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  • I was vegetarian for 7 years. But I uhcheated. Every now and then I would have like

  • just one crab cake. They don’t count right? It’s not like they can feel pain. Oh shoot.

  • Apparently. They can. Noooooooooo!

  • Hey guys Julia here for DNews

  • We humans like to think pretty highly of ourselves. We put ourselves on the top of the totem pole

  • of the animal kingdom. Weve got our big brains and our fancy thumbs for texting. Every

  • animal is beneath us. And for a long time we thought we could just use any animal how

  • we wanted to. It didn’t matter.

  • For a long time we didn’t think they could feel pain! Scientists for hundreds of years

  • though that animals couldn’t feel, they just simply reacted mechanically. I mean compared

  • to our complex nervous systems it made sense. But crab’s nervous systems do have their

  • own complexity.

  • Well a study published in the journal Biology Bulletin found that crabs and other crustaceans

  • have life spans of many years and a brain that, in size and complexity, lies somewhere

  • between the octopus and insects” .

  • They have a small brain of sorts right behind the eyes. Their main brains are more complex

  • than you might think. They have three ganglia that have fused together to form a single

  • brain. They also smaller brains also called ganglia for each section of their bodies.

  • These smaller brains mean a quicker response from stimuli in the environment; the nerve

  • signal doesn’t have to travel as far.

  • So what happens when those nerves get stimulated? Do they feel pain?. A recent small study published

  • in the journal Biology Letters found that crabs physically react to a pain stimulus.

  • The researchers subjected 20 crabs European shore crabs to electrical shock. Most, of

  • the crabs started walking around in their tanks and a few tried to climb out. While

  • some the control group of crabs who did get shocked started to walk but 6 did nothing.

  • But most telling was when the researchers tested theirbloodor their their haemolymph.

  • It had three times the amount of lactic acid. A clear physiological sign of stress.

  • Another study published in the journal Animal Behavior found that hermit crabs feel pain

  • and specifically avoid it. Crabs given electric shocks were more likely to leave their shell

  • and to seek out another shell without the shocks. So it’s clear they feel something

  • and avoid it when possible. And according to another study published in the journal

  • Applied Animal Behavior Science they also limp or show other protective behaviors called

  • pain guardingand they even show fewer responses to negative or supposedly painful

  • events.

  • And so that fits a definition ofsuffering painas described by Temple Grandin in

  • a study published in the journal Emerging Concepts and Strategies in Veterinary Medicine,

  • in which she found mammals from humans to the lowly rat suffer from pain. She even found

  • evidence that birds, reptiles and fish feel pain too. She can tell when an animal suffers

  • from pain based on certain behaviors, like pain guarding and seeking analgesics, which

  • reduce pain. Pain guarding is like when you dog hurts its paw and so won’t put any weight

  • on it anymore or Or if they were hurt in a specific place, they learn to avoid that place

  • in the future.

  • And a wide range of animals perform this kind of behavior. Even chickens, when their beaks

  • are trimmed, peck less than usual. Other studies on mammals and birds and even fish found that

  • when the animals were given analgesics like morphine, those pain guarding behaviors stopped.

  • Which is bad news for me and my new pescetarian lifestyle. Ugh but shrimp just taste so good.

  • Guess I should go whine about it somewhere on the internet. Maybe I’ll start a website

  • like iwillnevereatshrimpagain.com which is available on domain.com.

  • No domain extension will help you tell your story like a DOT COM or DOT NET domain name.

  • And because you watch DNews, you can get 15% off Domain Dot Com’s names and web hosting

  • by using the code DNews when you check out.

  • So would you still eat crab after this? let me know down below.

I was vegetarian for 7 years. But I uhcheated. Every now and then I would have like

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