Posted: 17 January 2013 0921 hrs
PARIS: A lobster thrown live into boiling water may
suffer for many seconds, said a scientist who argued Thursday that
crustaceans can likely feel pain.
A set of experiments on crabs revealed that the animals are willing
to give up a valuable dark hiding place in order to avoid an
electric shock, an indicator of pain, said a study in the Journal
of Experimental Biology.
Crabs in the study learnt to avoid the shelter in a laboratory tank
where they had repeatedly received a shock, said study leader Bob
Elwood of Queen's University in Belfast.
"They were willing to give up their hideaway in order to avoid the
source of their probable pain."
Elwood told AFP it was impossible to prove beyond doubt that the
animals feel pain, but the research results were "consistent" with
pain and added: "Perhaps we should err on the side of
caution".
Elwood said billions of prawns, crabs and lobster are caught or
reared for human consumption every year and treated in "very
extreme ways".
"Crabs have their claws torn off and the live crab is thrown back
in the sea. Lobsters and prawns have the front half of the body
torn off from the abdomen which is kept for the meat. The nervous
system in the head and thorax is still functional an hour
later."
The biologist said many people assumed that because crustaceans do
not have a brain resembling that of vertebrate animals, they could
not feel pain.
"Crustaceans are invertebrates and people do not care about
invertebrates," he said.
"More consideration of the treatment of these animals is needed as
a potentially very large problem is being ignored."
-AFP/fl
