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Interesting article. I've always found it amusing that insects are so taboo in most cuisines, yet we already eat all sorts of weird creatures[0]. However, I ag

Interesting article. I've always found it amusing that insects are so taboo in most cuisines, yet we already eat all sorts of weird creatures[0]. However, I agree with the author at the end. This is a weird statement by the interviewee: > If you're a vegetarian, I can't imagine a reason why you wouldn't want to adopt insects into your diet I can think of a lot of reasons. Some people just don't want to eat living creatures capable of sentient thought and pain (even if the process used to raise and kill them is painless). I'm painting with an incredibly broad brush, but in my experience, vegans tend to be more focused on farming practices - I know several vegans who say that they would be comfortable eating eggs or dairy that they themselves farmed (so that they could be sure that the hens/cows are being treated properly). But vegetarians (and vegans) have a number of different reasons for their dietary preferences - some of them are also interested in the treatment of animals, but they may instead (or also) have a vegetarian diet for reasons related to health, religion, etc. Most of these reasons would apply equally to insects and to birds/fish/mammals. [0] obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1268/ https://xkcd.com/1268/

jimmaswell 13y ago
From what I understand, insects aren't complex enough to feel or understand what an animal like a mammal or reptile sees as "pain"
- quasque 13y ago
  The most common argument against insects feeling pain used to be that they lacked the nociceptors (sensory neurons that respond to stimuli indicating damage) that provide pain perception in humans, and by analogy other vertebrates. However, it turns out that fruit fly larvae have thermal nociceptors that respond at the same threshold (~42°C) as those in vertebrates, rather damaging that line of argument. Alternatively, we could state that they don't have the mental capacity to experience pain as a conscious human might, but this is difficult (maybe impossible) to prove: how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? This also suggests that the conceptual line drawn between vertebrate animals and other living things regarding which species can experience pain, is really quite arbitrary.
  - canjobear 13y ago
    > how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? We can't measure "subjective experience", nor can we verify that it even exists; which suggests that it is not a well-defined concept and we shouldn't be using it for anything.
    - 1457389 13y ago
      Many of the most important concepts in science, not to mention ethics, are not yet well defined... I don't think your stance here is very productive.
    - quasque 13y ago
      From a philosophical point of view you may well be correct. However, there is the option of using behavioural observations as a surrogate. For example, exposing living things to pain stimuli and analogising the response to what we humans know to be a typical reaction to pain. This does carry the risk of inappropriately anthropomorphising non-human species, but as the question of whether other creatures feel pain is intimately linked to the morality of how humans should treat them (after all, we're not going to be able to stop other animals from inflicting pain on each other), then maybe it's not a problem.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        I have a microcontroller, a tiny DC motor, a pair of wheels, and a handful of thermistors. From these I build a robot, autonomous to the limit of its battery charge, which senses the temperature of its surroundings and acts on this information to move itself toward temperatures within a range its programming defines as preferable. The speed with which it does so is determined, to the limit of the motor's capability, by the difference between the temperature it's moving away from, and the temperature it's moving toward. If I use a cigarette lighter or a lit match to apply an open flame to one of this robot's thermistors, it will flinch away from the stimulus as fast as it can. This is closely analogous to "what we humans know to be a typical reaction to pain"; if you applied the same stimulus to one of my fingers, after all, I would initially react in much the same fashion. From this behavioral observation, do you conclude that my robot's subjective experience a) exists at all, and b) encompasses the experience of pain? Does this behavioral observation inform your concept of the morality surrounding how this robot is treated by humans? Why, or why not?
- psychometry 13y ago
