All Creatures Feel Pain - Including Fish, Lobsters and Crabs!

by Robert Wilkinson

As a vegetarian since 1973 for all kinds of reasons, over the years I've heard people assert that lobsters, crabs, and other invertibrates do not feel pain. When tossed into boiling water, or having their claws ripped off, for some strange reason people fail to accept the fact that these creatures feel pain. Science now confirms many creatures we didn't think felt anything in fact do feel pain, suffering substantially.

This is a revolutionary finding, since it is more evidence that ALL SENTIENT BEINGS do suffer. Perhaps those beings who don't share a cerebral cortex, or advanced nervous system, still deserve our compassion and hopefully, the lessening of the sources of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the reality of suffering.

Ordinarily I would just link you to the story, but I feel this is so important that I want to preserve it on this site for all who visit here to find. If you want to see it in its original form, here's the link to the MSNBC story from Discovery News: Lobsters and crabs feel pain, study shows. For those of you who don't want to click on the link, here's the story:

Lobsters and crabs feel pain, study shows

Findings add to growing evidence that virtually all animals can suffer

By Jennifer Viegas

updated 9:53 a.m. MT, Fri., March. 27, 2009

Ripping the legs off live crabs and crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment, given two new studies that indicate crustaceans feel pain and stress.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that virtually all animals, including fish, shellfish and insects, can suffer.

Robert Elwood, the lead author of both papers, explained to Discovery News that pain allows an individual to be "aware of the potential tissue damage" while experiencing "a huge negative emotion or motivation that it learns to avoid that situation in the future."

Both pain and stress are therefore key survival mechanisms.

Elwood, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The Queen's University in Belfast, and colleague Mirjam Appel studied hermit crabs collected from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland. All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat.

Elwood and Appel gave small electric shocks to some of the crabs within their shells. When the researchers provided vacant shells, some crabs — but only the ones that had been shocked —left their old shells and entered the new ones, showing stress-related behaviors like grooming of the abdomen or rapping of the abdomen against the empty shell.

Grooming, as for a person licking a burnt finger, "is a protective motor reaction and viewed as a sign of pain in vertebrates," the researchers wrote.

It has been thought that the behavior of crustaceans is mostly reflexive, but the fact that they showed signs of physical distress at the same time they changed a behavior — in this case, moving into another shell — suggest they feel pain as well, according to the researchers.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior.

For the second paper, slated for publication in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, Elwood, along with Stuart Barr and Lynsey Patterson, outline seven reasons, with supportive findings, they believe crustaceans suffer.

For one thing, they argue, crustaceans possess "a suitable central nervous system and receptors." They learn to avoid a negative stimulus after a potentially painful experience. They also engage in protective reactions, such as limping and rubbing, after being hurt.

Physiological changes, including release of adrenal-like hormones, also occur when pain or stress is suspected. And the animals make future decisions based on past likely painful events.

If crabs are given medicine — anesthetics or analgesics — they appear to feel relieved, showing fewer responses to negative stimuli. And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess "high cognitive ability and sentience."

In the past, some scientists reasoned that since pain and stress are associated with the neocortex in humans, all creatures must have this brain structure in order to experience such feelings. More recent studies, however, suggest that crustacean brains and nervous systems are configured differently. For example, fish, lobsters and octopi all have vision, Elwood said, despite lacking a visual cortex, which allows humans to see.

It was also thought that since many invertebrates cast off damaged appendages, it was not harmful for humans to remove legs, tails and other body parts from live crustaceans. Another study led by Patterson, however, found that when humans twisted off legs from crabs, the stress response was so profound that some individuals later died or could not regenerate the lost appendages.

Chris Sherwin, a senior research fellow in the Clinical Veterinary Science division at the University of Bristol, has also studied pain in invertebrates.

Sherwin told Discovery News, "The question of whether invertebrates experience pain is fundamental to our legislation that protects animals and our behavior, attitude and use of these highly complex organisms."

He said that while the recent studies suggest crustaceans experience "something akin to pain, rather than fixed, reflex responses," additional research is needed.

