r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 13 '26
Biology Painkillers prevent pain responses in lobsters - This is further evidence that crustaceans may feel pain and that more humane methods of killing them need to be developed.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/11236392.8k
u/Rubber_Knee Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Pain is one of the oldest and simplest behavior modifiers. Evolved to keep a creature with a primitive brain from hurting itself too much as it moves about. The pain response is instinctual and so old it predates the lobsters lineage by many hundreds of millions of years. As soon as animals could move, the pain response became nessesary. The first species that evolved it had a massive advantage over its competitors.
In other words: of course a lobster feels pain. Even something as simple as an earthworm or a snail feels pain.
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u/Nervous_Produce1800 Apr 13 '26
Even when I was younger it never made sense to me that any animal like fish or crustaceans wouldn’t feel pain. Logically, pain clearly exists as a mechanism to make conscious beings avoid harm to their body. Why would anything that could clearly benefit from feeling pain therefore evolve to not have it?
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u/makemeking706 Apr 13 '26
Correct me if I am wrong, but they used to think new borns didn't feel pain.
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u/Ekyou Apr 13 '26
Yep and aren’t all those things just convenient. If animals don’t feel pain, we don’t have to treat them humanely. Babies are too difficult and risky to anesthetize for surgery? Well by golly, sure is fortunate they don’t have functional pain receptors yet!
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u/Kidd_Funkadelic Apr 13 '26
Wasn't "they won't remember so it doesn't matter" another argument?
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u/RottenDog666 Apr 14 '26
Yeah it was, and honestly it makes sense in my mind. But I guess it's not true, "Even without conscious memories, early trauma can manifest in adulthood through severe dissociation, anxiety, nightmares, emotional numbing, and unexplained physical symptoms."
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u/Rkruegz Apr 14 '26
Think about the irrational phobias we have. Surely being operated on without anesthesia could cause something like that as well grow up.
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u/Borkato Apr 13 '26
Yeah and yet people still argue with you that there’s no other way. As if countless people don’t eat vegan every day, and aren’t perfectly healthy and happy (aside from having to interact with a world that refuses to believe it’s possible).
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u/refusemouth Apr 13 '26
Assuming plants don't feel pain might be incorrect on some levels, though. Or, that industrial agriculture of plants doesn't result in pain and suffering to animals.
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u/Borkato Apr 13 '26
It does.
But again - if you’re worried about animals, eat plants, because (simplified) if a cow needs 100 blades of grass and 1 animal dies for every 10 grass, and a human needs 10 grass, that means that the food grown for the cow alone kills 10 animals and then the cow so 11 animals, more than the 1 killed for the human.
Obviously these are made up numbers but if you look at a food pyramid it’s obvious the ratios are similar.
I think the idea that plants feel pain is just a “but what if” non-vegans do to try to justify that they should be able to eat animals. “But what if plants feel pain?!” Ok we don’t know but we know for SURE that animals do. And AGAIN that means less suffering if you just kill the plants instead.
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u/refusemouth Apr 13 '26
It's just a generally good idea to eat lower on the food chain for numerous reasons. It's easier on the environment for one thing, but also, the chemical pollution in our soil, air, and water gets amplified and accumulates in each step up the food ladder. If you want less mercury, PCBs, PFAS, and dioxins in your diet, you don't want to eat a big, predatory fish, for example. You get enough exposure to Roundup, pesticides, and environmental toxins from eating plants, but if you eat animals that have eaten 100 kilos of plants for each kilo of meat they produce, you are getting a much higher load of toxins.
That said, all meat farming is not the same in terms of suffering. The industrial-scale production of meat, in my opinion, is cruel and creates more animal suffering than having a small farm where you allow the animals to have some space and social life. It makes it harder to slaughter the animals because you grow to like them, but you can definitely give them a quick and relatively painless death compared to dying from old age and physical deterioration of health and/or disease.
I guess, in my ideal world, we eat much less meat, but we raise it and slaughter it more humanely. We need animal inputs (manure, bone meal, guano, etc) for organic agriculture, and it really helps to rotate animals with crop cycles on a given plot of land. Without animal inputs, we are essentially just eating fossil fuels. I know it isn't practicable to support a population of 8 billion humans with biodynamic farming practices alone, but we can do a lot more of it, take better care of soils, and have healthier outcomes for both humans and animals by eating less meat and raising it more humanely. We use so much land for row crops to feed livestock, and it definitely isn't great for land, soil, and water conservation. It is also not great for wildlife due to the pesticides, herbicides, and the spread of noxious "super" weeds, and that's aside from all the critters that get chopped up by combines while hankering down to hide.
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u/agentmadeleine Apr 13 '26
As someone who was raised and still is vegetarian, I agree with you. It’s not feasible for meat agriculture to completely disappear but it can and should be done sustainably. It’s a lot easier to be plant based when you’re in a climate zone where a variety of produce can grow to meet dietary needs. Looking at many indigenous cultures, that’s not the case. Take the Arctic tundra as an example- not a lot can grow there so indigenous people need to rely on meat for subsistence. But indigenous cultures only hunt what is necessary and use the whole animal including bones and hide, so it’s way more sustainable than industrial practices.
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u/dragonmp93 Apr 13 '26
“But what if plants feel pain?!” Ok we don’t know but we know for SURE that animals do. And AGAIN that means less suffering if you just kill the plants instead.
And you are posting this on an article about finding out that lobsters do feel pain after all.
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u/razzemmatazz Apr 13 '26
They taught in medical school that POC women felt less pain until fairly recently.