  Where do you draw the line though? Ultimately it's arbitrary and I think vegans realize the only solution is to avoid the issue entirely.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Plants, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, are also capable of nociception. In advance of further discussion, my preliminary conclusion is that the vegan line is just as arbitrary as any other, but drawn so as to more tightly circumscribe those species on which the infliction of pain is acceptable, presumably out of a desire to inflict the least possible harm -- an honorable intent, but I think not honorable enough to satisfy at least some vegans, who insist upon seeing themselves as taking the only moral option, rather than merely the least practicable immoral option. (I have to admit I don't really understand any of this dietary hair-splitting from the inside. My species has gone to a lot of effort in becoming this planet's undisputed apex predator, and as far as I'm concerned, I may as well get the benefit.)
    - anon4 13y ago
      We aren't the apex predator. Yes, we do have everything necessary to kill any one animal on Earth and eat it. Even animals that are usually poisonous, like the pufferfish, the fishing of which is strictly regulated because otherwise we'll eat them all. On the other hand, we're not actually eating all the species. Most of us are almost exclusively eating species that through the miracle of selective breeding have been bred to be delicious, nutritious and easy to kill. We stopped trying to satisfy our dietary needs by way of becoming the apex predator once we figured out domestication.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        "Apex predator" doesn't mean "eats everything", but rather "eats what it please and has no predators of its own". By that standard, we're the most spectacularly successful predatory species this planet has yet seen, to the extent that many of us never have to hunt even once in our entire lives.
    - 13y ago
Yorrrick 13y ago
The argument suggested in the article is that harvesting plants also kills insects.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gordaco 13y ago
Aside from the taboo and the (heavily, if not completely, cultural) disgust, I have to say that I've never liked seafood (prawns and such, but also oysters, clams, etc), and this is the main reason I'm not willing to eat insects; I suspect they would taste similarly. I sometimes say half-joking that I only like to eat hot-blooded animals (I do eat fish, but just because it's healthier; I don't enjoy it). So yeah, I position myself along Randall Munroe. Here in Spain, snails are considered somewhat of a delicacy (they're usually served inside their shells, with a somewhat spicy sauce); I don't think that's too different than, say, eating oysters and other sea bivalves (also heavily consumed in many varieties), but I think that the cultural shock for Americans (and possibly most Europeans) is similar to that of eating insects.
- aaronem 13y ago
  That's certainly true for most Americans; in the United States, escargot is not a delicacy but a perennial joke. (I don't find it unpleasant, particularly, but I also don't really see the point; it strikes me as one of those things people eat, not for its own sake, but rather to be seen so doing.)
  - davidw 13y ago
    I've had snails - "bovoeti" is the local term - here in Italy, and... yeah. There was so much garlic you couldn't really taste much else. And there are other, better things to eat, like octopus. One of the things I'm very proud of as a father is having cultivated a wide range of tastes in our ~6 year old daughter, who happily slurps down octopus tentacles at one of the local food carts. And they are good - I'm happy to take anyone who stops by Padova to have some.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      My Neapolitan grandmother taught me similarly, by the simple expedient of not telling me what I was eating until I had already decided I liked it. Smart woman, my grandmother.
mikestew 13y ago
Well, if one can't imagine why a vegetarian wouldn't eat insects, one needs to expand the imagination. While not speaking for all vegetarians, one of the reasons I don't eat animals or insects is that I hold to the idea that no creature should have reason to fear me. Sure, insects get killed in the harvesting of plants, but I don't harvest plants for the expressed purpose of killing insects. As with most things it is typically more complicated than "here's a single reason, making it easy for you to mount a counter argument that you think quite clever."
- aaronem 13y ago
  Does it matter, to a cricket, whether it dies so you can put it on your supper plate, or merely so you can fill said plate with roughage?
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  Does it matter whether or not the creature is capable of experiencing fear?