News story © 2009 Discovery Channel

To quote a Spiritual Brother:

May all sentient beings have happiness and the cause of happiness

May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering

May all sentient beings remain in the absolute bliss which is beyond suffering

May all sentient beings rest in the great equanimity which is free from aggression, lust and ignorance

Peace, Light & Love

© Copyright 2009 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Aditya]

Thank you for sharing this article with us, Robert.
I decided to become vegetarian this January 2009. I love the way I feel now though in the beginning I had to load up on Tofu to get the heaviness in the stomach when I used to eat meat.
My question here is, what about plants? Do they feel pain even though they cannot scream audibly? Some people say that yes they do, however humans should respect nature and take what they can eat at one time instead of hoarding it.
Then does the same apply to animals, as in hunting one on one without technology, instead of using vast slaughter houses?
Just thinking aloud and would appreciate your views on this...

[Isabel]

Dear Robert and der Aditya,

I have been a vegetarian for most of my life, and, feeling very much for every Being, I would also stop eating plants if I could live on PURE AIR and LIGHT - the fact is that one has to eat something...

One thing that is often explained by ocultists is that the nervous systems of plants are - well, I would not say "non existente", but rather less developed than animals... This does not mean that they do not feel - experiments done by scientists with plants show that they can sense emotions of anger, love, and can guess danger and even react to these different things...

There are some communities, such as Findhorn, in Scotland, which work with the vegetable kingdom. Their plants are raised organically and with love and kindness and they are "talked to" and it is asked of them their permission to be taken and even used for food.

I know this may sound crazy for some poeple, but at least it is one way of acting with AHIMSA - innofensivity - and trying to give as little suffering as possible and developing ties of kindness if possible with all Kingdoms of Nature... We are ALL ONE after all and, as Blavatsky would put it, SEPARATNESS is the only heresy...

Robert, Thanks ever so much for this post, it is so relevant to call people's attention for these topics.

Love from

Isabel

[Aditya]

Dear Isabel

Thank you for enlightening me in your post above. I do talk to plants sometimes and notice their behaviour afterwards. I do it when no one is watching. Though would want to try Castanedas approach and do it openly in front of people... evolving as I write...

Love

[Isabel]

You are welcome, Aditya! It is so nice that we meet through Robert's excelent site!

All the best,

Namasté,

Isabel

[Aditya]

Yes its nice to be able to visit a site and share views with like minded people. Cheers to you Robert for creating and maintaining this wonderful site. Hope you get more energy this year to do what you love doing most.

Love is the higher way...

[Isabel]

Dear Aditya,

If you want, you can visit my blog in English, by clicking on my name (Isabel) at the end of the post, or by going there through the following link:

http://newsletterfromlisbon.blogspot.com/

It is not about astrology, but I think you will like it.

Hug,

Isabel

[Robert]

Hi Aditya and Isabel - What Isabel wrote is close to how I would respond. It is said that all sentient beings feel pain in some way, supposedly including bacteria. That's why we should honor the life in that which dies to feed us. There are many good reasons to become vegetarian, including the meat supply chain that kills more than we need in very inhumane ways and is not very clean. I became a vegetarian due to food poisoning by bad meat. It almost killed me, and I couldn't even smell it cooking for months afterward without become VERY ill. As for becoming a breath-arian, I suppose if I could get the nutrients from the light and sounds around me, I'd give it a try. But for now, my sensory mechanism still requires vegetable products, some of which do not involve suffering, like nuts, fruit, cheeses, and leafy vegetables that don't require killing the plant. Findhorn demonstrated across years that by engaging the plants and devas we can in fact cooperate with nature and further her productivity.