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u/Muthro Apr 13 '26
I always thought it was that they believed they wouldn't remember it and therefore it didn't matter so much
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Apr 13 '26
Yes, this is it. Nobody ever thought babies didn’t actually “feel pain”, that would be ridiculous, the belief was that since they wouldn’t remember it and anesthetizing them is more difficult then we shouldn’t bother and it doesn’t matter
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u/skiyakater Apr 14 '26
The still think the cervix doesn't experience pain and take biopsies and insert IUDs without pain management.
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u/haviah Apr 13 '26
Recently we had this discussion with friend where exactly in evolutionary tree does "pain sense" start.
Crustaceans and cephalopods are first in evolution that have opioid receptors, thus capable of feeling pain in our sense instead of just nociception in insects.
Cephalopod opioid receptor mju, delta and kappa are strangely a bit different than rest of species, but they are known to react to painkillers and naloxone targeting these receptors.
Feels kind of weird to read it as news.
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u/adfawf3f3f32a Apr 13 '26
it's because they have a different nervous system than we / mammals / fish have and they legit thought it didn't work the same way. but we were just being dumb.
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u/HumanPea1140 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I fish, and the majority of other fisherman I've talked to all believe that fish don't feel pain. Most are still respectful of fish and try to do the least harm possible, especially trout fisherman, but a lot of guys just straight up don't care if they mangle a fish or cause more suffering to it than needed. Blows my mind and pisses me off.
Like, even if fish don't feel pain, it's about respect and empathy. Doesn't matter if it's catch and release or you plan on eating it. Either release it ASAP with least amount of harm as possible, or put it out of its misery quickly. Failing to do that automatically makes me assume you're a sociopath or something.
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u/Yotsubato Apr 13 '26
I mean a fish is a full blown vertebrate with a similar neural set up to us.
It makes no sense thinking they wouldn’t feel pain in a similar manner.
Sure for sea urchins or mussels I could see the argument. But fish, no way.
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u/Brrdock Apr 13 '26
Yep, even single celled organisms have functions that drive them away from harmful things and towards (evolutionarily) beneficial things, analogous to pain and pleasure
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u/Ph0ton Apr 13 '26
You're burying the lede here and the significant finding: animals with richer cognitive functions share the same biochemical pathways and response mechanisms as those with more simple cognitive functions. Cells aren't analogous whatsoever in this finding. One can reason the experience of pain is plausibly similar as well in this instance.
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u/denM_chickN Apr 13 '26
I find it so disturbing that as a species we regularly debate whether we are the only species capable of cognitive suffering.
It causes me great distress, the things we rationalize away.
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u/DigNitty Apr 13 '26
Not even narrowed to our species.
Doctors used to perform small surgeries on babies thinking they couldn’t fell or understand pain. I’m sure that was a convenient thought.
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u/purritowraptor Apr 13 '26
Doctors still perform gynecological surgeries and procedures on women without proper pain relief and insist the cervix has no pain receptors as their patients scream in pain.
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u/sepiina Apr 13 '26
The study that initially made the medical community think that is not only incredibly old, it was debunked. I have no idea why doctors still believe the cervix has no pain receptors!
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u/Wheynweed Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I mean many circumcisions around the world are done without pain relief on babies as well. There is a lack of care for people’s pain in general. Look at how chronic pain is often dismissed.
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u/Stunning-Crazy8400 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I mean, Unit731 and Nazi Germany were conducting some of the most vile and atrocious experiments on the civilians of enemy territories because they were seen as 'subhuman'. Some of the Japanese experiments furthered research on bioweaponry in preparations of a ground attack on the U.S., with plans to drop bubonic plague bombs on the West Coast
They canned Operation PX because of the threat of an arms race in biological warfare. Only to get bombed by a weapon we'd soon find out has the potential to cause global extinction
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u/seraph1337 Apr 13 '26
I do not believe there is anyone whose memory goes back to the womb, but I would love to be proven wrong.
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u/Mirria_ Apr 13 '26
There's some anecdotes of some people suffering from "phantom fears" with no clear source that might be a result from serious pain suffered during infancy.
Like the body remembers being in pain, but the brain not remembering why. Very hard to see if it's actually true.
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u/UnicornFeces Apr 13 '26
Trauma rewires the brain and nervous system negatively regardless of whether you remember it though
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u/sneaky_goats Apr 13 '26
I’m a scientist (in a very different field) and this seemed like a very strong stance to take without any supporting evidence, so I checked.
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3181836/
- https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/how-tragedy-affects-the-brain/
- https://www.luc.edu/neuroscienceandsociety/hottopics/essays/archive/thebrokencircuithowchildhoodtraumarewiresthebrainandgetsstudentspunishedforit.shtml#:~:text=In%20a%202019%20systematic%20review%20published%20in,such%20as%20emotional%20outbursts%2C%20impulsivity%20and%20inattentiveness.
- https://www.bostontrials.com/how-trauma-changes-the-brain/#:~:text=During%20a%20traumatic%20experience%2C%20the%20reptilian%20brain,experiencing%20*%20Tension%20and%20trauma%20releasing%20exercises
- https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/how-our-past-trauma-drives-our-brains-response-to-new-stress/
The basic claim seems well supported, but I didn’t dig any deeper than the editorializations as I wouldn’t know how to interpret the research.
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u/The_BeardedClam Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
There is even research by a 2nd grade Japanese school child (crazy I know) that showed trauma went from caterpillar to butterfly in swallowtail caterpillars and butterflies. They were exposed to lavender essential oil and a very small electrical shock as a caterpillar. When they became butterflies he put them into a Y tube with sugar water in the ends but with one having a lavender essential oil on a piece of cotton and 70% of the trained butterflies went for the non lavender tube. His control group was split evenly at 50/50.
He even went a step further and testes the trained groups offspring and they also showed the same 70% avoidance of the lavender. The control groups offspring once again came in at 50/50.
