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. We’ve 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 their “blood” or 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 guarding” and they even show fewer responses to negative or supposedly painful

events.

And so that fits a definition of “suffering pain” as 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.