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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.
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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..
The Crab People are not going to be happy about their weakness being discovered.
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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.
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I don't believe its selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish.
It really depends on what is meant when you say 'feel'. 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. The only definition of 'feel' that matters to me is the one that implies consciousness. This is pretty 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". Even that won't stop me eating meat, one animal killing and eating another is as natural as it gets, and we evolved canines for a reason.
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 :
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)
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 :(
Of course vegetables feel pain.
It's far easier for most people to be empathic about a furry warm blooded cow or cute little chick than a slimy fish blankly-staring fish or what is essentially a tasty ocean spider.
There will never be any protection for some animals equivalent to the cruelty laws for cats and dogs simply because most people draw a mental line between animals they like and don't. Reptiles, fish, and invertebrates will generally be on the "don't give a shit" side of that line regardless of what science has to say about whether they feel pain.
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They don't bite/sting nearly as fast and don't have venomous acid to shoot into me. They also don't possess the strength to actually hurt me with those claws of theirs. Lobsters of course have venomous feelers >_
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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. ... A lot of these "But I'll Eat Fish!" vegetarian people are giant hypocrites.
Yes. Actual vegetarians are often annoyed by pescetarians who incorrectly label themselves as vegetarians.
They reflect badly on the rest of us, as people sometimes jump to conclusions and assume all or most vegetarians are hypocrites. But they also dilute the term itself, to the point where some restaurants and food service workers come to believe that if someone identifies as a vegetarian, it's okay to feed them fish products. That's unfair.
..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...
Did you know if you dump some instant grits on a fire ant mound the workers will take them in and feed them to the queen, and that she will then die as they slowly expand in her body, leaving her foul spawn to wither and die leaving an empty hellmound full of nothing but silence and despair?
Good stuff.
Incidentally, they kill scallops the same way as lobsters: by dumping them in boiling water. It's quick, and about as humane as it gets for something that can't otherwise be killed without wasting the meat.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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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.
If the scientists played any Final Fantasy games, they would know that casting "Lightning" on crabs hurts them, and hurts them much more than fire spells. ...Damn, you can tell when it's late afternoon on Friday when I start making retarded posts like these.
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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.
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Its only surprising in retrospect. Does corn feel pain? how about tape worms? At what point on the evolutionary ladder does pain fold into the equation?
This is not surprising to anyone who assumes that it requires a central nervous system to feel pain, but it is to people that assume that you need more than just a hard shell and feeler hairs to feel pain. The study is significant because it lowers the evolutionary level required for pain sensation.
Do squid feel pain? Do clams? Do Bacteria? If you answered no to 1 or more of those, then you might agree that more studies are needed to figure out where the pain bar is set.
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Some of my favourite meals are Vegetarians.
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Did you know if you dump some instant grits on a fire ant mound the workers will take them in and feed them to the queen, and that she will then die as they slowly expand in her body,
I've been reading Slashdot for many years and I've seen a lot of comments about grits, but that one's new to me.
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.
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 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 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?
Bigger, and shorter tails. Americans are often fatter.
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But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
You may as well just say what you mean: without a soul to experience pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
It's an extremely popular idea, but many people fill a little silly worrying so much about souls (especially those trying to distance themselves from christian philosophy). Which is why dualism so often runs around under the guise of "consciousness". But be honest with yourself: if it sounds silly when you talk about souls, it's no less silly when you replace "soul" by "consciousness".
Right now the american association PETA is trying to "reposition fish as SEA KITTENS" so that people will love them. Its kinda bizarre really, they have some t shirts they sell with fish wearing kinda cat costumes, to have whiskers and cat heads....
Still, I think its fair to say that people are moving away from brutish behaviour, and I do expect future people to be Vegan eventually. If you watch a lot of Sci Fi, its kinda a given.
All animals must feel pain, I'm quite certain about that, and its stupid to think otherwise, surely its just putting up a mental block to help people keep eating animals.
If not for the animals, go Vegan for yourself, have you never heard of all the health benefits? Have you never seen the "Meat causes impotence" billboards? :P
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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.
No, I don't think pescetarians are hypocrites; quite the opposite. I'm glad they made the choice to avoid most types of meat, good for them. I'm saying it's incorrect to call oneself a vegetarian if one is not.
if it's the case that you are complaining about experiencing intolerance for your ethical beliefs
It's not. And I don't really care what people I don't know think of my ethical choices. I would like not to be mistakenly fed animal products and clear language use by everyone helps me avoid that.
Also, most people do not know what pescetarian means, and do not want to know - hence, it is better to describe as vegetarian to avoid being fed mammals.
How about "I don't eat most meat, but I do eat fish"? Not that hard to say.
Actually fruitarians can eat grains, pulses and legumes. You can harvest grains (delicious grasses) after the plant has died.
Since I have lived with dogs my whole life, I am an ethical vegan.... also I have met a few fruitarians. The fruitarians that I have met were not Christian and would never quote the Genesis as a motivation for their ethical choices.
Cheers