Off but On topic - Pain For Crabs

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/article.aspx?cp-documentid=15424012

Wasnt sure where to post this - but its interesting article and relates somewhat to our sit


Crabs 'can remember suffering pain'

pa.press.net

Crabs not only suffer pain but can remember being hurt, new research has suggested.

Scientists, who made the discovery by submitting hermit crabs to small electric shocks, said it has important implications for crustacean welfare in the food industry.

The news may alarm many chefs who still boil lobsters alive, believing the creatures to be impervious to pain.
Hermit crabs lack a hard carapace of their own and so make their homes in empty mollusc shells.

The researchers delivered electric shocks to wires attached to the shells of hermit crabs. Only crabs that received shocks vacated their shells during the experiment, indicating that what they had experienced
was unpleasant.

With less powerful shocks, below the threshold that forced them out, crabs remained in their shells but appeared to be waiting for an opportunity to move. When a new shell was offered to them, they were more likely to switch
homes than crabs that had not received a shock.

This suggested that the crabs retained a memory of the pain they had felt earlier, said the study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour. Professor Bob Elwood, of Queen's University Belfast, said: "There has been a long debate
about whether crustaceans including crabs, prawns and lobsters feel pain.

"We know from previous research that they can detect harmful stimuli and withdraw from the
source of the stimuli but that could be a simple reflex without the inner 'feeling' of unpleasantness that we associate with pain.

"This research demonstrates that it is not a simple reflex but that crabs trade-off their need for a quality shell with the need to avoid the harmful stimulus. Such trade-offs are seen in vertebrates in which
the response to pain is controlled with respect to other requirements.

Trade-offs of this type have not been previously demonstrated in crustaceans. The results are consistent with the idea of pain being experienced by these animals."

I dont know whether to be horrified that, once again, scientists are needlessly inflicting pain on animals, or grateful to them for the fact that at long last a scientific argument may be put forward that they can experience pain.

The way that cooks throw lobsters and crabs in pots of boiling water alive has always horrified me, as to be honest, does all of the animal slaughtering techniques used.

I know that if we want to eat these creatures they have to be killed for us, but lets just do it as humanely as possible.

thats some statement for scientists to make but if ture then they sould stop cook, cooking crabs and lobsters the way they do. they need to find a more humane way.



dekker

Off to General Freshwater Topics with you...

The fastest way to dispatch a crab (as with many creatures) is to simply stab them between the eyes - I have always thought cooking whatever whilst alive to be cruel. They should have added tot his article that it was recently shown that prawns/shrimp feel pain etc as well.

Why do ppl feel its some how 'hip n cool' or whatever to be barbaric - to eat things that are either still alive or suffered greatly in their last moments of life?

Its strange to me how hypocritical people are - would you eat eat a puppy whilst it was still alive or boil it alive? probably not (and we curse certain eastern cultures for similar practices) yet we go ahead and turn a blind eye to the same treatment of other creatures.

Also in this day n age of apparent disgust of discrimination - we discrimnate between animals still (I know many anomal welfare groups dont treat fish as animals as well)

Excuse the pun Food for thought