5 ms·

Lobsters and Crabs Feel Pain, Study Shows

33 points by silkodyssey 16y ago

devinj 16y ago
Wait. You mean people thought they didn't? I'm not at all experienced in the realm of animal activism as it relates to lobsters and crabs, but did people really think that animals didn't feel something akin to pain if you ripped their limbs off? Pain is a vital mechanism/motivation for survival and thus evolutionarily advantageous. Maybe some complex animals don't have it, but they'd have to be pretty weird (although I admit, lobsters and crabs would be in the right category-- it's not going to be a vertebrate that feels no pain-- they aren't particularly unique in terms of how they grow and die).
- goodside 16y ago
  You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. If your environment is stable enough that you can operate entirely by innate reflex, there's no reason to waste genetic selection pressure on crafting sensations for the benefit of some passive, ineffectual observer inside the lobster. Or the observer itself, for that matter. Its almost certainly true that lobsters feel pain (response to analgesics is damn convincing), but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this study.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > It may well be true that lobsters feel pain, but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this. Then at best the evidence is inconclusive. This is usually an issue that is trotted out as 'fact' a lot when it comes to debates about boiling lobsters/crabs alive for food. So really the 'general knowledge' of this should be: We don't know whether or not lobsters and crabs feel pain. and not: We know for sure that crabs and lobsters don't feel pain, because if they did, then I would feel bad about going to Red Lobster for dinner.
  - ars 16y ago
    > response to analgesics is damn convincing It's not. It just means you blocked the negative stimulus, so that innate reflex you mentioned does not trigger. It doesn't necessarily mean they feel pain. Personally I don't think this question is possible to answer, so I behave as if all animals feel pain and I avoid inflicting it, except when I have no alternative. And when I have no alternative I try to minimize the duration and/or severity (giving priority to minimizing duration over severity).
  - cousin_it 16y ago
    You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. Whaaaat? You need pain to run away from the source of it, and to warn your relatives by screaming.
- ars 16y ago
  > Wait. You mean people thought they didn't? If you rip the leg off an ant it keeps going as if nothing happened. Or if you cut an earthworm in half it behaves normally. So clearly not all animals feel pain. The question becomes which ones do, and which don't. You can't ask them, so at best you watch their behavior and look for changes. The trouble comes in when you try to distinguish between pain and suffering. Pain prompts an animal to change behavior. A worm being shocked will move away - but does that mean it suffers? Or just that it avoids the negative stimulus? I can't give you the answer, but at least I can help you understand the question.
  - maushu 16y ago
    Don't know about the earthworm, but for the ant it's like this: The ant itself might not feel pain but the ant colony as a whole does feel "pain", the reason for this is that an ant is the equivalent to a human cell. It doesn't feel pain by itself. To verify this, just find a big ant colony (with hundreds of ants above ground, doing their stuff) and then step on some ants and you will see them completely freak and try to find the attacker so that it doesn't cause any more "pain" the colony.
    - TheSOB88 16y ago
      We're talking about the neurological pain, the pain that you feel when you pinch yourself. An ant colony cannot feel this, unless it is somehow conscious.
      - maushu 16y ago
        Define... "conscious".
  - jules 16y ago
    > Or if you cut an earthworm in half it behaves normally. It does not. It certainly does act like it feels pain. And in a few minutes it dies.
  - devinj 16y ago
    I'm not sure you've ever seen an injured worm. As for ants:perhaps so. The thing is, ants are really different and interesting. As I said, perhaps some animals don't feel pain, but they'd have to be pretty weird. I would suppose ants qualify, being essentially borg, which is pretty out there. Lobsters, not so much.
michaelpavelich 16y ago
A great read from David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" from Gourmet magazine http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true&currentPage=9 http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...
mark_l_watson 16y ago
It has always bugged me that some people boil live crabs and lobsters: I have seen them struggling to get out of the water. Quickly cutting out their brain stems and then tossing them in the water seems better. That said, anyone who has seen live pigs piled 20+ feet deep in a pre-killing pen may think about being a vegetarian. The look of total fear in their eyes is difficult to forget. My wife and I had the misfortune of seeing that one time and we could not bring ourselves to eat any meat for a long time.
