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Do Lobsters Suffer When Boiled?

maximus otter said:
I am firmly on the “They’re bugs, just big delicious ones” side. l have never needed to kill a lobbie, but l’d have no compunction about dropping one into boiling water. lf you have reservations, the freezer will kill them overnight, or a knife thrust into the appropriate point on the carapace will destroy whatever serves them as a brain.
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The fisherman whose videos on beach foraging etc. I watch says that a spell in the freezer slows down their metabolism and puts them in a semi-hibernative state but won't kill them. The knife thrust administered after that will kill with little pain.

Obviously not for the squeamish

[Channel recommended for foraging instruction]


Personally, I think I've had lobster twice in my life and was distinctly underwhelmed; in contrast, I've eaten crab possibly hundreds of times, a wide variety of kinds, from the cheap and humble to the massive things with eye-watering price-tags.

My conclusion: crab everyday and twice on Sundays.
 
maximus otter said:
Killed in slaughterhouse: 89
Shot from helicopter (l believe this was in NZ, where reds are a pest species): 61
Multi-rifleman hunting: 49
Single rifle (as l do): 16
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Indeed, and hunting gives that animal a good life, a swift death and at least a chance of escaping.
 
Yithian said:
Personally, I think I've had lobster twice in my life and was distinctly underwhelmed; in contrast, I've eaten crab possibly hundreds of times, a wide variety of kinds, from the cheap and humble to the massive things with eye-watering price-tags.

My conclusion: crab everyday and twice on Sundays.
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I've had lobster just the once and was also underwhelmed.
It's ridiculously expensive for something that doesn't taste that wonderful.
 
Yithian said:
The fisherman whose videos on beach foraging etc. I watch says that a spell in the freezer slows down their metabolism and puts them in a semi-hibernative state but won't kill them. The knife thrust administered after that will kill with little pain.

[Channel recommended for foraging instruction]

Personally, I think I've had lobster twice in my life and was distinctly underwhelmed; in contrast, I've eaten crab possibly hundreds of times, a wide variety of kinds, from the cheap and humble to the massive things with eye-watering price-tags.

My conclusion: crab everyday and twice on Sundays.
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My stalking mentor in the Highlands wore several hats, one of which was as the skipper of his own lobster & prawn boat in Sutherland. l went out with him three or four times as a deckhand, trying not to hinder helping him shoot and raise lobster creels.

Seeing the whole process from its start to its end (in his kitchen, liberally dressed with butter or mayonnaise) would, l am confident, raise the lobby in your opinion.

:twothumbs:

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Seeing the whole process from its start to its end (in his kitchen, liberally dressed with butter or mayonnaise) would, l am confident, raise the lobby in your opinion.

:twothumbs:

maximus otter
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This is plausible.

I went scuba diving and collected clams and oysters from the seabed, and the subsequent barbecue produced the best of both that I've ever eaten.

The only thing the experience could not help were sea squirts/pineapples, which are disgusting no matter how they reach the table.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_pineapple
 
Lobsters don’t have to be afraid of me.

Maybe I have eaten two lobsters in my lifetime, and was not too enthusiastic about the taste.
 
The wife prefers large shrimp over lobster while I prefer lobster, but I like Alaskan King crab legs over both.
 
dr wu,

I am with you about Alaskan King Crab.

The few times I have eaten this particular crab, it was sweet as sugar, a real delicacy !
 
Fluttermoth said:
Oh, and the 'we have to kill things to eat', sure we do, but if you're honestly trying to tell me that you think a potato being peeled suffers in anything like the way a cow or sheep does, I have no idea how to reply, it's an obvious fallacy, imo.
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You'd be amazed at some of the conversations I've had with what I might characterise as 'extremist' vegans. Who really don't realise they are killing things, albeit things with a very low likelihood of suffering. You are clearly not one of them.

I recall a vegetarian I once met who got very upset when I pointed out he was wearing a leather jacket.

I don't have much to disagree with you over your last post. We draw the lines in slightly different places is all it comes down to, and not all of us are entirely consistent.
 
maximus otter said:
Is there any actual evidence one way or another?

I am firmly on the “They’re bugs, just big delicious ones” side. l have never needed to kill a lobbie, but l’d have no compunction about dropping one into boiling water. lf you have reservations, the freezer will kill them overnight, or a knife thrust into the appropriate point on the carapace will destroy whatever serves them as a brain.

Simply repeating “They must feel pain” proves nothing. ls there any proof that anyone can adduce?

Many readers will know that l go deer stalking. lf anyone raised the issue of pain in deer, l can quote a scientific study: a chap analysed the cortisol (“stress hormone”) levels in red deer killed by various methods. He didn’t tabulate the highest he’d ever tested, which was a red deer he’d had to euthanise after finding it irretrievably trapped in a wire fence; from my memory, the cortisol level something like 240. The levels he did record included:

Killed in slaughterhouse: 89
Shot from helicopter (l believe this was in NZ, where reds are a pest species): 61
Multi-rifleman hunting: 49
Single rifle (as l do): 16

That final number is pretty close to the “background noise” stress level of everyday life for a deer.

