence can feel pain and take action to avoid pain. So I won't support the killing of these.
I find it interesting what modern research is finding. It is showing that we are very related to animals (as opposed to some beliefs). Not only in physiological make up, but also in our psychological make. Research is starting to show that animals have feelings and have awareness of themselves, and not just for primates, this is also for other species.
Death to crustaceans! The more painful the better I say. And don't forget the butter.
The point where worthless turds with way fucking too much time on their useless hands disagree is
A less technical way to put it is that the average lobster doesn't give a shit about whether humans suffer, so there is no reason for humans to give a shit about whether lobsters suffer.
That's the attitude that has allowed weak, slow, defenseless homo sapien to become dominant species on the planet!!!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Since they have no "souls" (that is, a centre of consciousness), they cannot really suffer. They're just meat robots.
That's why it's fine to forcefully have sex with them (it's not rape when they're your own property). It's why it's fine to make them wear robot suits whenever they leave your house to do your shopping for you. They are as disposable as Christmas Puppies. They're just meat.
OK, I'll stop pretending to be a devout Muslim or a particularly devout Christian of Orange County[1]
What I'm getting at is the way that people often come up with convenient ways to justify their treatment of what they find convenient to torture, rape or kill.
Slashdot readers should take more notice of films like Zardoz[2]. "Oh, you can't equate their feelings with ours!"
---
[1]They are _so_ miffed that marital rape became illegal in all 50 states that they have effectively re-legalised it (and acts of paedophilia, too!) in through marriages of convenience. Seventh degree marriages are fine in Orange County.
[2]Zardoz is ostensibly about a bunch of people trapped in a malaise of artificial immortality, but it's really about cultural elitism. It's much like how Starship Troopers is ostensibly about alien bug-hunting, but is really about fascism.
Blancmange
If crabs didn't want to die as food, they should've thought twice before they decided to be made out of meat.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
No, they just feel a little prick...
What?
I'm sure that "bugs" feel pain too. It would be silly to assume they dont.
---
In Japan, each time you turn on the tv you can see some fish being eaten alive ... dismembering crabs is also common. It's like at least 40% of the programs are about cruelty to the animals, the other 60% it's Steve-O-like performances.
Wonder what they think about that news and if they care ...
I always preferred to kill crabs by hitting them in their weak spot for massive damage. Giant enemy crabs, at least.
Kudos to all the other Vegans posting here today.
---
I am a rock, you insensitive clod!
Newsflash one: The ability to experience pain is not the basis of the "moral status" of any animal.
Newsflash two: There is no such thing as a "moral duty". Morality is not a list of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots.
Newsflash three: There are no qualifications for the job of "ethicist". None. Anyone with a label machine and too much free time can make a badge for himself and - poof! - become an "ethicist".
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Boil them like frogs! Put them in mild water and increase slowly the temperature. Works on frogs. I know it's true and totally not an urban legend because Pierce Brosnan said it in that movie.
Would Pierce Brosnan lie about boiling frogs just to make a point? Of course not, he's Brosnan, Pierce Brosnan, for Christ's sake!
You just got troll'd!
Hermit crabs !crabs.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Why is the presumption is that they cannot experience pain? I always assumed they did until I was told otherwise by some "expert." Was this always the presumption, or only after they were dissected, and studied and compared to mammals? I'd presume they do feel pain as they seem to avoid it in pretty much the same way mammals do. Or do only humans feel pain, is that what we are presuming now?
It's food. Do we care about the pain we're causing to cows or chicken when we eat them? Do we care about the squirrel or other road kill that gets cooked? Food is food.
And the part about vegans and rocks. What if there is a silicon lifeform out there. Would rocks be offlimits too?
As a Vegan I've had a great time reading this /. page. Its funny, and sad, to see people trying to tell themselves that animals DONT feel pain, when its so obvious they must.
To people who like to make out that Vegetarians/Vegans are weak, whiny little girls, I'd like to challenge the average american meat eater (all 100+KGS of them) to pick on Adolf Hitler, Nikolai Tesla and Albert Einstein. You're team has a fat guy who cant touch his toes, armed with a steak knife, we have a man who killed millions of people, the guy who discovered radio waves/magnetism/ the Tesla Coil, and the guy who kinda came up with Nuclear Weapons (thats pretty loose).
---
To hell with my karma, you've got a point, we've consistently proven to be more apathetic than most people. Hence why so many of us are Libertarians.
