Feel free to boil me...

[Happy Salvador]

...because i don't feel pain:



http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science....ap/index.html

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- A new study out of Norway concludes it's unlikely lobsters feel pain, stirring up a long-simmering debate over whether Maine's most valuable seafood suffers when it's being cooked.

Animal activists for years have claimed that lobsters are in agony when being cooked, and that dropping one in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

The study, funded by the Norwegian government and written by a scientist at the University of Oslo, suggests lobsters and other invertebrates such as crabs, snails and worms probably don't suffer even if lobsters do tend to thrash in boiling water.

"Lobsters and crabs have some capacity of learning, but it is unlikely that they can feel pain," concluded the 39-page report, aimed at determining if creatures without backbones should be subject to animal welfare legislation as Norway revises its animal welfare law.

Lobster biologists in Maine have maintained for years that the lobster's primitive nervous system and underdeveloped brain are similar to that of an insect. While lobsters react to different stimuli, such as boiling water, the reactions are escape mechanisms, not a conscious response or an indication of pain, they say.

"It's a semantic thing: No brain, no pain," said Mike Loughlin, who studied the matter when he was a University of Maine graduate student and is now a biologist at the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission.

The Norwegian report also reinforces what people in the lobster industry have always contended, said Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute, a research and education organization in Orono.

"We've maintained all along that the lobster doesn't have the ability to process pain," Bayer said.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, has made lobster pain part of its Fish Empathy Project, putting out stickers and pamphlets with slogans such as "Being Boiled Hurts. Let Lobsters Live." Group supporters regularly demonstrate at the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland.

PETA's Karin Robertson called the Norwegian study biased, saying the government doesn't want to hurt the country's fishing industry.

"This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn't cause cancer," she said.

Robertson said many scientists believe lobsters do feel pain. For instance, a zoologist with The Humane Society of the United States made a written declaration that lobsters can feel pain after a chef dismembered and sauteed a live lobster to prepare a Lobster Fra Diavolo dish on NBC's "Today" show in 1994.

It's debatable whether the debate will ever be resolved.

The Norwegian study, even while saying it's unlikely that crustaceans feel pain, also cautioned that more research is needed because there is a scarcity of scientific knowledge on the subject.

And, many consumers will always hesitate at placing lobsters in boiling pots of water.

New Englanders may feel comfortable cooking their lobsters, but people outside the region often feel uneasy about boiling a live creature, said Kristen Millar, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council.

"Consumers don't generally greet and meet an animal before they eat it," she said.

[Venn Dutch]

[2pac]

A Zionist Response To Boiled Lobsters

[/2pac]

[Bicycle Repair Man]

I don't care about lobsters in the slightest, but this is my new favorite sentence of all time:

It's debatable whether the debate will ever be resolved.

[Lonesome Cowboy Bill]

Oh, God, that's tasty! I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this.

[ahow]

"This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn't cause cancer," she said.

To my knowledge, the tobacco has acknowedged that smoking causes cancer. Therefore it is exactly not like that at all...

[ahow]

Originally Posted by Lonesome Cowboy Bill

Oh, God, that's tasty! I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this.

I love how he is mumbling about how it is so good and crying that Pinchy is dead at the same time...

[That Goblin]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Repairman

I don't care about lobsters in the slightest, but this is my new favorite sentence of all time:

My new favorite sentence of all time:

...contrary to the conventional wisdom, lobsters are very clever and they can only be beaten by cunning.

[Venn Dutch]

What's the conventional wisdom on Space Lobsters?

[Super Silver Haze]

"It's a semantic thing: No brain, no pain."

AWWWWWESOME!

*cracks open skull, rips out brain*

I'M INVINCIBLE!!!

*collapses*

[Happy Salvador]

Gigantic Lobster Spared From Boiling Grave

Pic below

PITTSBURGH — He could be older than Warner Bros. studio, General Motors and the Boy Scouts. He could have survived two world wars and Prohibition. He could have been dinner.
He's Bubba, a 22-pound leviathan of a lobster pulled from the waters off Nantucket, Mass., and shipped to a Pittsburgh fish market.

"It is overwhelming," owner Bob Wholey said. "If you see it, you will never forget it. Customers are just in awe."

On Tuesday, Wholey gave the lobster to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium (search), which will send him to an aquarium at a Ripley's Believe It or Not (search) museum.

Based on how long it typically takes a lobster to reach eating size — about five to seven years to grow to a pound — Bubba may be 100 years old.

That would make the crustacean older than Warner Bros. (1907), the Boy Scouts (1910) and the states of Arizona and New Mexico (1912), not to mention the first commercial radio station (1920), television (1927) and computers (1943).

22lber next to a 1.5 lber