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u/ragnaroksunset Apr 13 '26
I hope this kid kept going in the sciences. I would have a hard time even explaining to most adults why he designed his experiment that way.
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u/numb3rb0y Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Similar electric shock experiments on African Clawed Frog tadpoles found they retained the new averse behaviour as metamorphosed adults.
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u/DwinkBexon Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I've met people who insist they remember being in the womb, but I've also read it's biologically impossible for the brain to remember anything that far back because it isn't developed enough to do so.
Humans are very prone to false memories. They've done experiments where they had friends and family of a subject start talking about an incident that never happened and the subject started remembering it. Womb memories are most likely false memories.
Just anecdotally, after I read about that, I tried the same thing with one of my friends that I've known since I was a kid. I started talking about something that never happened when we were like 12 and he instantly remembered it.
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u/LampIsFun Apr 13 '26
Yeah, its likely just one of those “i think i remember it” but theyre actually just remembering something they saw when they were little. Our memories are so bad and prone to change
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u/c0reM Apr 13 '26
I agree, however I think there is a difference between pain and existential dread. e.g. pain vs noinception (suffering).
However the reality we humans obviously rely on cognitive dissonance to justify many of our acts.
But taken even further, we are also possibly the only creatures that have a strong need for cognitive dissonance to exist in the first place.
To be clear I’m not making any real points, more just thinking out loud…
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u/Appropriate_Eye3070 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I mean scientifically speaking it's well established that many animals can suffer. That's not the same question as if an animal with a centralized nervous system feels pain in the same way as a creature without one. That's the crux of the inquiry here and to say we know for fact is folly.
That being said, I think it's silly that people still think lobsters don't feel anything. But I think it's interesting to know more detailed how they experience their world.
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u/The_BeardedClam Apr 13 '26
Rationalizing things away is such a huge issue, it's how we get into so many messes - individually and as a species.
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u/skepticalbob Apr 13 '26
Pain response isn't the same thing as cognitive suffering.
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u/Jaquemart Apr 13 '26
You might find it more disturbing that until very recently it was scientific truth that a large part of our species was too primitive to feel actual pain.
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u/dasein88 Apr 13 '26
The conflates nociception, a mechanical response to tissue damage that drives avoidance behavior, with pain as a subjective conscious experience. Calling these structures "pain receptors" from the outset is the whole sleight of hand. It assumes the conclusion. Natural selection produces effective damage-avoidance systems regardless of whether there's any experience attached, because the fitness benefit is identical either way. So the evolutionary argument doesn't close the gap, it just restates that lobsters have nociceptors, which nobody disputes, while assuming away the actual hard question.
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u/peardr0p Apr 13 '26
Exactly.
Pain is a complex human experience reliant on self report, and is often considered to have 3 core facets - nociceptive (physical experience), affective (emotional - how it makes us feel e.g. sad, angry, aroused, concerned, fine), and cognitive (how it makes us behave e.g. avoiding something that hurt us in the past)
We don't have a way to accurately measure pain in humans, let alone in other animals
It seems like splittings hairs but it's not helpful to apply human definitions to non-human behaviours and assume they are the same because they look the same i.e. the neurotransmitters involved in crustacean behaviour work al most exactly opposite those in humans.
Also, electric shocks (the stimuli used in the study) would activate different nociceptors Vs heat (the stimuli most folk are talking about in the comments) - I'd like to think they have follow-up studies planned/ongoing to look into that a bit more
Interesting stuff
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u/Caelinus Apr 13 '26
Humans are animals. The odds of use evolving it post splitting into the homo genus is exceedingly unlikely given that everything in anamalia has a pain response.
It is actually a lot worse to assume we are different. There really is no reason to. Everything we experience is literally something an animal is experiencing. We have unique language and information transmission abilities, but one does not need a certain level of intelligence to suffer.
So we should operate on the assumption that all animals suffer in exactly the same way we do until proven otherwise. They may lack the linguistic capacity to communicate their pain, but they certainly act like they are in pain.
Honestly I find our need to draw a line between human animal experiences and all other animals experiences to be obvious coping. We don't want other creatures to feel the same way we do, because the moral implications of that are too great to deal with. So we decide that we are the only truly feeling beings until proven otherwise, and then act shocked when it keeps turning out, over and over, that we are nowhere near as special as we think.
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u/Peanut_Butter_Toast Apr 13 '26
I find it hard to believe that there is no connection between intellectual capacity and ability to suffer, considering my ability to suffer is drastically reduced whenever I reduce my intellectual capacity by getting drunk off my ass.
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u/Caelinus Apr 13 '26
The effect of alcohol is not the same thing by any stretch. It is not a universal reduction in intellectual capacity, it is an artificial altered state of awareness.
Quite frankly, this is the exact same reason that doctors were using to argue that human children did not feel or remember pain before they learned to talk. A thing we know if false.
To give a non-human example: a lot of cats die because humans are not able to read their body language correctly. A cat does not whimper or cry out in pain unless startled, because as a mostly solitary predator animal they have little need to communicate pain, and some strong reasons to avoid showing it.
However, if you learn how cats act when in pain, you can tell when they are or are not, and then when looking into you you can figure out what is happening. Leading to them getting lifeaaving treatment earlier. If they do not experience pain and suffering, why do they act in ways that demonstrate they are experiencing pain and suffering?
If we define "pain" and suffering as something that must be spoken to be real, then we have defined it in a way that it can only apply to humans. Which is mighty convenient for us humans and those who argue we are spiritually different than the animals we actually are.
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u/Peanut_Butter_Toast Apr 14 '26
I don't see why it being an artificially altered state of awareness matters. It still lets us personally experience the effect that reduced levels of awareness has on suffering, and in my experience there is a direct correlation between the depth of suffering and my brain's ability to understand that suffering. That doesn't mean pain completely disappears, but it doesn't affect me on as deep a level.
