Do Crabs Feel Pain? Maybe—and Maybe We Should Rethink Eating Them

Do lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans feel pain? We certainly act as if they don’t, cramming them in tanks with their claws wired shut, tossing them as if they were a football. And then there’s the cooking itself—most chefs, professional and amateur, cook lobsters and crabs alive, usually by dumping them in boiling water. Along with the melted butter, that’s the appeal of crustaceans—there’s no fresher food. We may feel a frisson of guilt, or maybe just discomfort, when we hear the creatures rattling around the inside of the pot as the water boils. But that feeling usually dissolves for lobster lovers by the time we crack open a claw and dig out the succulent meat. We wouldn’t dream of doing the same thing to a live chicken or pig, which are dead well before the cooking process begins, but those vaguely insect-looking crustaceans are different. They don’t even feel pain. Right?

Actually, they just might. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Robert Elwood and Barry Magee of Queen’s University in Belfast examined the reaction of common shore crabs—a close relation to the crabs that end up on our dinner plate—to small electrical shocks. 90 crabs were individually placed in a brightly lit area, and were given the the option of scuttling to one of two dark shelters. (Shore crabs, like many crustaceans, like to hide in dark, tight spaces.) Once they’d made their choice, the crabs in one of the shelters were exposed to an electric shock. After a rest period, the crabs were returned to the lit tank. Most of the crabs went back into the dark shelters—and then the same crabs were given another electric shock. (Science, like cooking, can sometimes seem cruel.) When they were placed back into the lit tank for the third time, the majority of the shocked crabs instead went to the alternative dark shelter, avoiding the one where they had repeatedly been shocked.