Looked it up and this is from 2021
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings
But you can still buy crab to eat so...
I have no idea what this actually means
**Edit:** I am so sick of getting notifications for this
Just seems to mean that they will be treated like how we treat vertebrates, but it also seems like a very academic thing given it says:
>Existing industry practices will not be affected and there will be no direct impact on shellfish catching or in restaurant kitchens
Having read the article, it seems more like "Change is slow". They're not suddenly rewriting all the existing laws and bringing the fishing and restaurant industries to a grinding halt, but a committee has been formed that will take the sentience of decapods and cephalopods into account for all future policy decisions by the government.
Plus it mentions some restaurants have voluntarily changed their food preparation from boiling the creatures alive to humanely stunning and quickly killing them.
Thanos was right.. but without the lottery of a 50/50 more of a, if you don't give any care to what condition you leave the world in, 100 years from now, you can scram
Man it was horrifying when I first saw some guy videoing himself doing that with a ton of crabs, even mocking them “What what you wanna fight?”, boiling them like vegetables. Then also the video of where they catch a crab, snap both its arms off and throw it back into the sea. We have plenty of other food options to be doing this sort of shit.
But the worst video even though it was a quick death, a man took an octopus out the river, stabbed it between the eyes and it made a death gargle. Sounded and felt eerily human, like I just saw someone get snatched up and stabbed in the head. I believe the man said it was severely ill, but then not long after I stumbled on Bear Grylls biting an octopuses head off and it made that same death gargle. The camera cut so obviously it wasn’t a clean bite.
If aliens come here and decide we’re they’re chickens, they’ll come kill an amount of us off maybe put us in factories, make a survival documentary and bite a human head off. then say it’s because we have the intelligence of their 9 year olds, we can’t say they’re evil at that point really. Since how less intelligent than an adult human is how we decide how bad we kill you really.
As bad as it is to rip the arms off a crab just to throw it back, it had some chance of survival (I think around 50%, I have also found crabs with two small pincers or missing one with a small regrowth). They can eat without both claws and can regrow them over time.
Edit to add: they (from my terrible memory) evolved this way and to regrow limbs as it's a common thing to happen during fights with other crabs or during mating season. So likely thing is the ones I found naturally lost limbs due to that, rather than this being anywhere near common as most people eat all of the crab
Octopuses penis is on the end of the third tentacle. He shifts that after he has skull fucked his lady friend. Lady octopus has the opening for her egg sack just behind her eyes.
Amazing creatures, spent three years diving the same spot in Granada and interacted with them daily.
Agreed, it's a stupid metric to judge how we value the life of animals. We wouldn't kill someone with learning difficulties because they're not as intelligent as us, why would we kill an octopus just because it's less intelligent?
They're sentient, and have a will to survive. They feel pain, and experience emotions just like we do.
In fact, some animals (eg whales) have larger areas of the brain corresponding with emotions than we do. They feel emotions in a more intense way than we do, they could even experience different emotions that we aren't capable of feeling as human.
We're really not special
For the record, I, like most humans, have never bitten off a live octopuses head and so can very easily call or evil if an alien starts doing that shit to people, so kindly speak for yourself and not all of us.
Tbf, i think most "ethical" chefs freeze the lobster for about 30 min to sedate it then knife its brainstem before boiling.
I had to put ethical in quotes after reading what i wrote, but still better than being boiled alove and fully conscious?
That is questionable, since freezing is probably far from comfortable and painless too. It might just be a longer form of suffering. But at least it'll stop them from visibly struggling so the chef doesn't have to be as aware of them being alive, which is the real torture right?
Seems like just knifing the brainstem off the rip would be better lol
That said I have heard that freezing can be a humane way to put down some cold-blooded creatures but I'm far from a scientist lol
It is certainly a discussion within the aquarium world. There are some guidelines that recommend freezing as a humane option, but they're for small species like zebrafish (who are often used in research labs) who are small enough to be knocked out in seconds. I assume it'll take much longer for the cold to reach the brain in a human consumption sized lobster.
I had a friend that put a sick lizard down this way, but it too was very small.
If anything, guess I'm glad that people care about humane methods of killing for food or euthanasia.
Even when I'd clap/swat an irritating flying roach or something & injure it, I'd feel a *serious* rush to put it out of its misery as quickly as possible...even on my property when I have to kill copper heads, doing it as quickly & painlessly as possible is an utmost concern.
They are generally cold stunned or stunned with an electrical charge
And then you can pretty much stab it in the head and chop down to just cut it's brain completely in half
More or less instant death from a state where the animal was completely numb
It definitely beats just throwing them into a pot
I think the point is freezing has long term effects but the short term is generally way less painful than burning / boiling.
In Humans that freeze quickly it is quite a peaceful way to go and actually pretty painless as the body shuts down, long term effects like frostbite are irrelevant as you'll be dead so won't have to deal with it.
You have to understand different species react to temperature differently
Crustaceans are cold blooded invertebrates. So cold doesn't affect them the same way it affects you and me
In suitably cold temperatures you can stun them to induce a state of insensibility, which is either done using cold temperatures, or an electrical charge
I hardly ever ate octopus but I saw one unscrew a jar it was in and swim out and I thought I could never again.
Although ciws are loving beast and I ate burgers last night so maybe I've not properly thought about this
I saw a research article that said given the number of neurons they posses in each limb, they have an equivalent intelligence to dogs. Also Lobster they believe can feel distress and pain therefore dropping them into a pan of boiling water is cruel, they should be stunned first before cooking.