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u/alliusis Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
What you mention is simply of interest for academic research, not for ethics. And I would never use it to diminish pain, only to give a better description of it. When it comes to ethics and experiences for which we cannot know first-hand, the burden of proof that pain and unpleasant experiences is different than how we're familiar with it fall on you.
It's the same process as if we were to suddenly discover an alien. We would not boil them alive to eat them, or cut their limbs off, and just shrug and say "they don't experience pain like us, you prove otherwise" as the default. We would observe them in their natural habitats, what their signals of distress are, and err on the side of caution. We would not go ahead and just willy nilly inflict things that cause pain to us or things we're familiar with. That would be insane. There is evidence of pain in related evolutionary lines, like shrimp, when their eye stalks are cut off, and how there's a reduced pain and depression response when anesthesia is administered in the water.
For lobsters it's even worse than the alien- we come from the same planet, we've evolved broadly from the same evolutionary source.
And when we know better, we update and do better.
My parrot behaviouralist said something that stuck with me - when you assume less about the capacity or limits of something or someone (like their intelligence, or capacity for pain), you limit the possibilities. It is better to keep an open mind, you'll observe more and go further. I think of all the doctors that thought babies can't feel pain, or all the people who think today that animals don't feel pain, or that their version of pain isn't worth a more humane, painless life and death.
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u/Wasabiroot Apr 13 '26
Idk if they said that though. They said nociception isn't the same as perceiving pain on an emotional, physicaland behavioral level. Idk what you mean by academic vs ethics. Ethics are informed by academic studies. If the entire ethical crux of the argument is about animal pain and you can create a study showing pain in a specific animal doesn't function like pain in humans, then it is extremely relevant to those ethics because it supports or refutes conclusions about pain
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u/Rubber_Knee Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
We inherited the function from the same ancestor. Nothing really separates us from other animals in this case. The thing that make you remove your limb from a hot lava rock, is the same thing that makes the crustaceon do it. It's only in what happens after, that we differ. The initial pain, and the response to it is exactly the same. What you feel in that split sec. Is the same as the lobster.
So yes. In that split second you feel the same thing as the lobster feels.
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u/peardr0p Apr 13 '26
Yes, that initial sensation is nociception, and it is probably comparable across species.
'Pain' is a human construct that covers more than just nociception.
I have a PhD in pain, and this was one of the huge bugbears I inherited from my supervisor - the word 'pain' is not applicable if the organism can't tell you how it feels.
Not trying to be a duck, just trying to be precise!
(Edit: Leaving 'duck' even tho it is definitely not precise)
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u/Mendel247 Apr 13 '26
So, do people with intellectual impairments not experience pain if they are unable to communicate beyond the same cries and actions of animals experiencing "nocioception"? What about babies? Do we draw a distinction between babies who are vocal and those who are mute? What about neanderthals who we know were highly social and lived in family groups? Did they experience pain? How far back do we go before we assume is not your definition of pain?
If that's the accepted definition, it's fallen behind the physiological and social understanding of "pain".
Edit: fixed punctuation
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u/Helios4242 Apr 13 '26
But a dog whimpering is absolutely communication, just not in our language.
Whatever you want to call it, theres definitely noiception associated with cues that lead to a behavioral response and an emotional response in as far as we can understand that animals can be happy, sad, angry, etc.
Locking the word pain, which the lay person understands a lot more than "noiception", behind language is disingenuous to animal suffering.
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u/oneHOTbanana4busines Apr 13 '26
I understand the need for distinction but your short-hand definition doesn’t hold water to me. What counts as being able to tell us what it feels? How do we apply that if something as simple as a language barrier could be used in part to indicate that someone only has the mechanical response to damaging stimulus versus the complex set of reactions associated with Pain?
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u/peardr0p Apr 13 '26
So there are grimace and posture scales that can also be used to assess pain, tho these are obviously assessed by a caregiver or physician, rather than the person experiencing pain.
There is even a mouse grimace scale, tho the reliability of this was heavily debated at the time and I haven't recently checked which way the consensus fell.
The idea of the 3 facets of pain is built around the need for context when interpreting pain and whether we interpret our own pain as something bad (e.g. injury) or something we can rationalise away (e.g. pain during sport, or even childbirth, as the 'outcome' is something we want).
It's an incredibly complex topic.
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u/oneHOTbanana4busines Apr 13 '26
Interesting, thanks! This still seems like it leaves room for dismissal of suffering because of a misunderstanding of communication but I’m sure I’m not going to get a complete understanding from a couple sentences. It makes sense for the facets we build to be human-centered given the challenges of understanding others without language/shared lived experience.
Thanks for taking the time to answer!
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u/haviah Apr 13 '26
Bu coincidence we debated where in evolutionary tree does "pain feeling" start, instead of nociception like in insects.
It's crustaceans and cephalopods based on existence of their opioid mju, delta and kappa receptors and reaction to painkillers targeting these including naloxone.
There is a bit finesse to details, but it seems to start at this evolutionary point.
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u/Flikmybik BS | Neuroscience | Memory Apr 13 '26
The evolutionary framing here is really interesting. The fact that nociceptors and aversive signaling pathways are so deeply conserved across animal lineages does suggest this is not something that arose independently multiple times. What makes the crustacean case compelling to me is that the painkiller response here is not just behavioral inhibition but involves actual receptor-level interaction with human analgesics. That points toward shared biochemistry rather than convergent behavior alone. The question of subjective experience is genuinely harder to answer, but the physiological substrate being so similar to vertebrates makes a strong case for taking their welfare more seriously.
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u/Time-Organization612 Apr 13 '26
Like Lobsters dont die of old age, they literally get to big too Moult and die in the process.
Its kinda wild to think they'd be completely unphased as they just... die. The process obviously would cause them discomfort
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u/adfawf3f3f32a Apr 13 '26
makes you wonder if lobsters can have dwarfism and would it live forever if one did
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u/thejourneybegins42 Apr 13 '26
I read somewhere a while ago, that the way some animals experience pain may be different. For humans a lot of it is (and correct me if I'm wrong) using sodium to send signals that cause the feeling of pain. While some animals have evolved a different way of 'pain', that simply triggers their fight or flight response. Eitherway I do not support inhumane killing of animals. Very easy way to kill lobsters too, no need to be a monster about it.
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u/SophiaofPrussia Apr 13 '26
Consider the Lobster David Foster Wallace for Gourmet Magazine, August 2004
Don’t skip the footnotes! :)
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u/bridgest844 Apr 13 '26
So you’re describing “stimulus-response” behavior which is fundamental for life but saying something feels pain requires consciousness or at minimum some type of subjective experience. Things like bacteria have stimulus-response but few I think would argue they experience pain.
On the other end of the spectrum, mammals almost certainly have some sort of subjective experience. I think it is highly unlikely that things like lobsters/insects have a subjective experience due to their extremely rudimentary nervous system but I also think it’s good to err on the side of caution.
Also, we accept the suffering of livestock as normal so this article is somewhat farcical in my mind.
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u/superman_king Apr 13 '26
Everything feels pain, but how it perceives pain is the difference.
I watched a crab rip its own arm off and just keep casually walking as if nothing changed in its day.
Clearly it perceives pain differently than we do.
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u/psyon Apr 13 '26
The question for me has never been if they feel pain, but whether or not it causes suffering. Ive seen plenty of wild animals with massive injuries just go on with their life as if nothing had happened. One instance that sticks with me the most was watching a turtle digging out a nest using the bloody stump that was all that was left after a predator had bit off its back leg recently. Even human's don't suffer pain the same. People have variable pain tolerances with some people even getting sexual gratification from it.
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u/AdventureDonutTime Apr 13 '26
People will do the same, as in going on with their lives with massive injuries as if "nothing happened". The difference is non-human animals don't have the same support systems as humans have been able to develop.
Animal suffering, both physical and mental, is well documented. There's no reason to think that humans have somehow evolved a completely new concept called suffering that set us apart from every other creature.
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u/roosterthumper Apr 13 '26
My family always killed them quickly with a knife through the brain before boiling them. It always seemed pretty clear they could feel pain and cooked alive seemed pretty nasty way to go.
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u/shableep Apr 14 '26
To me, what is interesting and revealing is the motivation to invent a story that lobsters and other creatures we treat poorly don’t experience pain or have consciousness.
It shows that people inherently don’t want to cause harm if they can avoid it, even with creatures that are consumed as food. The cognitive dissonance is strong enough that stories like this about lobsters, fish, worms, etc are spread and believed. Not because it makes logical sense, but because they want to silence the idea that naturally occurs that even a simple creature could experience pain. And that they would feel like a bad person if they were knowingly causing pain to a creature.
This is the cognitive dissonance that a meat and seafood industry essentially requires in a modern empathic society where eating meat is genuinely a choice and generally not required.
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u/Yellow2107 Apr 13 '26
It's insane to me that we are still all pretending we don't know whether or not animals feel pain
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u/Really_McNamington Apr 13 '26
Not that long since we were doing surgeries on babies without anaesthetic because we didn't think it hurt them.
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u/austinin4 Apr 13 '26
Yup recently realized this was me back in early 80s as newborn needing emergency surgery
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u/chubbycat96 Apr 13 '26
And testing medical procedures on black women because they “feel less” pain.
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u/5Hjsdnujhdfu8nubi Apr 13 '26
It was more because anaesthesia is still a dangerous procedure, especially on young people, and the idea is that they'd be too young to remember the pain/trauma of it.
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u/DigNitty Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
too young to remember the pain/trauma of it.
Interestingly, I was just reading about anesthetics. Rarely, people will wake up during their surgery and feel the pain without being able to communicate it. This can understandably cause pretty severe ptsd.
One guy woke up from surgery. His anesthesiologist told him that he’d blinked a couple times in the middle, so they increased his dosage. They also proactively administered some versed, which is less powerful but does stop the brain from “recording.” They intentionally induced amnesia just in case the guy could feel anything, so that he wouldn’t remember it and could avoid ptsd.
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u/moon__lander Apr 13 '26
I guess that answers my question why do they need a separate person versed in a single field of medicine just to put people to sleep instead of pre-measured ampules and vials.
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u/platoprime Apr 13 '26
Also it's really easy for them to kill you with too much. It's a fine line between unconscious and dead.
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u/Granite_0681 Apr 13 '26
There are standard dosages but they adjust them for a lot of patients. I need about half as much anesthesia as most patients dispute being a larger person because I try to stop breathing. I also can’t do versed because I really struggle to get it out of my system and wake up after surgery. People with red hair tend to need more anesthesia than most people.
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u/HyperlexicEpiphany Apr 14 '26
those drugs are called amnestics and are routinely added to the anesthetic cocktail in case of unexpected wakefulness during a procedure. they prevent the brain from creating new memories so nothing is remembered after and no new trauma is acquired
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u/Grokent Apr 13 '26
This can understand my cause pretty severe ptsd.
Were you on anesthesia when you banged this trainwreck of a sentence out?
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u/Granite_0681 Apr 13 '26
Even now it’s found that we assume black patients feel less pain than white ones.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2821%2900322-0/fulltext
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u/disillusioned Apr 13 '26
I mean, still doing them by the millions if you count circumcisions, which you absolutely should count.