[Nancy]

Worth noting here: it is believed by many of the Indigenous people of our world that if the taking of a life of an animal to sustain human life is done with gratitude to Spirit, ceremony and respect, it is a different event altogether. The element of reciprocity and conscious awareness of the sacrifice that the animal makes on behalf of its slayer raises the event to a level where the forces of Nature and our great mother Gaia actually bestow a blessing to both. BTW, I am a veg too.
I always talk to my plants before pruning them so that they can feel the vibration of helpfulness and not feel harmed. Think about Emoto's water crystal experiments! Our human consciousness and attitude is the factor that makes it helpful or harmful.
Shine on, friends,
Nancy

[Isabelle Baland]

Sounds mighty presumptious to think that a creature of the AllMighty does not feel pain..
Poor are those that do not know of Pain.
Blessings,
Isabelle

[Aditya]

Hi Robert, sorry to be a bore but since I turned vegetarian the biscottis I bake don't look the way they are meant to. I was just thinking based on your reply above, eating eggs does not harm anyone though there may be a tiny life in their somewhere. Or the mother hen will feel bad... Life has suddenly become so confusing.

Isabel: I enjoyed reading your blog and posted a comment there.

[Isabel]

Dear Adytia,

Thanks for your post to which I will reply very soon (lot's of work these last days, but maybe during the week end).

My dear, your doubts are common. If your type of chosen vegetarianism allows you to eat eggs (and it is alraight to do it from a AHIMSA point of view, because it does not harm the chicken) all you have to be rigorous about (if you want, of course) is to try not to est eggs that would have been fertilized (then, there would have been life in them). Many eggs from chicken are not fertilized anyway, and those which are show a red marking. You can either not eat them at all (but the life in it would have been lost anyway, and then this sacrifice would be even more useless if it is nor eaten) or you may simply take out the litlle red part...

For other sorts of products, if you are somewhere where you can get soya, tofu, seitan, etc., there are many products that may even be helpful to substitute cream, for instance, by soya cream, and so on.

But if your vegetarianism is lacto - egg - vegetarian, your cookies should be ok. Only if you have become Vegan there should be adjustments, but there is lot's of material online and in magazines and books.

Hope not to have been too fastidious!!!!!

Love,

Isabel

PS - I LOVED to see your comment, so many go there but find no way to leave a comment! Lovely, thanks!!!

Isabel

[Isabel]

Ah! I forgot to add that even to substitute gelly (which traditionally was made out of animal products) there is already vegetarian gelly (sometimes out of alghae, or other products of vegetable origine).

Isabel

PS - Sorry, Robert, for this "dialogue" through your site! No disrespect meant! Love and thanks,

Isabel

[Robert]

Hi Isabel - Actually, it's refreshing to find someone who knows the subject of vegetarianism from both practical and spiritual angles. It's great that the article inspired an on-going dialogue, since what we're discussing is the natural extension of the topic. Certainly no disrespect perceived, given the subtheme in this comment stream of respect for the life in all sentient beings, whether they become food or not. This is a perfect example of how we can all contribute to each other's knowledge and become better for the exchange.

[Aditya]

Thank you Robert and Isabel

I conciously decided to become Vegetarian though not Vegan (I love milk and milk products too much). I don't like eating eggs anymore though. Its good in a way that more of the crumbly but delicious biscottis find their way into my tummy.

I just came to know that you are vegetarian, Robert. If I had known earlier I would have taken the step then (needed a role model).

Namaskars

[Isabel]

Dear Aditya,

I have finally answered your comment on Newsletter during the week end. Sorry for the delay.

In case you want to get in touch you can do it there, through the comments, so I do not bother Robert with crosso dialogues that distract from the subjects of his Excelent site.

So, you're invited to show up there, ok?

Greetings to both of you!

Namesté

[Robert]

Hi Aditya and Isabel - It's great that people of like mind join up here. We're all part of a much larger community, and that the community is truly global. While I don't need to be a part of all dialogs (what an impossibility!) it's great that each offers what they can, where they can, when they can. That said, nothing anyone shares here is a distraction, as long as it's inclusive.

[Aditya]

Thank you for your clarification, Robert. I wasn't sure what these dialogs were making you feel. I am greatly indebted to you for the free help you have given me these last 2 years. And as I said earlier, you are a great person.

Isabel: Thank you for going out of your way to make me feel welcome. I have left another comment at your blogsite

[Isabel]

Well, what happiness to feel that this is like a beutiful temple where likeminded people can learn and share!

Thanks Robert.

Aditya, I have answered you already!

Love to both and have a nice Easter time.

Isabel