Can anyone show an equivalent for lobsters?

maximus otter
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To be honest, there's no really good evidence one way or the other, but we do know that lobsters are sensitive to stimuli, and they will avoid areas where they've experienced shocks in the past (and my pet one has learnt that me switching the tank light on means she's going to be fed) so they do have some kind of rudimentary 'memory' or 'learning' and some kind of awareness of not putting themselves in harmful situations. We know that humans who don't feel pain fall prey to all kinds of injuries and usually die young; it would be weird for nature to evolve an animal that didn't feel pain that could survive well into adulthood.

In the absence of anything better, I think it's safer to assume they do feel something akin to pain and try and mitigate that, rather than assume they don't; the former assumption causes less suffering than the latter!

I 'like' your deer cortisol figures; I've always preferred wild caught game, if I'm going to eat meat; I refuse to eat meat from intensively farmed animals; I honestly believe the demand for cheap meat has caused massive issues in welfare standards. Again, I have no problem with people eating meat; just, please, let it be 'good' meat from an animal that's been reared and killed humanely! It shouldn't be a big ask, really; it lessens us as thinking humans to not care at all :)
 
Aaah but where do people stand on mushrooms?

Personally I never stand on mushrooms.
 
Cochise said:
You'd be amazed at some of the conversations I've had with what I might characterise as 'extremist' vegans. Who really don't realise they are killing things, albeit things with a very low likelihood of suffering. You are clearly not one of them.

I recall a vegetarian I once met who got very upset when I pointed out he was wearing a leather jacket.

I don't have much to disagree with you over your last post. We draw the lines in slightly different places is all it comes down to, and not all of us are entirely consistent.
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The views of "extremist vegans" are probably as idiotic as those of extremist animal eaters.

I love my food, whether it's a vegetarian Thali at Hampshire's best Indian restaurant, a selection of my favourite tapas (patatas bravas, tortilla and setos con ajo) in a Barcelona bar, or a wonderful vegetarian moussaka on a cliff-top restaurant on Santorini. I've lived very happily for almost 40 years without any animal - whether crustacean or mammal, having to give its life to feed me.

If your view is "sod the suffering, because it tastes nice" then that's your decision.
It strikes me as a rather callous one, but I acknowledge that I am still in the minority (although far less so now than when I became an outlier vegetarian back in the late 80s). I would hope that even if you are a die-hard meat eater though that you would not be totally oblivious to the pain and suffering behind that meat on your plate.

Bon appetit.
 
I can remember when babies and small children didn't get anaesthetics or analgesics. They were thought to be too young to know or too young to remember or having no pain response yet. I can also remember discussions about how adults could tell if a 3 week old baby needed or would benefit from pain relief.

Nowadays, at least in the NHS, the heuristic is that if in doubt you do it. The same with dementia patients and some forms of disability. Err on the side of mercy not on the side of... I don't know... expediency?

Not that babies = lobsters. It's the thought process that I'm seeing as similar. Why not err on the side of mercy?
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I would hope that even if you are a die-hard meat eater though that you would not be totally oblivious to the pain and suffering behind that meat on your plate.

Bon appetit.
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You didn't actually read my previous posts. Because if you had you would have noted that I do object to UNNECESSARY suffering to the animals we like to eat.

In any case most of the animals to which we cause - in your terms - 'pain and suffering' to would have been exterminated centuries ago if we didn't eat them.

Enjoy your gruel. If we weren't meat eaters we wouldn't have canine teeth.

And yes, I do thoroughly enjoy masticating dead animals. Especially pig.
 
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"If we weren't meat eaters we wouldn't have canine teeth."

Oh not that old false argument!

Have you seen the teeth on this guy?

teeth.JPG


He's even more of a vegetarian than I am!
In fact the great apes - our closest relatives, are almost exclusively vegetarian, despite having very similar dentition and digestive systems to humans (and yes, I've seen those sensationalist films of chimpanzees eating meat, but it is still exceptionally rare for them).

Humans don't have the elongated jaws and shorter digestive tracts of the carnivore.
We can, however, live perfectly happily on a remarkably wide variety of foodstuff.
I just feel more at ease not contemplating the life of a sentient creature that was snuffed out to fill my belly.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"If we weren't meat eaters we wouldn't have canine teeth."

Oh not that old false argument!

Have you seen the teeth on this guy?

View attachment 41923

He's even more of a vegetarian than I am!
In fact the great apes - our closest relatives, are almost exclusively vegetarian, despite having very similar dentition and digestive systems to humans (and yes, I've seen those sensationalist films of chimpanzees eating meat, but it is still exceptionally rare for them).

Humans don't have the elongated jaws and shorter digestive tracts of the carnivore.
We can, however, live perfectly happily on a remarkably wide variety of foodstuff.
I just feel more at ease not contemplating the life of a sentient creature that was snuffed out to fill my belly.
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We are omnivores. We aren't pure vegetarians. What a tired old argument. 'Snuffed out' again, pointless sentiment.

At the end of the day, if we'd been 15 days in a lifeboat without any sustenance , I'd eat you. With all due respect , of course. And I'd butcher you with all due ceremony. But if it meant I got back to my wife alive that is what I would do. Priorities and all that.
 
