Mammals feel pain? What an amazing concept!

It still boggles my mind that people continue to think that if something living doesn't walk on two legs and style their own hair, it means they must not have the capability to feel pain.

Scientists have discovered (shock of shocks) that hermit crabs feel pain! And how did they discover this?

Well, they hurt them of course!


The only good thing (and 'good' is stretching it) about this article is that the research is being used to call for kinder treatment of crustaceans that are caught and used for food, as they are often treated badly based on the (horribly wrong) assumption that they cannot feel pain.

Professor Elwood said the research highlighted the need to investigate how crustaceans used in food industries are treated, saying that a "potentially very large problem" was being ignored.

However, I like to think that common sense could also have led to this conclusion, without the need to shock hermit crabs with electricity.

It's not like this issue has not been raised before: David Foster Wallace wrote an extremely disturbing but necessary article awhile back about the Maine Lobster Fest called Consider the Lobster that will leave you with a sinking feeling whenever you see those poor lobsters in glass aquariums, awaiting their doom.

And it begs the question how many other creatures have been captured and boiled alive after living on this planet longer than you, your parents, your grandparents and your great-grandparents ever inhabited it.