An Age of Magic

Are you a seafood lover…?

March 30, 2009 on 11:48 am | In Culture | No Comments

Think about this next time you get out the crab claw-crackers…

Crabs DO feel pain when they are boiled and would remember it if only they could escape the pot. Research has shown that when hermit crabs are given small electric shocks, they try to avoid being zapped again.  The finding could have important implications for the food industry, where many chefs boil crabs, lobsters and prawns alive in the belief that they are impervious to pain. But the poor little guys are not!

The study, carried out at Queen’s University Belfast, focused on hermit crabs, which protect their fragile bodies with empty seashells. When small electric shocks were delivered to their abdomens, some of the crabs moved out of their shells.

With less powerful shocks the crabs remained inside, but when a new shell was offered they were more likely to switch homes than crabs that had not received a shock. This suggested that they remembered the earlier pain and wanted to get away from it, the journal ‘Animal Behaviour’ reports.

I had a friend who stopped eating fish when he bought some coloured carp for his pond – the fish swam up to the side of the pond whenever he appeared as if they were saying ‘hello’. He said they were looking at him!

He has not eaten fish ever since.

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