jimmaswell 13y ago

From what I understand, insects aren't complex enough to feel or understand what an animal like a mammal or reptile sees as "pain"

quasque 13y ago
The most common argument against insects feeling pain used to be that they lacked the nociceptors (sensory neurons that respond to stimuli indicating damage) that provide pain perception in humans, and by analogy other vertebrates. However, it turns out that fruit fly larvae have thermal nociceptors that respond at the same threshold (~42°C) as those in vertebrates, rather damaging that line of argument. Alternatively, we could state that they don't have the mental capacity to experience pain as a conscious human might, but this is difficult (maybe impossible) to prove: how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? This also suggests that the conceptual line drawn between vertebrate animals and other living things regarding which species can experience pain, is really quite arbitrary.
- canjobear 13y ago
  > how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? We can't measure "subjective experience", nor can we verify that it even exists; which suggests that it is not a well-defined concept and we shouldn't be using it for anything.
  - 1457389 13y ago
    Many of the most important concepts in science, not to mention ethics, are not yet well defined... I don't think your stance here is very productive.
  - quasque 13y ago
    From a philosophical point of view you may well be correct. However, there is the option of using behavioural observations as a surrogate. For example, exposing living things to pain stimuli and analogising the response to what we humans know to be a typical reaction to pain. This does carry the risk of inappropriately anthropomorphising non-human species, but as the question of whether other creatures feel pain is intimately linked to the morality of how humans should treat them (after all, we're not going to be able to stop other animals from inflicting pain on each other), then maybe it's not a problem.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      I have a microcontroller, a tiny DC motor, a pair of wheels, and a handful of thermistors. From these I build a robot, autonomous to the limit of its battery charge, which senses the temperature of its surroundings and acts on this information to move itself toward temperatures within a range its programming defines as preferable. The speed with which it does so is determined, to the limit of the motor's capability, by the difference between the temperature it's moving away from, and the temperature it's moving toward. If I use a cigarette lighter or a lit match to apply an open flame to one of this robot's thermistors, it will flinch away from the stimulus as fast as it can. This is closely analogous to "what we humans know to be a typical reaction to pain"; if you applied the same stimulus to one of my fingers, after all, I would initially react in much the same fashion. From this behavioral observation, do you conclude that my robot's subjective experience a) exists at all, and b) encompasses the experience of pain? Does this behavioral observation inform your concept of the morality surrounding how this robot is treated by humans? Why, or why not?
psychometry 13y ago
Where do you draw the line though? Ultimately it's arbitrary and I think vegans realize the only solution is to avoid the issue entirely.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Plants, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, are also capable of nociception. In advance of further discussion, my preliminary conclusion is that the vegan line is just as arbitrary as any other, but drawn so as to more tightly circumscribe those species on which the infliction of pain is acceptable, presumably out of a desire to inflict the least possible harm -- an honorable intent, but I think not honorable enough to satisfy at least some vegans, who insist upon seeing themselves as taking the only moral option, rather than merely the least practicable immoral option. (I have to admit I don't really understand any of this dietary hair-splitting from the inside. My species has gone to a lot of effort in becoming this planet's undisputed apex predator, and as far as I'm concerned, I may as well get the benefit.)
  - anon4 13y ago
    We aren't the apex predator. Yes, we do have everything necessary to kill any one animal on Earth and eat it. Even animals that are usually poisonous, like the pufferfish, the fishing of which is strictly regulated because otherwise we'll eat them all. On the other hand, we're not actually eating all the species. Most of us are almost exclusively eating species that through the miracle of selective breeding have been bred to be delicious, nutritious and easy to kill. We stopped trying to satisfy our dietary needs by way of becoming the apex predator once we figured out domestication.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      "Apex predator" doesn't mean "eats everything", but rather "eats what it please and has no predators of its own". By that standard, we're the most spectacularly successful predatory species this planet has yet seen, to the extent that many of us never have to hunt even once in our entire lives.
  - 13y ago

Yorrrick 13y ago

The argument suggested in the article is that harvesting plants also kills insects.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gordaco 13y ago

Aside from the taboo and the (heavily, if not completely, cultural) disgust, I have to say that I've never liked seafood (prawns and such, but also oysters, clams, etc), and this is the main reason I'm not willing to eat insects; I suspect they would taste similarly. I sometimes say half-joking that I only like to eat hot-blooded animals (I do eat fish, but just because it's healthier; I don't enjoy it). So yeah, I position myself along Randall Munroe. Here in Spain, snails are considered somewhat of a delicacy (they're usually served inside their shells, with a somewhat spicy sauce); I don't think that's too different than, say, eating oysters and other sea bivalves (also heavily consumed in many varieties), but I think that the cultural shock for Americans (and possibly most Europeans) is similar to that of eating insects.

aaronem 13y ago
That's certainly true for most Americans; in the United States, escargot is not a delicacy but a perennial joke. (I don't find it unpleasant, particularly, but I also don't really see the point; it strikes me as one of those things people eat, not for its own sake, but rather to be seen so doing.)
- davidw 13y ago
  I've had snails - "bovoeti" is the local term - here in Italy, and... yeah. There was so much garlic you couldn't really taste much else. And there are other, better things to eat, like octopus. One of the things I'm very proud of as a father is having cultivated a wide range of tastes in our ~6 year old daughter, who happily slurps down octopus tentacles at one of the local food carts. And they are good - I'm happy to take anyone who stops by Padova to have some.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    My Neapolitan grandmother taught me similarly, by the simple expedient of not telling me what I was eating until I had already decided I liked it. Smart woman, my grandmother.

mikestew 13y ago

Well, if one can't imagine why a vegetarian wouldn't eat insects, one needs to expand the imagination. While not speaking for all vegetarians, one of the reasons I don't eat animals or insects is that I hold to the idea that no creature should have reason to fear me. Sure, insects get killed in the harvesting of plants, but I don't harvest plants for the expressed purpose of killing insects. As with most things it is typically more complicated than "here's a single reason, making it easy for you to mount a counter argument that you think quite clever."

aaronem 13y ago
Does it matter, to a cricket, whether it dies so you can put it on your supper plate, or merely so you can fill said plate with roughage?
ForHackernews 13y ago
Does it matter whether or not the creature is capable of experiencing fear?