Do you believe that shellfish feel pain?

[QuestionableMouse]

Just been talking to my mum on the phone and we got to talking about stuff from childhood including our seaside trips. She used to buy two or three live crabs and boil them when we got home.

I was always horrified by it as a child and thought it was horrible. I'm still uncomfortable with the idea as an adult.

It seems that it's recommended to kill crabs/lobsters now before cooking.

I can’t begin to imagine how painful it must be for any living thing to be dropped into boiling water.

I never eat anything like that because I can’t stand cruelty. Perhaps I’m ignorant of other cruelties which happens in abattoirs. I hope nothing suffers.

Bellyfullofbiscuits

Endeavour to be intelligible.

I get live crab from the fisherman. I put them in the freezer for an hour before boiling them.
I also get mackerel from him. I'm not sure how he kills them, but I think they just leave them in the bucket.

@Peacocking you do realise that large parts of the country aren't suitable for anything than raising animals? And the countryside/farm animals wouldn't exist as it does now without animal farming? It's not done cruelly in most of the UK. 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

@Dreeple what rat?

If your main concern is animal welfare, and taking account welfare throughout the lives of the creatures, wild shellfish/ fish still seem better choices than red meat or poultry.

Elieza your stance seems illogical and uninformed.

Questionablemouse

Sorry it wasn’t your rat!

I try not to think about it as I eat a lot of prawns.

When they farm prawns they pull off the female prawn's eye-stalk and hormonal gland to allow the prawns to mature and produce eggs consistently.

It was Nottherealslimshady‘s rat.

@Dozer I'm allergic to shellfish so it would be a terrible choice 🙄😂😂

I'm with the people who think they feel somthing that we describe as pain, but it's probably different to the pain we feel.

I had two pet crabs and the male snipped off one of the females legs every time she went near his rock. She kept going back though.

I think it's probably better to not boil them alive though. Regardless of how they interpret danger and damage to their bodies - I wouldn't want to cause it distress or suffering unecessarily.

I assume so. Many things we do to animals we eat are a bit brutal.

Why do we keep using the word humane regarding this industry!? Billions of animals are killed every year in the UK alone. Most of them are caged and in barns,driven to a slaughter house and come out chopped up in packaging. Yet we like to think something humane happened along the way?

The grass fed calfs stand in the same line as 'organic' ones. Most pigs are barned. They will never see the light of day. They are gassed alongside the sow that managed to live a bit longer until her body was spent and could no longer produce enough piglets. Do you think she would 'feel' she had a more humane life as she is forced into a gas chamber?

This industry is sick. And what's worse is that we fund it. Shit a dead animal out your arse by all means. But don't call in humane.

@Nousernameforme please tell me that's not true about the sheep. And how would anyone believe them?? I have lost track of the number of sheep I've seen sheared when I was a kid, they look happy as Larry and not a nick to be seen!!

Crabs are utter bastards anyway.

I think it’s hypocritical to care about a crab but not about other animals. There is no such thing as killing an animal ‘humanely’.
To describe slaughter as humane is absolutely ridiculous and you are kidding yourself into not feeling guilty by thinking that.

Yes. This is why I’m vegetarian. I move snails from paths so they don’t get stood on. (Yes I know snails aren’t shellfish 😂)

@Tootletum potentially distressing fake picture

medium.com/@cstum/violence-in-the-wool-industry-truth-and-rhetoric-in-petas-claims-d9f10b0c997b

It did their cause more harm than good.

No animal slaughter is humane. To believe otherwise is just kidding yourself. Which is why I'm veggie.

I don’t think there is a humane way of killing an animal, but it doesn’t really bother me.

@HeatherIV
Thank you I won't sleep well tonight.
I also won't eat prawns again.
I'll stick to avocados.

@Dreeple remarkably, I'm aware rats arent shellfish. I added it as it was connected to my other comments. Humans claim animals dont feel when it suits them essentially.

I studied cognitive neuroscience in postgrad school. There’s a fair amount of research into the sentience (which is often what people mean when they say intelligence) and ability to feel pain of different species.

I have no doubt that shellfish can feel pain, though I have not made extensive study of them. I have read quite a few studies on octopus models of consciousness and there is no doubt that octopuses are highly intelligent (really, equal at least to a dog) and are sentient creatures.

All vertebrates have nervous systems complex enough to feel pain.

Our understanding of animal conscious expands all the time.

The philosopher Descartes (of “I think ergo I am” fame) used to conduct experiments where he tortured and mutilated dogs to death, believing them to be automatons unable to feel pain, basically objects rather than living creatures. For anyone with a pet dog that seems incredibly. But people really didn’t see animals are living creatures.

Sorry copy paste error.

That should read: “ All vertebrates have nervous systems complex enough to feel pain. But there is an increasing body of evidence that invertebrates also feel pain, and that some of them have their own sophisticated nervous systems.”

It's not done cruelly in most of the UK.

UK practices are better than most. But still not humane.