You just got troll'd!
Taste like crab, feel pain like people.
Craaaaaaaab people,
Craaaaab people
Despite the name, hermit crabs are not crabs.
There is a fairly famous movie called "The Secret Life of Plants". This movies uses plenty of pseudoscience and plenty of Stevie Wonder musice to prove that plants have feelings and that plants can feel pain. Anyone remember this movie?
We taught a lion to eat tofu!
"I've fought mud crabs more feasome than you!"
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Crab People, Crab People, Crab People
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This isn't my original thinking; I'm reposting from memory from a thread I read someplace else.
It is commonly accepted that under some circumstances, it is OK to kill people; the quickest example is war. However, in those circumstances, it is not acceptable to intentionally inflict more pain than necessary; the quickest example is torture. With animals, it is OK to both kill and inflict pain for some reason. The amount of pain is waved away by results that the practitioner gains; i.e. the taste of meat. I have no way of knowing what meat tastes like to say one way or the other.
Me again - the issue is whether such a calculation is even valid for making moral decisions. I vote no because I make a distinction between self interest and the moral good. They coincide in some cases, and in some cases they do not. They are not inherently identical. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned survival. For a long time, human survival has not depended on meat consumption. What humans gain from meat that they cant't from other food products is carnal sensations in the mouth, and that's it.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Isn't this a little early for April 1?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Remembering adversive stimuli is provocative but it doesn't necessarily say much about consciousness.
As an aside about creatures I do think have consciousness, I was impressed that my cat cringed and looked visibly distressed when she was put on the vet's table the other weekend. Think she remembered getting her shots last _year_?
Further study has found that jerks can inflict pain.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
Seems the debate about feeling pain is just to address some need to for humans to feel it's "morally okay".
Who cares? You're killing something that, given the choice, doesn't want to be killed. Once you've decided to kill it, the means only matter to you. Whatever is getting killed is going to be unhappy with the result regardless.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
My favorite (and "humane" way of killing these California spiny lobsters is to drown 'em in a bucket of fresh water.)
Two things happen:
1) As the lobster consumes the remaining oxygen from the water, it gently suffocates as it encounters hypoxia but since it is in its "natural" environment, it doesn't know that it is doomed. (This is very similar to how a human reacts when breathing 100% nitrogen, O2 levels deplete but the CO2 levels are "normal" so there is no 'alarming urge to breathe', it's just simply 'lights out'.)
2) Thanks to osmosis (the absorption of excess water into its cells, the tail of the "bloated" lobster expands and gently "pops out" to give easy access removing the tail and pre-shelling the lobster for culinary preparation on the BBQ grill.
After doing this, (10 minutes tops) be sure to prepare the lobster for cooking or storage as they can quickly spoil when they are dead.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
And yeah...
Get your greasy hands off my Alaskan King!
I once dreamt of a huge banquet where the main course was a large crustacean with the face of sarah palin.
Yeah. I did.
Chum!
NO SIG
That'll teach them not to forget their safe word.
Have gnu, will travel.
As I understand it, yes, you're right. I was casting about for third declension words ending in -us. Corpus and genus are indeed neuter third declension words, and I shouldn't have used them as examples since octopus is masculine. Knowing that octopus was odd (masculine, ending in -us yet not a second declension; third declension yet ending in -us), I tried to qualify my description with "a kind of third declension ... term", but having used the other terms still amounts to a red herring. (It helps to know that the term is not actually octopus, but a spelling with a bar over the u -- a long u.)
I was hoping that the unexpected stem + ending results of genus and corpus would throw people completely off trying to get to a Latin pluralization so that there wouldn't need to be a discussion of octopus's oddity. But this probably only really opened the door for clever yet unsuspecting folk to create (the following is wrong) "octopora" (the preceding is wrong) . I apologize if anyone went that route.
If you want to pluralize octupus in Latin, the term is indeed octopodes.
They can feel pain? Now they know what if feels like when they pinch people.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Doctor: This next tragic case is a man who sustained full-body burns when he fell into a vat of boiling oil. He requires a high dose of morphine in order to endure the extreme amount of pain he is feeling across his entire body.
Med student: He looks so... crispy!
(licks lips)
Should researchers be able to take a hacksaw to the leg of a cow for whatever reason?
Provided that:
1. They own the cow, or have permission from the owner.
I'm fairly certain that would even be covered under animal cruelty laws.