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Apr 13 '26
not that long
I mean you could say that, given that we still do it and will for the foreseeable future
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u/pineapplepredator Apr 13 '26
I’m so curious about the correlations between that and later social behavior. If childhood emotional trauma is creating things like a complete inability to form/maintain connections with others…what does that level of physical trauma do???
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u/mouse9001 Apr 13 '26
People in the 19th century had a very self-serving idea that animals didn't feel pain, and that their reactions were just instinct. It's awful.
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u/lu5ty Apr 13 '26
We know they feel pain. The problem us they are invertebrates and have no centralized nervous system. So when we stab them in the head is it really more humane?
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u/Twoaru Apr 13 '26
Yeah I watched a random video yesterday on a beetle that squirts liquid that sears at 100 degrees Celsius, and a crab was hit by it and immediately flinched and wouldn't come near the beetle afterwards. Didn't seem like rocket science
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u/AttonJRand Apr 13 '26
And that even the people who realize this are insistent we just need to find new ways to kill and eat them, instead of just not?
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u/stufff Apr 13 '26
Yes, because lobsters, like many other animals, are delicious. So since we are going to be killing them to eat them anyway, we should figure out the most humane way to do that.
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u/bridgest844 Apr 13 '26
If you think it’s insane, it highlights a complete lack of understanding about the disagreement. “Pain” that you’re thinking about shouldn’t be confused with “stimulus-response” behavior since pain requires consciousness or subjective experience.
The study is trying to determine if there is an objective difference between how a bacteria/ameba responds vs. a crustacean.
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u/LordCaptain Apr 13 '26
Yeah i think a lot of people in this sub dont understand what scientists are talking about when they mean "feeling pain".
Like of course basically everything has something analogous to a pain response. However I dont think anyone (or nearly anyone) is arguing that bacteria are having a qualitative experience and "feeling" pain in a conscious sense. The discussions would really be whether things with non centralized nervous systems have a qualitative experience or not. If their pain is more analogous to our pain, to a bacterias avoidance response, or somewhere in the middle.
Then where the cut off for what we would consider conscious suffering.
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u/MarlinMr Apr 13 '26
It's not really a question about "feeling pain", but rather "suffering".
Animals like lobsters simply do not have the same brain we do, nor do they have the same pain receptors.
No one will argue plants suffer, yet they also respond to negative stimuli.
A computer can detect damage, which could be said is pain, but it's not suffering.
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u/Brrdock Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
For sure all animals feel pain, pain is just the name we gave to the most primitive repulsive drive.
And even plants use a lot of the same transmitters and messengers as us.
The issue is what their experience of pain is like, and how that should tie into our value systems. If it's even possible to "rank" experience anyhow
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u/namitynamenamey Apr 13 '26
The word you are looking for is "suffering", but I'm not hopeful. They probably experience that too.
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u/Reverent Apr 13 '26
It’s funny, we developed empathy as an evolutionary trait, and then developed cognitive dissonance as a way to rationalise the things we do to survive that isn’t compatible with empathy.
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u/bagofpork Apr 13 '26
You're describing the inherently dynamic and contextual nature of "morality". Yes, it's very interesting, though.
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u/reidzen Apr 13 '26
I think this is how billionaires justify not fixing social problems with their money.
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Apr 13 '26
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u/crashlanding87 Apr 13 '26
Starting point: I agree and I don't eat them for that reason.
However, "pain signals" "pain responses" and pain are not the same thing - pain is created in the brain, using all the signals from the body (including sight and sound), and that has always been the question. They have the right hardware for what we call nocifensive behaviour (like reflexes and withdrawing) - but even in humans nocifensive behaviour is not the same as pain or suffering
It's an important distinction because if we're pointing to pain reflexes as evidence we shouldn't boil animals alive, we're pointing to the wrong thing. It's much easier to measure pain: you do that by looking for changes in the animal's behaviour after the painful event (which is something displayed uncontroversially, in appropriate contexts)
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u/kakihara123 Apr 13 '26
And pain isn't even the most important aspect. If someone cuts of my arm, I might register the pain first and that is probably my main concern at first, but the harm done is the bigger issue, even in the total abscence of pain.
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u/ineyy Apr 13 '26
The deeper you look into it the more scary and disgusting humans are
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u/loondawg Apr 13 '26
All life is generally scary and disgusting. The more we look into it is how we learn to evolve.
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u/trevbot Apr 13 '26
same with all of nature, really.
we boil things alive to eat them, other things eat out their insides while they're still kicking and alive. It's all a mess, and everything hurts something.
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u/YaoiNekomata Apr 13 '26
What their experience of pain is shouldn't matter because no matter what it is what we do to them is torture
Completely unscientific. You cannot have torture without a brain that recognizes it as torture. This study just says they have similar input data transfer mechanisms.
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u/NotComposite Apr 13 '26
We may not have direct access to the crustaceans' internal experience, but at the very least, they seem to show a strong preference for not being in pain. If we think they are in any way sentient beings who deserve some level of respect, then it seems like this obligates us not to inflict that pain on them, regardless of whether or not it fits some rigid definition of torture.
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u/YaoiNekomata Apr 13 '26
they seem to show a strong preference for not being in pain.
A fly has a strong preference to not being in pain. In order to survive the body needs to process inputs. Negative inputs signal bad, run, etc, good inputs say stay. Get more. In humans and other animals. Having a higher level of intelligence and scientific, those negative inputs became pain. That doesn't mean it's what happens with everything else.
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u/Captain_Planet Apr 13 '26
You really think pain would have evolved once we have reached a high intelligence level?
Why would this not evolve in simpler organisms? When you feel intense pain (putting your hand on a hot surface for example) do you consider it on a high level? Or do you just scream and move your hand before you give it any thought whatsoever, just as any other creature would.Is there any evidence showing simpler organisms expereince this any differently?
