|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
Scientists have discovered that lobsters have pain receptors and neurotransmitters that are very much like our own. University of Pennsylvania neurobiologist Dr. Tom Abrams says that lobsters have “a full array of senses,” and these senses include the ability to detect noxious chemicals and changes in water temperature and feel pain. Scientist John R. Baker states, “The nervous systems of lobsters and crabs … are complex; their sensory organs are highly developed; their responses to certain stimuli are immediate and vigorous.”
Dr. Nedim Buyukmihci, professor of veterinary surgery at the University of California at Davis, explains, “There is no question that lobsters have the ability to feel pain and suffer … Lobsters have a brain and a nervous system and are responsive to noxious (painful) stimuli. … [I]t would be inappropriate to do something to lobsters that you would not consider doing to conscious dogs, cats, or humans.”
In a recent feature for Gourmet magazine, renowned author David Foster Wallace researched the current science on lobster pain and reported that beyond having the parts of the brain necessary to feel discomfort, lobsters also have very sensitive pain receptors that are similar to our own. Wallace states, “[Lobsters] do have an exquisite tactile sense, one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs that protrude through their carapace. ‘Thus,’ in the words of T.M. Pruden’s industry classic About Lobster, ‘it is that although encased in what seems a solid, impenetrable armor, the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.’” Read Wallace’s eye-opening article about lobsters.
It’s difficult to imagine that lobsters would have survived in the harsh underwater world without the ability to feel pain. Pain protects animals from danger—when they feel pain, they know to stay away from whatever caused the discomfort. In order for lobsters or any animal to have survived through the millennia, they must be able to sense pain and avoid it.
Even More Vulnerable to Pain
Besides having sensitive pain receptors, lobsters also lack the pain-dulling mechanisms that our own nervous systems
use to protect us from severe pain. This means that lobsters may feel even more agony than we would in similar
situations. Explains Wallace, “[L]obsters are maybe even more vulnerable to pain, since they lack mammalian
nervous systems’ built-in analgesia …”
Invertebrate zoologist Dr. Jaren G. Horsley agrees that lobsters may feel even more pain than we do, saying, “The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. … [T]he lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open. … [It] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during cooking.
 |
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |