LOBSTERS

    Lobsters look a lot different than us, so it may be hard for us to imagine how they perceive the world. Lobsters "smell" chemicals in the water with their antennae, and they "taste" with sensory hairs along their legs. But actually, they aren't so different from you and I. Like humans, they have a long childhood and have an awkward adolescence. They carry their young for nine months and can live to be more than one hundred years old.

    Like dolphins and many other animals, lobsters use complicated signals to explore their surroundings and establish social relationships. They take long-distance seasonal journeys and can cover 100 miles or more each year (equivalent of a human walking from Maine to Florida(-assuming that they manage to avoid the million of traps along the seacoast. Sadly, many lobsters don't survive their most formidable predator - humans. More than 20 million are consumed in the U.S. each year!

    Scientists have determined that lobsters, like all animals can feel pain. Also, when kept in tanks, they may suffer from stress associated with confinement, low oxygen levels, and crowding. Most scientists agree that a lobsters' nervous system is quite sophisticated. Neurobiologist Tom Abrams says lobsters have "a full array of sense."

    In some situations, they may even feel more pain than us. According to invertebrate zoologist, Jaren G. Horsley, "The lobster does not have an automatic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut... I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open... [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed" during cooking.

    "As an invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for a number of years, I can tell you the lobster has a rather sophisticated nervous system that, among other things, allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm. ...[Lobsters] can, I am sure, sense pain."-Jaren G. Horsley, Ph. D

    Anyone who has ever boiled a lobster alive knows that when dropped into scalding water, lobsters whip their bodies wildly and scrape the sides of the pot in a desperate attempt to escape. In the journal Science, researcher Gordon Gunter described this method of killing lobsters as an "unnecessary torture."

    Many marine biologists have been consulted about the least cruel way to kill a lobster. While the experts couldn't seem to agree on which method would cause the least suffering, they do agree that there really is no humane way to kill these sensitive and unusual animals.

    So, next time you are at the grocery and pass up the tank of the silent lobsters.. think of them being trapped in their water, stressed out and manhandled to live in a tiny tank.. and think of them being scolded to death in a pot on a stove just to feed your mouth.