- mingdingo 16y ago
  I think it's more than some people, unfortunately. It's probably the de facto way. “One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals” - Mahatma Gandhi Most nations do poorly on this test, although there is slow progress. The funny thing is, at least 7 out of 10 people would not be happy with factory farming practices, but they still dominate agriculture in this country. It deeply troubles me that you can keep pigs in pens where they cannot even turn around, even though they're about as intelligent as dogs. Other animals can be equally as unlucky.
  - ars 16y ago
    It's a bit off topic, but that is not actually a good way to measure a nation. Holocaust survivors describe how dogs were treated well, and there were laws protecting them and other animals. A much better way to measure that, is seeing how the nation treats it's prisoners.
    - polp 16y ago
      I think you are missing the point. Nazi Germany was by no means a vegetarian country. I think a better question to ask would be - could the Holocaust have happened in the mostly-vegetarian India? Millions of people were murdered under the pretense that these people are pigs or rats. But what if your culture (e.g. Hinduism or whatever) also condemns the killing of pigs and rats? The entire argument that justifies murdering these people breaks down.
kevinh 16y ago
People ripped the legs off of live crabs? That's sick whether or not they can feel pain.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Is it really? I am asking this as a genuine question. I am quite sure our ancestors did this. In fact, in many cultures, food is eaten alive and wriggling. How is this any different? Is it really "sick" to kill something slower (ripping the legs off), rather than faster (cutting its oxygen supply, eviscerating it, etc)?
  - joeyo 16y ago
    The usual argument is that, to the extent that we believe that an organism can experience pain, it's preferable to minimize its pain as much as is practical, especially when there alternatives.
  - kevinh 16y ago
    I'm not aware of any reason to have the animal alive while you're breaking off its limbs. It just seems like the behavior of a sociopath to me.
    - ars 16y ago
      It's law number 6 of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_laws > I am quite sure our ancestors did this. Presumably some did and that's why the Noahide laws address this issue. And clearly some ancestors agreed it was a bad thing - and not just a little bad, but bad enough that it was listed in the core set of laws.
  - maushu 16y ago
    Using "Our ancestors did this." as an explanation to do something is fallacious. Our ancestors also (in some cases) sacrificed people as offerings. Should we do that too?
    - deleted 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago
  Hmmm, lessee, logic . . . If God didn't want me to eat people, She wouldn't have made them out of meat.
  - adbge 16y ago
    Finally, a justification for religious cannibalism! I've waited...so long...
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
Jun8 16y ago
In addition to Wallace's Consider the Lobster I'd very much recommend Baggini's The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten (review here: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants-to-be-eaten.html http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants...) for a deeper dive into this problem. The title essay's premise is this: As a thought experiment assume that a lobster is genetically modified to think that it's sole purpose is to be eaten. Is it still morally wrong to eat that animal? For less far fetched examples (and moving somewhat tangentially), consider the people in The Matrix, who are happy in their deception or Frenchwomen who insist that wearing burkas liberate them. They are happy that way. Should we still impose our attitudes on them? What would you do if you met a worshiper of the Crocodile God, who craves the honor of being thrown alive into the pit (that last example is from Bach's Illusions).
- orborde 16y ago
  There was an animal exactly like this being served at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
jarin 16y ago
"And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess 'high cognitive ability and sentience.'" Wow, did they just jump to that conclusion based on pain aversion behavior or is there some kind of evidence to support this? It's quite a stretch.
- jules 16y ago
  I think your and their definition of "high cognitive ability and sentience" may not be the same.
albertcardona 16y ago
I work with invertebrate sensory neurons (neuroscientist here). For a starter, check out the pick pocket neurons in Dan Tracey's paper ("nociceptive" means pain receptors): http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)02268-3 http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)0...
cmars232 16y ago
Is there a quick, painless alternative though? Can't really decapitate or bleed out a heavily armored invertebrate. Maybe drown them in wine or spirits?

