14 DAY TRIAL // Each year, an impressive number of crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans are either boiled or dismembered while still alive.
Since most people work on the assumption that these creatures are unable to experience pain, this practice is rarely frowned upon.
However, recent evidence made public by animal behaviorist Robert Elwood at Queen's University Belfast, suggests that, although they don't cry out when thrown in a pot of boiling water, these creatures do feel pain.
Thus, when given the opportunity to choose between two confined spaces, i.e. one in which they were constantly shocked and one in which no harm came to them, several crustaceans quickly learned to avoid the first one and run towards the second.
The outcome of this series of experiments reportedly proves that the crabs did not like being shocked and found the experience aversive.
Robert Elwood maintains that, from his standpoint, it does not make any sense that most people completely disapprove of other animals being treated in an abusive manner, yet seem not to care about how awful it must be for a crab or a lobster to be boiled or torn apart while very much alive and aware of what is happening to it.
“We’re behaving in an illogical way at the moment by protecting mice but not crustaceans,” he argues, as cited by Nature.