It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Mark Twain
“Lobsters are remarkable, sophisticated creatures.”
Marine biologist Jelle Atema
We should of course not forget the enormous suffering of one creature who is cooked alive! The lobster.
First some fascinating facts about an amazing but little understood creature.
A lobster is an inverterbrate crustacean.
Lobsters may live as long as 100 years, prior to the rise of the lobster industry lobsters where thought to have lived as long as 145 years.
In a similar way to dolphins lobsters use complex signals to explore their environment and also to establish social relationships.
Lobsters carry their young for none months, their offspring have a long childhood and adolescence. In their natural habitat and circumstances, older lobsters have been observed leading the young walking claw in claw.
Four times each year they shed their hard outer shell and grow a new one. Only after she has shed her shell can a female lobster mate.
Lobsters are able to regenerate legs, claws, and antennae. Lobsters like us are either lift or right handed, that is a lobster's crusher claw can be either on the left or the right.
Lobsters are remarkable creatures, with highly developed senses, for instance with their antennae they can smell chemicals in the water, they Taste with sensory hairs along their legs. Lobsters can both emit and detect low frequency sound. They are indeed sophisticated animals highly adapted to determine changes in their environment.
Most importantly they have pain receptors and have complex nervous systems. In short lobsters feel pain, they cry out when they are put into boiling water and frantically thrash their bodies and scrape the sides of the cooking pot in a desperate bid to escape.
Surely this is enough to convince anyone that this creature is in pain as he is boiled alive! If this is not enough to convince you, you may be surprised to know that in fact most scientists agree that a lobster’s nervous system is quite complex. Below are comments by leading scientists:
Neurobiologist Tom Abrams says lobsters have “a full array of senses.”
Jaren Horsley Ph.D. Invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for many years states:
'I can tell you the lobster has a sophisticated nervous system that, among other things, allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm... [Lobsters] can, I am sure, sense pain.'
In fact lobsters may feel even more pain than you would in a similar circumstance. Sometimes before cooking live lobsters are cut in half, even sliced and diced.
Jaren G. Horsley says:
“The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. ... I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open ... [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during cooking.
This animal undergoes astonishing cruelty to provide the over privileged with an item of food that is most certainly not essential.
You would be outraged it this happened to your cat or dog, or even a chicken, pig or sheep. Although many people seem oblivious to the cruelty of factory farmed animals this particularly heinous act of cruelty would not be permitted. Why do we allow lobsters, an equally sentient creature who also feels pain to be boiled alive. Imagine sitting in a restaurant and asking for a chicken dish and hearing the screams of your chosen chicken as he is boiled alive, well you can't can you, yet this happens to lobsters everyday, millions of them world wide. In the USA alone 20 million are caught each year.
Lobsters are caught in a trap, each year thousand of these traps go missing. Some are fitted with a time releasing lock but many are not and the lobster is left to starve to death or die as a result of cannibalism or being washed up onto the beach
Once trapped they are hauled from their deep sea environment, their claws are than bound, they are transported to stores packed together in tanks, they are than kept in a state of semi consciousness in thermal cases until required.
Lobsters than meet the most horrific death you can imagine as they are boiled alive. Death may take from 15 seconds to as long as seven minutes.
Animal Aid in their article The Silent Suffering of Lobsters quote leading chef Gordon Ramsey who explains how killing lobsters makes him feel good.
"You always feel better after killing something. I do... stab the head off a lobster. You feel all the better for it... God knows how many I've killed... plunge them into boiling court bouillon, and their tails flip up and they scream and you can hear their claws scraping on the sides, and I got great pleasure out of that." (The Independent Magazine, 12th October 2003)
Animal Aid: The silent suffering of lobsters
Shocking isn't it that we share this world with people with such cruel inclinations, unimaginable to me how anyone can derive pleasure from such cruelty.
Contrary to what the lobster industry would have you believe the lobster does not gradually loose consciousness when water is brought to the boil slowly, in fact as already mentioned lobsters react by thrashing about, struggling violently with the increase the temperature.
Watch this shocking film if you can, very upsetting.
Exposé: Live Lobsters, Crabs Torn Apart
Dawn Carr, director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Europe), says:
"For every cruel thing people do, there is a compassionate alternative.
This is most certainly the case with lobsters although experts consider that there is no humane way to kill a lobster.
The answer than is simple: do not eat them.
The information above was gleaned from a number of sources including those below where you will find more information and actions you may take.
As individuals there is at least one way to help bring about change and that is to stop eating fish and other aquatic creatures. There are a number of campaigns you can support. For ideas, campaigns, petitions and more information please visit the following websites
The life spark in my eyes is in no way different than the life spark in the eyes of any other sentient being.
Michael Stepaniak, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998
References and Links :
Internal
Sentience in crustaceans
External
External links will open into a new window
peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/lobsters-crabs.aspx
Put an end to the boiling of lobsters and other crustaceans - Petition - Sign
Graphic Credit
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fish_stall_at_Barcelona_market_(2930230562).jpg
Important please note:
I am not an animal expert of any kind just your average person who loves animals, all animals, and feels deeply about the plight of many of our fellow creatures. Neither am I a writer, or any other expert. Therefore please keep in mind that the information included in this website has been researched to the best of my ability and any misinformation is quite by accident but of course possible.
Copyright, accreditations and other matters, please read
"For every cruel thing people do, there is a compassionate alternative.
This is most certainly the case with lobsters although experts consider that there is no humane way to kill a lobster.
The answer than is simple: do not eat them.
The information above was gleaned from a number of sources including those below where you will find more information and actions you may take.
As individuals there is at least one way to help bring about change and that is to stop eating fish and other aquatic creatures. There are a number of campaigns you can support. For ideas, campaigns, petitions and more information please visit the following websites
The life spark in my eyes is in no way different than the life spark in the eyes of any other sentient being.
Michael Stepaniak, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998
References and Links :
Internal
Sentience in crustaceans
External
External links will open into a new window
peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/lobsters-crabs.aspx
Put an end to the boiling of lobsters and other crustaceans - Petition - Sign
Graphic Credit
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fish_stall_at_Barcelona_market_(2930230562).jpg
Important please note:
I am not an animal expert of any kind just your average person who loves animals, all animals, and feels deeply about the plight of many of our fellow creatures. Neither am I a writer, or any other expert. Therefore please keep in mind that the information included in this website has been researched to the best of my ability and any misinformation is quite by accident but of course possible.
Copyright, accreditations and other matters, please read