33 points by silkodyssey 16y ago

Wait. You mean people thought they didn't? I'm not at all experienced in the realm of animal activism as it relates to lobsters and crabs, but did people really think that animals didn't feel something akin to pain if you ripped their limbs off? Pain is a vital mechanism/motivation for survival and thus evolutionarily advantageous. Maybe some complex animals don't have it, but they'd have to be pretty weird (although I admit, lobsters and crabs would be in the right category-- it's not going to be a vertebrate that feels no pain-- they aren't particularly unique in terms of how they grow and die).

goodside 16y ago
You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. If your environment is stable enough that you can operate entirely by innate reflex, there's no reason to waste genetic selection pressure on crafting sensations for the benefit of some passive, ineffectual observer inside the lobster. Or the observer itself, for that matter. Its almost certainly true that lobsters feel pain (response to analgesics is damn convincing), but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this study.
- pyre 16y ago
  > It may well be true that lobsters feel pain, but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this. Then at best the evidence is inconclusive. This is usually an issue that is trotted out as 'fact' a lot when it comes to debates about boiling lobsters/crabs alive for food. So really the 'general knowledge' of this should be: We don't know whether or not lobsters and crabs feel pain. and not: We know for sure that crabs and lobsters don't feel pain, because if they did, then I would feel bad about going to Red Lobster for dinner.
- ars 16y ago
  > response to analgesics is damn convincing It's not. It just means you blocked the negative stimulus, so that innate reflex you mentioned does not trigger. It doesn't necessarily mean they feel pain. Personally I don't think this question is possible to answer, so I behave as if all animals feel pain and I avoid inflicting it, except when I have no alternative. And when I have no alternative I try to minimize the duration and/or severity (giving priority to minimizing duration over severity).
- cousin_it 16y ago
  You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. Whaaaat? You need pain to run away from the source of it, and to warn your relatives by screaming.
ars 16y ago
> Wait. You mean people thought they didn't? If you rip the leg off an ant it keeps going as if nothing happened. Or if you cut an earthworm in half it behaves normally. So clearly not all animals feel pain. The question becomes which ones do, and which don't. You can't ask them, so at best you watch their behavior and look for changes. The trouble comes in when you try to distinguish between pain and suffering. Pain prompts an animal to change behavior. A worm being shocked will move away - but does that mean it suffers? Or just that it avoids the negative stimulus? I can't give you the answer, but at least I can help you understand the question.
- maushu 16y ago
  Don't know about the earthworm, but for the ant it's like this: The ant itself might not feel pain but the ant colony as a whole does feel "pain", the reason for this is that an ant is the equivalent to a human cell. It doesn't feel pain by itself. To verify this, just find a big ant colony (with hundreds of ants above ground, doing their stuff) and then step on some ants and you will see them completely freak and try to find the attacker so that it doesn't cause any more "pain" the colony.
  - TheSOB88 16y ago
    We're talking about the neurological pain, the pain that you feel when you pinch yourself. An ant colony cannot feel this, unless it is somehow conscious.
    - maushu 16y ago
      Define... "conscious".
- jules 16y ago
  > Or if you cut an earthworm in half it behaves normally. It does not. It certainly does act like it feels pain. And in a few minutes it dies.
- devinj 16y ago
  I'm not sure you've ever seen an injured worm. As for ants:perhaps so. The thing is, ants are really different and interesting. As I said, perhaps some animals don't feel pain, but they'd have to be pretty weird. I would suppose ants qualify, being essentially borg, which is pretty out there. Lobsters, not so much.

michaelpavelich 16y ago

A great read from David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" from Gourmet magazine http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true&currentPage=9 http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...

mark_l_watson 16y ago

It has always bugged me that some people boil live crabs and lobsters: I have seen them struggling to get out of the water. Quickly cutting out their brain stems and then tossing them in the water seems better. That said, anyone who has seen live pigs piled 20+ feet deep in a pre-killing pen may think about being a vegetarian. The look of total fear in their eyes is difficult to forget. My wife and I had the misfortune of seeing that one time and we could not bring ourselves to eat any meat for a long time.

