Wait. You mean people thought they <i>didn't</i>?<p>I'm not at all experienced in the realm of animal activism as it relates to lobsters and crabs, but did people <i>really</i> think that animals didn't feel something akin to pain if you ripped their limbs off? Pain is a vital mechanism/motivation for survival and thus evolutionarily advantageous. Maybe some complex animals don't have it, but they'd have to be pretty weird (although I admit, lobsters and crabs would be in the right category-- it's not going to be a vertebrate that feels no pain-- they aren't particularly unique in terms of how they grow and die).
It has always bugged me that some people boil live crabs and lobsters: I have seen them struggling to get out of the water. Quickly cutting out their brain stems and then tossing them in the water seems better.<p>That said, anyone who has seen live pigs piled 20+ feet deep in a pre-killing pen may think about being a vegetarian. The look of total fear in their eyes is difficult to forget. My wife and I had the misfortune of seeing that one time and we could not bring ourselves to eat any meat for a long time.
In addition to Wallace's <i>Consider the Lobster</i> I'd very much recommend Baggini's <i>The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten</i> (review here: <a href="http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants-to-be-eaten.html" rel="nofollow">http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/review-pig-that-wants...</a>) for a deeper dive into this problem. The title essay's premise is this:<p>As a thought experiment assume that a lobster is genetically modified to think that it's sole purpose is to be eaten. Is it still morally wrong to eat that animal? For less far fetched examples (and moving somewhat tangentially), consider the people in <i>The Matrix</i>, who are happy in their deception or Frenchwomen who insist that wearing burkas liberate them. They are happy that way. Should we still impose our attitudes on them? What would you do if you met a worshiper of the Crocodile God, who craves the honor of being thrown alive into the pit (that last example is from Bach's <i>Illusions</i>).
A great read from David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" from Gourmet magazine<p><a href="http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true&currentPage=9" rel="nofollow">http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...</a>
"And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess 'high cognitive ability and sentience.'"<p>Wow, did they just jump to that conclusion based on pain aversion behavior or is there some kind of evidence to support this? It's quite a stretch.
Is there a quick, painless alternative though? Can't really decapitate or bleed out a heavily armored invertebrate. Maybe drown them in wine or spirits?
I work with invertebrate sensory neurons (neuroscientist here). For a starter, check out the pick pocket neurons in Dan Tracey's paper ("nociceptive" means pain receptors): <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)02268-3" rel="nofollow">http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)0...</a>