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We surely did evolve as omnivores; but we also evolved to do a whole lot of nasty things like rape and murder that most of us have grown beyond. No one evolved to wear specs, drive a car or use a PC, and yet we happily do all those things.

What we evolved to do in the past should have no bearing on how we behave now; this is not the Stone Age. We are probably the only animal ever who has the mental capacity to understand our own origins and empathise with other species, as well as have the means and technology to reduce suffering, why would some people not want that?
 
You couldn't pay me to eat Lobster or anything "bug" like, I don't like seafood taste wise generally and anything that looks like it's from a late night B horror movie I'm disinclined to eat.
I dislike having to kill things to eat them but will and have - but, like having to drop dead some day myself it's an arrangement I'm not overly fond of (really must have a word with the management).
I generally don't like eating at all - it's a necessary chore like going to the toilet that we have to put up with and "cooking" is up there with cricket as something I'd happily ban if at all possible - as a kid I remember seeing Dalek invasion of the Earth 2150 and being jealous of the Robomen who get to eat pills for food.
Hopefully we will soon have something thats just grown in a lab and we can ping it in the microwave in 3 mins without all the fuss.
In the meantime I'm sorry to say that lifes crap and then you die - but, if possible try not to make it worse for everything else as you go along.
 
Cochise said:
We are omnivores. We aren't pure vegetarians. What a tired old argument. 'Snuffed out' again, pointless sentiment.

At the end of the day, if we'd been 15 days in a lifeboat without any sustenance , I'd eat you. With all due respect , of course. And I'd butcher you with all due ceremony. But if it meant I got back to my wife alive that is what I would do. Priorities and all that.
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You probably wouldn't wait 15 days.
 
Fluttermoth said:
We surely did evolve as omnivores; but we also evolved to do a whole lot of nasty things like rape and murder that most of us have grown beyond. No one evolved to wear specs, drive a car or use a PC, and yet we happily do all those things.

What we evolved to do in the past should have no bearing on how we behave now; this is not the Stone Age. We are probably the only animal ever who has the mental capacity to understand our own origins and empathise with other species, as well as have the means and technology to reduce suffering, why would some people not want that?
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Underneath we haven't evolved at all. We only need the right buttons to be pressed and we will kill each other, sometimes on the flimsiest pretext. As war after war has shown. It's only one in a thousand can resist, and those who do will be condemned as cowards.

It is still the stone age, just with prettier toys.
 
maximus otter said:
Meat, eggs and insects make up about 10% of a chimp’s diet.

Monkey and antelope DNA has been found in gorilla faeces, though the jury’s still out on how it got there.

maximus otter
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According to Scientific American, it's more like 3%. If a chimp is up to 97% vegetarian (and bonobos, gorillas and other great apes approaching 100%) it is just plain daft to argue that humans are designed to be meat-eaters, when our closest relatives, equipped with very similar teeth and digestive systems, are primarily vegetarian.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-eat-like-a-chimpanzee/
 
Cochise said:
Underneath we haven't evolved at all. We only need the right buttons to be pressed and we will kill each other, sometimes on the flimsiest pretext. As war after war has shown. It's only one in a thousand can resist, and those who do will be condemned as cowards.

It is still the stone age, just with prettier toys.
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There are complexities there, I agree that we are essentially animals whatever "greatest achievements" or "advances" that "we" have made; however, I've seen interviews with trainers in the army that say it's often difficult to get recruits to kill, we instinctively don't kill our own kind without good reason.

For survival we will readily do it and survival is a perfectly good reason. I'd imagine most killings have some element of this there - people are killing as much out of fear as anything, fear is about self-preservation. Whether this is because you need to eat, in direct self defence or killing some one else (including a different race, creed, nationality etc) isn't simply hatred it's that the "other" represents a threat to that person's mind. Rapists and abusers killing victims are often likely often doing so because they don't want to be caught, again: self preservation.

We also do have the hunting instinct which has nowhere to go in most "civilised" societies.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
There are complexities there, I agree that we are essentially animals whatever "greatest achievements" or "advances" that "we" have made; however, I've seen interviews with trainers in the army that say it's often difficult to get recruits to kill, we instinctively don't kill our own kind without good reason.

For survival we will readily do it and survival is a perfectly good reason. I'd imagine most killings have some element of this there - people are killing as much out of fear as anything, fear is about self-preservation. Whether this is because you need to eat, in direct self defence or killing some one else (including a different race, creed, nationality etc) isn't simply hatred it's that the "other" represents a threat to that person's mind. Rapists and abusers killing victims are often likely often doing so because they don't want to be caught, again: self preservation.

We also do have the hunting instinct which has nowhere to go in most "civilised" societies.
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So how do you explain the mass volunteering at the start of WW1, the white feathers dished out by 'ladies' to those who didn't want to kill. It wasn't fear because the popular opinion was that it would be a cakewalk.

Maybe we are herd animals? If the leader of the herd decides on violence are we powerless to resist?

The animal is there in (nearly) all of us. Maybe if we were better at recognising it we'd be less easily led to slaughter.
 
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