mingdingo 16y ago
I think it's more than some people, unfortunately. It's probably the de facto way. “One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals” - Mahatma Gandhi Most nations do poorly on this test, although there is slow progress. The funny thing is, at least 7 out of 10 people would not be happy with factory farming practices, but they still dominate agriculture in this country. It deeply troubles me that you can keep pigs in pens where they cannot even turn around, even though they're about as intelligent as dogs. Other animals can be equally as unlucky.
- ars 16y ago
  It's a bit off topic, but that is not actually a good way to measure a nation. Holocaust survivors describe how dogs were treated well, and there were laws protecting them and other animals. A much better way to measure that, is seeing how the nation treats it's prisoners.
  - polp 16y ago
    I think you are missing the point. Nazi Germany was by no means a vegetarian country. I think a better question to ask would be - could the Holocaust have happened in the mostly-vegetarian India? Millions of people were murdered under the pretense that these people are pigs or rats. But what if your culture (e.g. Hinduism or whatever) also condemns the killing of pigs and rats? The entire argument that justifies murdering these people breaks down.

kevinh 16y ago

People ripped the legs off of live crabs? That's sick whether or not they can feel pain.

Aetius 16y ago
Is it really? I am asking this as a genuine question. I am quite sure our ancestors did this. In fact, in many cultures, food is eaten alive and wriggling. How is this any different? Is it really "sick" to kill something slower (ripping the legs off), rather than faster (cutting its oxygen supply, eviscerating it, etc)?
- joeyo 16y ago
  The usual argument is that, to the extent that we believe that an organism can experience pain, it's preferable to minimize its pain as much as is practical, especially when there alternatives.
- kevinh 16y ago
  I'm not aware of any reason to have the animal alive while you're breaking off its limbs. It just seems like the behavior of a sociopath to me.
  - ars 16y ago
    It's law number 6 of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_laws > I am quite sure our ancestors did this. Presumably some did and that's why the Noahide laws address this issue. And clearly some ancestors agreed it was a bad thing - and not just a little bad, but bad enough that it was listed in the core set of laws.
- maushu 16y ago
  Using "Our ancestors did this." as an explanation to do something is fallacious. Our ancestors also (in some cases) sacrificed people as offerings. Should we do that too?
  - deleted 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

CapitalistCartr 16y ago
Hmmm, lessee, logic . . . If God didn't want me to eat people, She wouldn't have made them out of meat.
- adbge 16y ago
  Finally, a justification for religious cannibalism! I've waited...so long...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

Jun8 16y ago

In addition to Wallace's Consider the Lobster I'd very much recommend Baggini's The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten (review here: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants-to-be-eaten.html http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants...) for a deeper dive into this problem. The title essay's premise is this: As a thought experiment assume that a lobster is genetically modified to think that it's sole purpose is to be eaten. Is it still morally wrong to eat that animal? For less far fetched examples (and moving somewhat tangentially), consider the people in The Matrix, who are happy in their deception or Frenchwomen who insist that wearing burkas liberate them. They are happy that way. Should we still impose our attitudes on them? What would you do if you met a worshiper of the Crocodile God, who craves the honor of being thrown alive into the pit (that last example is from Bach's Illusions).

orborde 16y ago
There was an animal exactly like this being served at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

jarin 16y ago

"And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess 'high cognitive ability and sentience.'" Wow, did they just jump to that conclusion based on pain aversion behavior or is there some kind of evidence to support this? It's quite a stretch.

jules 16y ago
I think your and their definition of "high cognitive ability and sentience" may not be the same.

albertcardona 16y ago

I work with invertebrate sensory neurons (neuroscientist here). For a starter, check out the pick pocket neurons in Dan Tracey's paper ("nociceptive" means pain receptors): http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)02268-3 http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)0...

cmars232 16y ago

Is there a quick, painless alternative though? Can't really decapitate or bleed out a heavily armored invertebrate. Maybe drown them in wine or spirits?