2. They aren't forcing other people to watch or listen.
Sure, why not? It's a cow.
Well, by extension, you endorse cruel and unusual punishment. Someone could do this to another vertebrate, say a dog, cat, or even a human just because no one is being forced to watch or listen.
You still missed my point about the ones providing the money make the rules.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Consider the guinea worm. It lives in your leg. It causes a festering wound that lets eggs drop out of you while you cool your sore in the water.
Consider that horrid thing (fluke?) that makes millions of Africans go blind.
Consider the botfly. It glues eggs to mosquitos. When those mosquitos land on you, the larvae immediately burrow into your skin. You get a giant maggot living in you. If it's near your ear, you can even hear it chewing.
I can just imagine a Far Side strip with two of those amiable bears picking their teeth companionably as they devour the remains of a human body.
"Of course they don't feel pain!" says one of them. "These creatures are just like insects - driven by a few simple reflexes. When you jump out of the bushes at them, they only ever do one of three things: try to climb a tree, run away, or freeze rigid. Of course none of those does them any good, so how can they possibly be intelligent?"
I sense a certain amount of discomfort in discussions like these. If you are religious, it is hard to understand why a creator God would think up a world in which every interestingly complex creature has to eat other creatures to survive - often causing them excruciating unbearable pain in the process. (I'm thinking of flesh-eating bacteria and haemorrhagic viruses here as well as bears and weasels).
Our civilisation has isolated us so successfully from the cruel realities of life that more and more people simply cannot face these facts honestly. They have to explain them away somehow.
But you can't run away from the facts. The movie "The Edge" has a scene that rams them down your throat. The survivors of a plane crash in the frozen North are huddled round a camp fire one night when a grizzly bear walks up to them, grabs one guy, and rips his arm off. Then the bear calmly sits down to eat the arm while the unfortunate man is screaming his head off (and presumably quickly dying of shock and blood loss). The bear is absolutely unconcerned about the man's suffering - neither happy about it, nor upset, nor guilty. As far as it's concerned, it's just found some fresh meat and is satisfying its hunger. Presently, if it's still hungry, it may eat some more of him, whether he's still alive or not.
That was a brilliant scene, because it distilled into a few ghastly seconds the truth of "Nature red in tooth and claw". That sort of scene plays itself out billions of times every day, but we humans mostly manage to ignore it.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"There aren't a lot of people killing lobsters our of necessity."
Of course there is a necessity... how are you going to have a lobster party without the lobster?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The Bose Institute ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose_Institute ) exhibited approximatively 90 years ago that plants do "feel" pain. A. Huxley visited the lab and wrote about this in his "Jesting Pilate" book (1926), in very similar terms (more or less "upon discovering those studies, vegans will be tempted to only eat minerals") Nothing new under the Sun...
WAT
My cat freaks out at the vet, but she doesn't even get proper yearly shots. Last time she was at the vet was for a horrible accident she has YEARS ago (like 5ish?) but she is still traumatized.
tritonman writes: "... 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."
That's a sad joke, and it isn't the point at all, off course.
Sadly enough we can't stay alive without killing other living beings to feed us (and many other things, too). But given that we can't avoid killing them, then we *must* try to inflict the least suffering to those we kill, we must be compasionate and keep in mind what we are doing and why we do it...
That's the reason I feel that being vegan it's the right thing: as a explicit way of reminding myself that we must actively try to be the least evil possible. Off course I see it's mostly a symbolic gesture, because even vegetables surely feel pain in some way, but at least I try to do the right thing and also keeps my mind centered in the way things really *are*.
Or to put it in another way: those tasty crabs you are eating are the dead corpses of pitiful sentient beings that had an horrendous dead. If you can't keep yourself from eating then at least try to be minimize their suffering...
For years millions of poor crabs have been praying to the big crab god in the sky to come save them from us - and his spaceship is almost here!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You must be in the 60% too stupid to look up what conscious means.
You just got troll'd!
That's exactly my question. The only feelings here are organic contact, and not emotions. This could merely be the crabs survival instinct, a reaction to the environment. The soft squishy parts of a crab are tasty and the crab knows it because they're cannibals. They've only proven that the crab gets the heck out of a shell when there's something weird going on inside that shell.