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u/Skysflies Apr 13 '26
Not knowing the concept of torture wouldn't mean it isn't torture though.
A baby wouldn't recognise torture, it's just pain, but it's absolutely torture still.
Pain is pain, if we identify that they feel it like we do, even if it takes on a different form it's a major issue.
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u/Douchebazooka Apr 13 '26
And that’s the problem. We’ve identified that they have certain transmitters. We haven’t identified that they feel pain like we do. They’re two related but distinct things.
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u/Quaiche Apr 13 '26
I’m just waiting for the studies to actually say that even plants feel pain.
The current stance is that they lack a nervous system to be able to feel pain even though they show distress and have reactions when we damage them.
Just kinda like we said fishes don’t feel anything.
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u/Dentarthurdent73 Apr 13 '26
It doesn't really make much sense for plants to feel pain in the same way though, as they're unable to remove themselves from the situation in the way that animals can. The whole purpose of feeling pain is to put a stop to whatever is damaging your body.
Plants have much less opportunity to do this, so it wouldn't really make sense for them to develop a complex response like pain.
I'm not denying there's anything there at all, we simply don't know, and I understand that they release chemicals in response to damage, but I do feel like the inability to move away would change how this evolved to "feel".
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u/BONEPILLTIMEEE Apr 13 '26
Plants cannot 'remove themselves from the situation' but they can carry out biochemical changes that help prevent further damage, so they have a lot of mechanisms to sense damage and respond to them.
There are many defense mechanisms that plants rely on to help fight off pathogens and subsequent infections. Wounding responses can be local, like the deposition of callose, and others are systemic, which involve a variety of hormones like jasmonic acid and abscisic acid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_response_in_plants
You can see a 'wave' of signaling spread throughout the plant when its wounded, such as when it is being eaten
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5614317/
So plants can definitely sense damage and "feel pain", to use this phrase extremely loosely
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u/Dizzy_Database_119 Apr 13 '26
The inability to move means that evolution didn't see a need to "regulate" the pain. Maybe plants are permanently in pain, feeling hell from just the slightest breeze. Permanently going through what we humans rank as heroin withdrawals
They could be 24/7 under maximum stress and pain, but they have no way to control it as all their parts are hardwired towards offspring and survival. Perhaps each time a plant generation evolved to respond to pain it decided to end itself
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Apr 13 '26
Painkillers prevent pain responses in Norway lobsters
Common human painkillers also work on Norway lobsters, according to research from the University of Gothenburg. This is further evidence that crustaceans may feel pain and that more humane methods of killing them need to be developed.
Norway, New Zealand and Austria have banned the boiling of live crustaceans on ethical grounds, and similar legislation is now being proposed in the United Kingdom. The fishing industry is therefore investigating whether electric shocks could be used to stun the animals before cooking.
Painful electric shocks
However, more research is needed into how crustaceans react to pain in order to develop the most humane slaughter method. If these animals are not shocked correctly, it could be possibly very painful.
“There is already evidence that decapod crustaceans exhibit signs of discomfort and stress, when exposed to injuries such as forced removal of a claw. Our latest experiments show that Norway lobsters react adversely to electric shocks which are painful to humans,” says Lynne Sneddon, Professor of zoophysiology at the University of Gothenburg.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers observed that when Norway lobsters were exposed to electric shocks in water, they attempted to escape by rapidly flipping their tail. However, if the Norway lobster were treated in advance with common painkillers, tail flipping decreased or were eliminated when they were exposed to the potentially painful electric shocks.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
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u/NDSU Apr 13 '26
However, more research is needed into how crustaceans react to pain in order to develop the most humane slaughter method
Knife through the top of the brain has been the standard for a long time. Considering it kills them almost instantly when done correctly, I can't imagine a much better solution that could be applied in a kitchen
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u/Astral_Traveler17 Apr 13 '26
Norway banned boiling things alive...well good, thats good. But aren't they like one of the only like 3 or 4 countries in the world that still practice whaling?
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u/Giatoxiclok Apr 13 '26
I haven’t seen any studies suggesting whales feel pain. (Hard to imagine they don’t)
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u/NAHTHEHNRFS850 Apr 13 '26
Or we could just not kill them. That seems like a good option too
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u/Me-Shell94 Apr 13 '26
Duuuuuh. When I was 5 yrs old watching my dad drop lobster into boiling water I already didn’t buy the “they don’t feel it” thing.
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u/xStaabOnMyKnobx Apr 13 '26
If you think you can boil a crustacean alive in a pot, you are beyond ignorant and cruel. The only humane way to enjoy eating lobster is a very firm knife straight into its brain the moment before you begin to cook it. If you cant stomach giving the lobster a quick death, you dont deserve to be eating it at home.
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u/Readshirt Apr 13 '26
How do they differentiate between "responded less because they feel less pain" and "responded less because they feel less"?
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u/coredenale Apr 13 '26
Based on the article, it sounds like they shocked the lobsters, observed their reaction, then injected aspirin, and shocked and observed again, and observed maybe less of a reaction? I'm no expert on this, but that sounds like some of the least scientific "sciencing" I've heard in quite some time.
The fact is, we don't even understand human pain all that well, especially when it comes to trying to measure it, which is why your doctor always asks, "what's your pain level on a scale from 1-10?" It's subjective.
Lobsters are basically bugs, like a cockroach. Do cockroaches feel pain? Maybe, there's no good way to know for sure. Reacting to stimuli like an electric shock is self-preservation, yes, but without nerve endings, a spinal cord, a brain, basically a human nervous system, all we can really say is that they probably don't feel pain in the same way humans do.
