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Japan's ‘dancing zombie squid’
- mansilladev 8y agoNope.
- ppseafield 8y agoOne of the reasons I went back to being a vegetarian (and then became vegan) was a video of something like this. I was so creeped out. I haven't gone back.
- foobiekr 8y agoNot a vegetarian but needless cruelty is repellent.
- chrischen 8y agoIf you watched the video they explain that the animal’s brain has already been removed, so anything after that is not felt by the squid.
- kijin 8y agoI can see why it messes with our intuitions, though. Most of the other animals we eat don't flop around like that unless they're still alive and in distress. Except the occasional headless chicken. Chickens are weird.
- chrischen 8y agoYes, which is a great wait to reveal someone who does it to make themselves feel better vs the actual welfare of the animal.
- saagarjha 8y agoIt's dead.
- ppseafield 8y agoIt wasn't always dead. It was caught, killed, and its brain was removed. And then its corpse was made to flail about wildly in a bowl. I find it, if even only the last part, creepy.
- saagarjha 8y agoOnce the animal is dead, I don't see how there's any cruelty involved. You are welcome to find it creepy, or object to the killing of the animal in the first place, but it's certainly not feeling pain by having its corpse being made to dance around.
- ppseafield 8y agoSorry, I thought you were replying to me, but you were replying to that other comment. I agree that the dead are spared cruelty, and this wouldn't be considered cruel.
- thatsnotmyusern 8y agoIt may have been this: "Adding salt to freshly cut muscle causes it to spasm." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCeA72UFg3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCeA72UFg3Q
- ppseafield 8y agoNo, it was a dancing squid corpse video, but ..... Thanks? :(
- oneeyedpigeon 8y agoThere’s something particularly unedifying - for me, at least - in making a dead animal 'perform' for you before you eat it. I was surprised the bbc adopted such a neutral tone on this one.
- Voloskaya 8y agoWhy would they not? Clearly at least some people (the consumers in Japan) think this is ok, so why would the bbc choose your point of view over theres? This is called objective journalism.
- funkaster 8y agoIt's both a matter of taste and a cultural thing. The first time I was in Seoul, a friend of mine took me to a place where they served "live octopus" with raw meat + raw egg yolk. It was extremely delicious, the raw octopus legs where still moving and twisting (just like in this example it was just nervous endings activated by chemicals in the food), they even wrapped around the chopsticks. The octoups + the yolk + raw meat provided an incredible mix of flavours and textures. I'm not Asian (actually I'm from South America), but my friend told me I already ate most than what even a typical S.Korean eats. I guess I was just more used to experience "weird" food because my family is from the country side in Chile and I also I really like to eat/try all kinds of sea food. Going back to your comment: it's not just about making the animal "perform", I see it more as a proof of freshness. In the end is all about the textures and flavours. So much talking about food, now I'm hungry :)
- armenarmen 8y ago> I see it more as a proof of freshness seems like the most practical reason, though the practice does make me very uncomfortable
- JeremyBanks 8y agoCan any moral issue be ignored by calling it a "cultural thing"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence
- zepearl 8y agoJapan is probably the only country that keeps suprising me and is often (in my eyes) absolutely contradictory - I love many of their animes, some of their movies (e.g. the old samurai classics, "I am a hero", etc) some of their music (I listen from time to time to "J1 radio"), but at the same time e.g. some other animes really go over my thresholds, they have the problem with child prostitution, keep fishing anything that moves, are ultra-protectionist, etc... . Incredible. How did it happen that they're sometimes absolutely great/avantgarde/etc... and then sometimes they fall back to the exact opposite? I often think that on the day when I'll be able to understand japan culture, I'll have no challenges left on this planet => I'll need some kind of extraterrestrial-invasion or faster-then-light-travel to find new interesting stuff to understand :)
- Taylor_OD 8y agoI think the best way for you to be able to understand them better is to remember while they are a country with a population of 120 million. There is going to be contradictions in their culture.
- lhorie 8y agoI mean, in the US, you have creationists and you have Silicon Valley. People are different everywhere. You just don't hear about strange curiosities from Brazil or Tasmania because journalism about Japan is more mainstream.
- drak0n1c 8y agoThose are not necessarily opposites. The centuries of various forces, traditions, and habits are what insulates them from western homogeneity. That is what enables them to produce artifacts that seem to be out of the norm to a western observer.
- subjectsigma 8y ago*anime
- crocodiletears 8y agoI think a lot of the confusion around Japan's culture often stems from the fact that from the outside, to casual observers, they seem so culturally integrated with the rest of the world; yet don't seem to have assimilated many (if any) of its social norms. The reality is, Japan is a net cultural exporter, and seems to have gone out of its way to prevent contaminating its social identity with foreign imports. Needless to say, the country has been heavily influenced by the brands it's imported, and the processes of technological/financial exchange abroad. But the nation itself has broadly kept its interactions with the outside world professional, or one-sided. Attempting to measure the nation (honestly most east-asian nations) with the metrics of progress we would we would use for more culturally integrated countries will always be confounding. They represent a parallel civilization that refuses to be subsumed by western thought in the way many less geographically defensible/isolated and technologically developed societies inevitably have been. As a result, their social development will never quite adhere to the broad trends that more westernized societies seem destined to follow.
- monkpit 8y agoI guess the lactic acid doesn’t get “forced” out during the dancing? Seems like it would.
- howard941 8y agoRelated submission about the ike jime method mentioned in the article here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19085530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19085530
- everyone 8y agoGagh!