We're just gonna keep making more unexpectedly disturbing discoveries that would have also been the intuitive guess of any empathetic two year old.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
157 points (98.2% liked)
Vegan
1494 readers
1 users here now
A place for solarpunks working toward a world without speciesism
Rules
- This is not a place to debate veganism
- There is no place for (carnist) trolls
- No unsolicited promotion of commercial products
- No speciesism
- No promotion of violence in any way
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This. Lots and lots of people, especially when I was younger, would go on about how "animals" (non-humans) can't experience pain or emotion. 30 years of evidence to the contrary later, fuck 'em.
It wasn't until the (late) 1980's that there was universal acceptance that baby human's felt pain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies
Its not better that this was the case, but it's a little more even-handedly stupid.
Who could have thought that boiling living beings alive is painful torture?
We boil vegetables alive all the time!
I come from a long line of medieval scalders, this is cancelling my culture, also the reason why I work the deep fryer at Wendy's.
“We need more research to find less painful ways to kill shellfish,” Dr. Sneddon urges.
It's sad that this is the takeaway and not "let's not eat these creatures that experience stress and pain"
Thats not a battle thats winable right now, if people are willing to eat way more obviously sentient animals like cows, pigs, etc. crustaceans have no chance unfortunately. More humane death is at least a start though.
He's saying we need a less shellfish way to prep this food.
"It's time to eat the bugs!" -Omnivores when confronted with any new challenges to animal ag.
I mean, plants also feel stress and pain. Maybe it's not as bad (and some parts are designed to be eaten), but the arguement for animals always seem to stem from the fact that they're more like us.
This whole concept that large groups of animals (fish, crustaceans, babies, etc.) just wouldn't feel pain has always been very bizarre to me. Pain is such a basic and extremely useful biological function that any creature missing it would have a huge disadvantage.
It's obvious that it's always been some kind of poorly thought out feel good excuse that just doesn't hold water.
I think the reasoning would be that a nervous system to convey pain would be complex and in a smaller body there's less room to have complex systems. You can only fit so much into a package. Another thing, not necessarily for lobsters since they are so long lived, is smaller creatures also tend to have shorter lifespans so a system to convey pain wouldn't be as helpful if you only live for like a year instead of 100 years. It might help you survive another month or two but would it be worth all the resources and space? Who knows.
Can crickets and grasshoppers feel pain? Would pain help them live significantly longer and produce more offspring than grass hoppers who could not feel pain?
That's all that really matters in the end, if pain helps them breed more. If it doesn't then that nervous system would never develop or eventually be bred out of the gene pool.
Imagine we banned things because they harm living beings.
Haha
Haha
😭
THEN WE BOMB VENEZUELA.
That's not how I remember those Sabaton lyrics.
Understandable. Have a very freedom day!
I can't speak for the UK but the restaurants I've worked in killed the lobster with a knife before boiling. The more compassionate reason was to kill them quickly before boiling, the other was that boiling them alive led to a worse tasting lobster.
From what I've read about lobsters (not sure about crabs) is they have a decentralized nervous system, not a singular brain like mammals.
So how do you humanely and quickly kill a lobster? If you are using a knife it would basically probably have to bleed out, which would not be quick, since you can't just stab it's brain or cut its head off like we do to cows, chickens and pigs.
"This is awful, but what can we do?"
er, I can think of a simple thing to do about it....
It's ok to boil crabs because they don't have any feeeeelings
Something in the way!
Have nonrof you ever cleaned a crab? You put the body over a small metal bar and hit the shell to "split" the crab then flip it and pull the legs from each side off. They are alive during that too.
Why would they be alive after you cook them? You don't crack and clean a crab before you cook it. You do that after you cook it.
People split the crab right on the docks after catching them sometimes.
Yep, I just watched the video, had no idea people could be this ****ing ******.
You can clean it before you cook it. Here is a video of the method that many do in the PNW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENZ2KEUrx50&t=90
JFC, I stand corrected. He's just going to toss out what most around the world consider delicacy! Cruelest preparation possible. I don't get it at all. Fuck this guy.