They should flip this test on its head and see if crabs can feel pleasure. Try this experiment; give them a little back rub and see if they come back to you. Or maybe they twitch a leg when you find their tickle spot. See if crabs prefer Nintendo Wii over Microsoft Xbox 360. Just try something outside their normal routines of eating and trying not to be eaten would be a nice start.
If you've ever seen a bushel of crabs thrown into a huge pot of boiling seasoned water ... there's absolutely NO question that they're feeling pain. Those poor suffering bastiges are climbing over each other to get out!
The first time I saw my grandmother make a batch of "steamed" crabs like that, it turned me right off crabs for life.
Same goes with lobsters, probably even oysters and clams.
So either you accept that you're inflicting pain on another creature (so you can eat it or whatever), or you maybe think of a way to prepare them that doesn't involve quite so much pain. We've managed that fairly well for higher order mammals (when we want to); why not for the lower orders?
Or, as mentioned, end up vegan and eating rock stew, yum!
No no. That is pavlov principle at work.
Cats don't feel pain. They feel fear.
Every time i kicked my neighbors' cat off my doorway, he/she (who cares) runs away screaming...
After a few weeks of well-deserved kicks, he now studiously avoids me-:)
When he sees my car pulling in, he jumps and runs like hell towards his house...
Now, the question is, did he feel the pain of my steel-tipped boot kicks on his perfectly furry hind side or was it the fear of flying that made him run???
eh?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Decades ago, a polygraph expert wired tomatoes, and found significant reaction on being cut, implying tomatoes feel pain.
Vegans, it's rocks and water for you!
On the *other* hand, I *do* feel a responsibility to minimize pain. If I could afford kosher or halal (the Islamic equivalent) meat only, I would, since they don't just say that someone's prayed over the critters, but rather that they were killed quickly and cleanly, with minimal pain, as opposed to much of the meat packing industry, some of which still use methods that were written about, and caused widespread outrage, a century ago by the "yellow journalists".
mark
So do crabs get itchy when they contract herpes then?
> then all of the vegans will only be allowed to eat rocks
allowed by whom ?
last time I check it was own fucking choice
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Who, besides idiots, actually believed that crabs couldn't feel pain?
Or the idiots who think that fish can't feel a damn hook ripping through their face.
Yes, morons, these animals feel it. The question is, do you really care?
Oh the baby carrots... the poor, poor baby carrots!!! If only those terrible Vegans would stop eating!
Actually, baby carrots are made from adult carrots. They take them, chop them and chip them until they are uniform little stubs that look like baby carrots all so the Vegans can eat with a clear conscious knowing that they did not hurt animals. Lots have studies have shown that animals AND plants react to pain and remember it. This is nothing new.
Of course, what is worse is the Vegans are eating those carrots alive. You were aware that the fruits and veggies were still alive when eaten raw weren't you? This is far worse than what is done to animal life.
Vegans are simply hypocritical kingdomists.
The real question is does it matter. Yes, what you eat was once a living thing. That is the nature of things. You too are part of the web of life and the food web. In your time you too shall be eaten, I hope, by the worms and turn into compost for the next generation of life. Unless of course you are so greedy as to choose to be pickled (embalmed) or fried extra crispy (cremated) both of which are a tremendous waste of resources and energy.
What if rocks feel pain as well? What do we eat then?
I give massages and reiki treatments (for real!). More info here: http://www.universele-levensenergie.be
Based on the behaviour of several of my previous employers blood can in fact be extracted from rocks. And if I may quote from a certain US politician "if it bleeds we can kill it" then I would have to surmise that rocks are alive and highly likely that they too feel pain. Especially the burn of some rockist phrases in common use such as "rocks in your head". Eventually the voice of the Rock Liberation Front will be heard!! ;-))
As a hermit crab owner (whose crabs are a completely irrational joy in my life...and may be for a long time as they can live 30+ years in captivity) I have in fact seen that crabs remember pleasant and painful experiences. I have three crabs which I try to handle regularly. One of them took a rather nasty fall onto carpet during the first handling session and he has never since gotten over that fear of handling. When I handle him, he dump his shell water all over me and is frantic to escape. Two other crabs, who have had small falls from one hand into the other but nothing as high as the first one, have learned that no harm comes from being handled and have no similar responses when being handled. Their only response is to explore whatever I let them, be it my hands, arms, legs, room, etc. So it doesn't surprise me that scientists have found that crabs can make connections between certain experiences or circumstances and unpleasantness. People who have owned these creatures have known it for years.