Recent studies hint that crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans experience pain and discomfort in ways we hadn't fully understood before.

Recent studies hint that crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans experience pain and discomfort in ways we hadn’t fully understood before.

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.netEnglish
    52·
    10 days ago

    We’re just gonna keep making more unexpectedly disturbing discoveries that would have also been the intuitive guess of any empathetic two year old.

    • wolfeh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      23·
      10 days ago

      This. Lots and lots of people, especially when I was younger, would go on about how “animals” (non-humans) can’t experience pain or emotion. 30 years of evidence to the contrary later, fuck 'em.

  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
    28·
    10 days ago

    This whole concept that large groups of animals (fish, crustaceans, babies, etc.) just wouldn’t feel pain has always been very bizarre to me. Pain is such a basic and extremely useful biological function that any creature missing it would have a huge disadvantage.
    It’s obvious that it’s always been some kind of poorly thought out feel good excuse that just doesn’t hold water.

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
      4·
      9 days ago

      I think the reasoning would be that a nervous system to convey pain would be complex and in a smaller body there’s less room to have complex systems. You can only fit so much into a package. Another thing, not necessarily for lobsters since they are so long lived, is smaller creatures also tend to have shorter lifespans so a system to convey pain wouldn’t be as helpful if you only live for like a year instead of 100 years. It might help you survive another month or two but would it be worth all the resources and space? Who knows.

      Can crickets and grasshoppers feel pain? Would pain help them live significantly longer and produce more offspring than grass hoppers who could not feel pain?

      That’s all that really matters in the end, if pain helps them breed more. If it doesn’t then that nervous system would never develop or eventually be bred out of the gene pool.

  • umbra@slrpnk.net
    358·
    10 days ago

    “We need more research to find less painful ways to kill shellfish,” Dr. Sneddon urges.

    It’s sad that this is the takeaway and not “let’s not eat these creatures that experience stress and pain”

    • MycelialMass@lemmy.world
      271·
      10 days ago

      Thats not a battle thats winable right now, if people are willing to eat way more obviously sentient animals like cows, pigs, etc. crustaceans have no chance unfortunately. More humane death is at least a start though.

    • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.netEnglish
      41·
      10 days ago

      “It’s time to eat the bugs!” -Omnivores when confronted with any new challenges to animal ag.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 days ago

      I mean, plants also feel stress and pain. Maybe it’s not as bad (and some parts are designed to be eaten), but the arguement for animals always seem to stem from the fact that they’re more like us.

  • Cyteseer@lemmy.world
    12·
    9 days ago

    I can’t speak for the UK but the restaurants I’ve worked in killed the lobster with a knife before boiling. The more compassionate reason was to kill them quickly before boiling, the other was that boiling them alive led to a worse tasting lobster.

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
      4·
      9 days ago

      From what I’ve read about lobsters (not sure about crabs) is they have a decentralized nervous system, not a singular brain like mammals.

      So how do you humanely and quickly kill a lobster? If you are using a knife it would basically probably have to bleed out, which would not be quick, since you can’t just stab it’s brain or cut its head off like we do to cows, chickens and pigs.

  • Chewie@slrpnk.netEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    “This is awful, but what can we do?”

    er, I can think of a simple thing to do about it…

  • motruck@lemmy.zip
    13·
    9 days ago

    Have nonrof you ever cleaned a crab? You put the body over a small metal bar and hit the shell to “split” the crab then flip it and pull the legs from each side off. They are alive during that too.

  • activistPnk@slrpnk.net
    210·
    10 days ago

    I love to get in a hot tub and gradually turn up the temp to dangerous levels. It’s not painful… it’s dangerously comforting. I only read the article not the study, but I wonder if the study examined the effect of slow boiling (like the euphamism “boiling frogs”).

    The article has this:

    This is awful, but what can we do?

    The first step is acknowledging that these animals might experience pain similarly to how we do.

    With that understanding, industries and regulators can work towards implementing more humane methods of handling and killing crustaceans.

    Restaurants and home cooks alike can adjust. Rapid chilling at 32 °F for 20 minutes puts many crabs into torpor; specialized devices such as the CrustaStun deliver a quick electrical jolt that ends consciousness in under a second.

    So it makes sense that a restaurant would use a commercial device to do it quickly. And I guess most home cooks are buying dead crustaceans. But some grocers have a tank of live ones. I have never bought seafood like that. Do they give it to you live or do they kill it in the store before purchase?

    The ultimate question is whether consumers “need” to toss these animals into boiling water, or if they can put them in moderate water and slowly bring it to a boil. Or if the research shows that it’s relatively painless.

    • smh@slrpnk.netEnglish
      15·
      10 days ago

      But some grocers have a tank of live ones. I have never bought seafood like that. Do they give it to you live or do they kill it in the store before purchase?

      They give it to you live. My middle school home ec teacher thought they killed it for you, brought home two live lobsters and the only pot she had that they’d fit in was a glass one. She watched the poor things scrambling at the sides of the pot as they boiled alive. She didn’t buy live lobster again. Then she told the story to her home ec students, every year.