I was vegetarian for 7 years. But I uh… cheated. Every now and then I would have like
just one crab cake. They don’t count right? It’s not like they can feel pain. Oh shoot.
Apparently. They can. Noooooooooo!
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
We humans like to think pretty highly of ourselves. We put ourselves on the top of the totem pole
of the animal kingdom. We’ve got our big brains and our fancy thumbs for texting. Every
animal is beneath us. And for a long time we thought we could just use any animal how
we wanted to. It didn’t matter.
For a long time we didn’t think they could feel pain! Scientists for hundreds of years
though that animals couldn’t feel, they just simply reacted mechanically. I mean compared
to our complex nervous systems it made sense. But crab’s nervous systems do have their
own complexity.
Well a study published in the journal Biology Bulletin found that crabs and other crustaceans
“have life spans of many years and a brain that, in size and complexity, lies somewhere
between the octopus and insects” .
They have a small brain of sorts right behind the eyes. Their main brains are more complex
than you might think. They have three ganglia that have fused together to form a single
brain. They also smaller brains also called ganglia for each section of their bodies.
These smaller brains mean a quicker response from stimuli in the environment; the nerve
signal doesn’t have to travel as far.
So what happens when those nerves get stimulated? Do they feel pain?. A recent small study published
in the journal Biology Letters found that crabs physically react to a pain stimulus.
The researchers subjected 20 crabs European shore crabs to electrical shock. Most, of
the crabs started walking around in their tanks and a few tried to climb out. While
some the control group of crabs who did get shocked started to walk but 6 did nothing.
But most telling was when the researchers tested their “blood” or their their haemolymph.
It had three times the amount of lactic acid. A clear physiological sign of stress.
Another study published in the journal Animal Behavior found that hermit crabs feel pain
and specifically avoid it. Crabs given electric shocks were more likely to leave their shell
and to seek out another shell without the shocks. So it’s clear they feel something
and avoid it when possible. And according to another study published in the journal
Applied Animal Behavior Science they also limp or show other protective behaviors called
“pain guarding” and they even show fewer responses to negative or supposedly painful
events.
And so that fits a definition of “suffering pain” as described by Temple Grandin in
a study published in the journal Emerging Concepts and Strategies in Veterinary Medicine,
in which she found mammals from humans to the lowly rat suffer from pain. She even found
evidence that birds, reptiles and fish feel pain too. She can tell when an animal suffers
from pain based on certain behaviors, like pain guarding and seeking analgesics, which
reduce pain. Pain guarding is like when you dog hurts its paw and so won’t put any weight
on it anymore or Or if they were hurt in a specific place, they learn to avoid that place
in the future.
And a wide range of animals perform this kind of behavior. Even chickens, when their beaks
are trimmed, peck less than usual. Other studies on mammals and birds and even fish found that
when the animals were given analgesics like morphine, those pain guarding behaviors stopped.
Which is bad news for me and my new pescetarian lifestyle. Ugh but shrimp just taste so good.
Guess I should go whine about it somewhere on the internet. Maybe I’ll start a website
like iwillnevereatshrimpagain.com which is available on domain.com.
No domain extension will help you tell your story like a DOT COM or DOT NET domain name.
And because you watch DNews, you can get 15% off Domain Dot Com’s names and web hosting
by using the code DNews when you check out.
So would you still eat crab after this? let me know down below.