Study Finds It Unlikely Lobsters Feel Pain (PETA Alert)

AP/MSNBC ^ | 02/15/2005 | AP

[drt1]

Activists say Norwegian report slanted to favor fishing industry PORTLAND, Maine - A new study out of Norway concludes it’s unlikely lobsters feel pain, stirring up a long-simmering debate over whether Maine’s most valuable seafood suffers when it’s being cooked.

Animal activists for years have claimed that lobsters are in agony when being cooked, and that dropping one in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

The study, funded by the Norwegian government and written by a scientist at the University of Oslo, suggests lobsters and other invertebrates such as crabs, snails and worms probably don’t suffer even if lobsters do tend to thrash in boiling water....

[drt1]

What next, pain killers for fish bait, humane fly traps, etc.?

[Izzy Dunne]

dropping one in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

Yeah, but they take FOREVER to cook if you drop them in lukwarm water.

[TXBSAFH]

They do not feel pain, particularly if you have the heat up on the water.

[Puppage]

Can someone please pass the soap?

[shubi]

I guess they want us to eat everything while it is still alive.

Our first step should be turning PETA into sushi.

[kjam22]

suggests lobsters and other invertebrates such as snails and worms probably don’t suffer even if lobsters do tend to thrash in boiling water....

Pretty funny statement. It's saying "don't believe what you see and observe. Just listen to what I say"

[TRY ONE]

PETA:

1) Poor, poor lobsters feel pain when cooking!

2) An 8 1/2 month fetus does NOT feel pain when speared in the head with scissors, then had its brains sucked out!

[L98Fiero]

Life is pain and Lobster tastes good.

[drt1]

"An 8 1/2 month fetus does NOT feel pain when speared in the head with scissors, then had its brains sucked out!"

That is the premier example of Libs 'Selective' and hypocritical morality and outrage isn't it. Human rights are good unless the UN chooses to ignore them or they are inconvenient to their dogma. They spend more time worrying about lobsters than people, including the unborn and on and on. /rant

[wbill]

"I'd say, set'er again"

Tim Sample is a genius, but only if you're not from away.

[JCEccles]

Animal behaviorist Temple Grandin has written a book that in one chapter offers an intriguing look into the the question of animal pain, based on current research. She takes care to distinguish between lower-brain reflexive pain, which most if not all animals have, and frontal cortex subjective pain which it appears that most animals either lack entirely (such as fish) or have to only a limited degree compared to humans with their massively developed forebrains.

What animal activists are doing is projecting their own intense human feelings of subjective pain and suffering onto lobsters and crabs, which are essentially primitive brain stems attached to claws and feelers. This is an emotional argument, not a rational one.

[drt1]

It is sort of like the old "If a tree falls in a deserted forest and no one is there to hear it, is there a sound" type of argument isn't it.

[OldSmaj]

...dropping one (lobster) in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

Hey, the louder it screams, the better it tastes, right?

Hey, PETA, I don't care!

[eclectic]

Of course they feel pain, but the immense satisfaction they must derive from being consumed by a higher intellect should offset their suffering

[JCEccles]

Pretty funny statement. It's saying "don't believe what you see and observe. Just listen to what I say

Only is you assume that a lobster dropped into boiling water is thrashing in agony due to intense feelings of subjective pain.

When the doctor has you cross one leg over the other and taps your knee with a mallet, your lower leg kicks (independent of conscious control) with a vigor all out of proportion to the subjective sensation you feel. This is brain stem-driven reflexive "pain." Are you suffering or in agony because of it? No. Why not? Because suffering and agony are forebrain activities, and your forebrain is hardly engaged in the activity.

Lobsters and crabs have essentially only brainstems. What this Norwegian study is saying, fully consonant with other studies, is that lower order animals only experience reflexive "pain." The thrashing of a lobster dropped into boiling water is of the same type and quality as the kick of your leg when a doctor tests your reflexes by tapping your knee with a mallet.

[Deguello]

Some Researchers were studying the habits of insects and focused on the grasshopper.

They pressed a button and a loud horn would sound and the grasshopper would jump.

One-by-one, they removed the legs from the grasshopper and then pressed the button for the horn and each time the subject would jump.

When the last leg was removed and the horn blasted, the grasshopper just laid there. They tried again to reafirm the reaction and it was they same...no movement.

They concluded that when all the legs of the grasshopper are removed, it goes deaf.

[kjam22]

LOLOL....... I bought that hook line and sinker until the very end. I'm going to remember that one!

Saying the lobster doesn't feel the boiling water reminds me of one of my earliest childhood memories. Dad teaching me how to fish. Here's the worm.... you thread it on the hook. Don't worry... it doesn't feel a thing! Oh yeah.... So THAT'S why it squirms so much when you do it...

[Jack of all Trades]

I'll bet it stings a little bit when you lay one on its back, split in in half and fill its guts with stuffing though.

So what? It's a giant edible sea-bug.

[JCEccles]

Surgeons in the late 1940s sometimes used an operation that involved cutting the nerve connections between the frontal lobes of a patient and the rest of the patient's brain. In cases of patients that had been rendered essentially immobile due to chronic severe pain they found that the operation completely changed how the patient experienced pain. In essence, the patient would report that he or she still felt pain, but it really didn't bother them. A patient that the day before was collapsed in bed in a fetal position in agony, could be be found, after the operation, sitting calmly playing cards.

And yet if that same post-operation patient were poked with a sharp pin to test his reaction, he would yelp in surprise as if he had experienced intense subjective pain (which he had not inasmuch as the operation rendered him incapable of experiencing the subjective component of pain). In fact, his reaction was typically louder and more extreme than before the operation. Why? because the forebrain also governs complex social reactions and serves to temper a person's reactions so they are more socially "acceptable." Without that governor, the patient had no subjective control to temper his reflexive responses.

It is sloppy or uninformed thinking that PETA resorts to in these cases.