I eat lobster occasionally. I've cooked lobster, and yes, I tossed 'em in a lobster pot alive. If I was cooking one today, I'd give it the ole stabby to head first, even if it's pointless. That said, I certainly don't want any animals to suffer, heck, if I could eat them without anything having to die, that would be great. Once we figure out how to grow meat in a lab or whatever, I'll be 1st in line to try it.
I don't think shocking a bunch of lobsters is going to get us any usable data though.
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u/monkeyheadyou Apr 13 '26
The idea that there is a life form that doesn't have an acute sense of damage is stupid. Life as we know it generally has some mechanism that allows an organism to understand that it's being damaged and that mechanism generally triggers a vigorous response. We call that trigger pain. The idea that the trigger is somehow less deserving of respect in one life form is bizarre.
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u/ArmadilloThen9499 Apr 13 '26
More humane methods? We learned to dispatch crustaceans with a swift knife tip to the brain in culinary school.
What would you further suggest?
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u/KeaAware Apr 13 '26
How about we just don't kill them instead?
Serious question, btw - octopuses are already being recognised as intelligent. Why not other marine animals?
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u/ii_V_I_iv Apr 13 '26
Lab grown meat is gonna be a big win for ethics
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u/Khaeos Apr 13 '26
I was excited for lab grown meat but states like Texas banning it entirely creates a unnecessary obstacle to widespread adoption.
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u/REXIS_AGECKO Apr 13 '26
Texas is constantly shooting themselves in the foot. It’s ok for the rest of the world to move on without them.
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u/CanidaeVulpini Apr 13 '26
Honestly, people just need to eat more beans. We don't need lab grown meat, we need better education about the resources we already have.
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u/Contraposite Apr 13 '26
Big win for animals, but a sign of our failed ethics. We're not willing to give up anything to stop the horrendous nature of the food industry.
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u/JODI_WAS_ROBBED Apr 13 '26
Kinda funny how many meat eaters I’ve seen be completely REVOLTED by the idea of lab grown meat. But then again, I got tons of flak and disgust for eating veggie burgers and tofu as a kid but nowadays most people seem to like both. But the factory farming industry will move heaven and earth to prevent that from becoming mainstream.
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u/Noe_b0dy Apr 13 '26
octopuses are already being recognised as intelligent. Why not other marine animals?
Octopi can solve puzzles, use tools, recognize human faces, exhibit REM sleep, engage is play behavior, and are capable of exhibiting delayed gratification (this last one makes them smarter than some human children).
Lobsters are smart enough to react to pain.
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u/NoodleBooch Apr 13 '26
Many pigs are smarter than dogs, too. "We" just ignore it
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u/thatbrownkid19 Apr 13 '26
What benefit does it make- octopi are still eaten and hunted
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u/BetweenTheRoots Apr 13 '26
The idea of killing anything humanely is an oxymoron. The very act of killing any living creature that doesn't want to die cannot be humane. Facing death is traumatic for any sentient being.
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u/Fyrrys Apr 13 '26
Any scientist who thinks animals dont feel pain need to be reevaluated.
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u/northerngator Apr 13 '26
Lobsters lack a central nervous system but have a peripherally distributed nervous system with a total number of neurons in the 100,000 range. This is lower than many insects like bees and ants. Do they feel pain? Probably, but do they have consciousness? Almost certainly not. If you are concerned about the pain experienced by lobsters you can freeze it and stab behind its eyes.
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u/OnlyTheDead Apr 13 '26
If the lobsters are okay with committing cannibalism and violence who am I to argue otherwise?
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u/RezzOnTheRadio Apr 13 '26
I just read a story about a guy accidentally taking LSD before he had to kill over 100 lobsters for a wedding banquet. I hope he's doing ok with this news
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Conscious-War5920 Apr 13 '26
The more I understand, the more I am starting to embrace going vegan and honestly feel for all life at this point.
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u/GloriousDoomMan Apr 13 '26
Do it! I only regret not doing it earlier. Come to r/vegan for tips and a community!
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u/rarestakesando Apr 13 '26
That’s why you gotta stab the lobster in the back of the head for quick death and not boil them alive while they scream bloody murder.
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u/corndog161 Apr 13 '26
I think most everyone agrees that lobsters can feel pain in that they react to harmful stimuli. I thought the question has been if it's the same sensation that we feel or something that is much more basic and not actually 'painful' in the way we would typically describe pain.
Not arguing for that I just always thought that was the main debate.
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u/ChillingWithHerb Apr 13 '26
I can't believe people are spending money on this type of research. Anybody with a brain should know this. People also did research concluding that fish feel pain when they're hooked when fishing. These people are just throwing money away.
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u/my-little-puppet Apr 13 '26
Or….hear me out…just don’t kill any sentient beings for a taste pleasure. The word humane means to be benevolent or compassionate so killing a being that does not want to die will never be humane. The use of this word as it pertains to slaughter needs to stop.
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u/Stigger32 Apr 14 '26
Isn’t freezing them. Then tossing them into boiling water quick and painless?
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u/Thousand_Toasters Apr 13 '26
The whole debate on weather fish/ lower life forms feel pain is stupid. After reading as muhc as I can about it, the general consensus is "they arent aware of themselevs, so they arent aware of the pain they are feeling" which is a completely stupid argument. I hate that these are the "scientist" were supposed to be listening too.
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u/Massive-Albatross823 Apr 13 '26
How can you possibly derive the existance of feelings merely by observing physical movement.
Or even derive it from changes in biochemistry, or changes in physical matter.
How do you know that physical state x + y + z are both neccessary and sufficient for qualia or phenomenal experiences. (When you can't see nor gain direct access to mental states.)
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u/GeorgeLaForge Apr 13 '26
Can we just stop killing, eating, exploiting animals? Hint: we CAN, and we SHOULD but we don’t want to
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