Mar 27 2009
Study: Crabs feel pain too
A new study shows that crabs do in fact feel pain, and that they also retain a memory of it. Results of the study, undertaken by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast in UK, are published in the journal Animal Behavior.
In the study, hermit crabs received shocks through wires attached to their bellies. The ones who were shocked left their shells behind in search of a new painfree home. The ones who were not shocked did not move. Conclusion? Shocking hermit crabs “is unpleasant for them.”
In another test, a shock just below the threshold that caused them to abandon their shells was administered, and they were then offered new shells. While both shocked and non-shocked crabs inspected the new shell, shocked ones were much more likely to move into the new shell.
Researcher Bob Elwood explained, “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.”
Elwood undertook a study in 2007 where acetic acid was administered to the antennae of prawns. The acid irritated them, and after a local anesthetic was applied, they would stop rubbing their antennae.
So…if crabs can feel pain, what does that say about the common practice of boiling them alive?
I noted yesterday that it was Descartes who first popularized the argument that we could eat animals because they don’t have a soul, and without a soul, they can’t feel pain. Before Descartes, meat-eating was justified on a scriptual level - God said it was okay.
Once people began to question religion during the Enlightenment, the ethics of eating meat were trickier. John Reynolds, criticising the deists, said that if men dismissed scripture, then they should be vegetarian. If the Bible was an invention, then it would be necessary to “let the Butcher’s Trade be cashier’d from off the Face of the Earth; let the Shambles be converted into Fruiterer’s Shops, and Herb-Markets…[and] have done with their Ragous, with their Fricassies, and Hashes, made of broken Limbs of dismember’d Brother Animals.”(1725)
Sorry Descartes.
As an interesting note, most of the early Western vegetarians found their beliefs in the Bible as well. They saw that Adam and Eve lived in harmony with the animals, eating a herbivorous diet. So, they figured, a return to this paradise must involve a vegetarian diet.
Sources: Live Science - Boiling Mad:Crabs Feel Pain March 27, 2009
Stuart, Tristram. The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times, 2006.