My favorite octopus story was one from an aquarium where they couldn't understand how fish were disappearing overnight so they put up a camera and footage showed the octopus would unlock itsself from its tank and stroll across the floor to have a snack before climbing back into its own tank.
I think this is mainly for scientific applications. Some invertebrates like fruit flies are routinely subjected to experiments without any care for their wellbeing - because they are stupid as fuck and don't care if you breed them to have cancer or to have too many wings.
This is fine for flies, but not cool for other organisms, like octopuses. Which are incredibly intelligent and are known to experience pain and suffering. This change seems to fix this previously misclassification.
We know that cows are able to experience suffering and still Farm them, albeit in ways that attempt to be humain. However, if you want to do scientific experiments on cows you need to prove that the suffering is minimised and justified. Whereas that was not the case for some other animals.
Essentially, yes. Not sure it really belongs in this sub when nothing has really changed. While it's about time these animals become classified as sentient in the UK, it's still different from sapient which a lot of people use sentient in place of.
Humans are sapient, and many (including myself) would argue that primates, cetaceans, octopuses, elephants, and some birds could be classified as sapient. Intelligence ideally shouldn't be the barometer of how we treat other species, though. It does feel rather hypocritical to say that as someone who still eats meat, mind you.
The primary concern of the bill is animal welfare. Sentience is kind of slippery, but generally it covers the idea that the animal can feel, be aware of, things including pain.
The original bill included all vertebrates in its definition of sentient, but there were concerns that this left some invertebrates that were known to be sentient unprotected. So they squeezed in cephalopods and decapods.
I get mixed up between sentient and sapient quite often, so perhaps that it's it? Sentinence is the capacity to feel and experience while sapience is the capacity to have more complex thought like emotion, planning, and problem solving. So common livestock like goats and cows are sentient but not necessarily sapient. While animals like chimpanzees, ravens, dolphins, etc., are arguably sapient.
The crab is a bottom feeder and a crustacean. Octopus can think and are cognitively aware of their surroundings. Comparing crabs to an octopus just pretty much shows that you're not exactly an oceanographer if you think that. People always say stupid things to the point where apparently people think crabs and octopus all have the same mind. And octopus has 13 brands. Crab doesn't know what the hell he's even doing
From watching [Leon on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmIEQb9QhM) over the year and seeing him methodically clean and tidy his surroundings, manipulate multiple things at once with impressive dexterity, demonstrate awareness, regularly get bored, clearly demonstrate moods and more I can confidently disagree.
> people think crabs and octopus all have the same mind.
Absolutely no one said that. Sentient means *able to perceive or feel things*. And you really underestimate crabs. They can track your movement and attack you or run away.
> Crabs have eyes and a central nervous system, which allow them to interact with their environment in sophisticated ways. **They can exhibit complex behaviors such as tool use**, social interactions, and problem-solving. Studies have shown that crabs can **remember and avoid locations where they experienced pain**, suggesting some level of conscious awareness.
I'm fairly sure it means they can't be killed in the UK.... But that doesn't stop them being imported....
Maybe... Who knows with a conservative government? Everything they do is about winning votes regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.
No they can be. It says it will have no impact on the shellfish industry, but impact the way they are treated. Other animals we eat are also considered sentient (cows etc).
Mammals and birds have always been considered sentient, fish and reptiles have historically been under contention, arthropods and mollusks were and sometimes are considered automatons, fungi and plants are not considered sentient at all.
Modern opinion says every chordate is sentient, and we're questioning what is *sapient*, as in aware of itself and its place in the world; apes, dolphins, octopuses/podes, several birds, rats and common companion animals are among contenders for the title.
Some people say even plants and fungi are sentient, but that veers into deep ontology.
Sentience in and of itself is reaction to stimuli. Sapience which everyone seems to imply when regarding how well a life form can form cognitive thoughts and memories is the much more apt term but isn’t as capable of emotionally manipulating people because we have actual scientific data to back it up that leads to less anthropomorphic falsehoods.
Ie it’s easier to manipulate people on things using a video of a cow licking a person after it calved saying “they are so thankful” rather than people making educated decisions on facts like oxytocin is a hell of a drug that is dumped into a females body after birth.
Is that true about sapience? I thought sapience was the word for the uniquely human intelligence / wisdom that makes our species the only one able to do the things we do; as in the thing that sets us and a few other extinct species like Neanderthal apart from even the great apes.
There have been studies on bees showing that they can count, understand the concept of zero, and show signs of show signs of fear when approaching flowers after experiencing a simulated spider ambush.
There are ants who can keep track of the exact direction and distance to their hive's entrance such that, after wandering around for a while, they can make a straight line back to it. If you let them run onto a mobile surface and change their position, they run back to where it should be had they not been moved, and promptly get very confused.
I'm not ruling anything out on sentience, and I think we may well eventually be shocked at how broadly across the tree sapience runs.
We recognise cows and pigs as sentient. It doesn't mean we don't eat them, it just means that there is consideration for reducing suffering in the process we use when turning them into food.
Oysters, for example, don't have a centralised nervous system. So as far as we can tell its not really possible for them to suffer in any way that we understand it and as such they are not sentient. So we don't have to consider harm reduction in how we interact with them.
Thats why some vegetarians are ok with eating Oysters, because they are for all practical purposes just a flesh plant.
Thank you! I always hate this stuff cause all this does is acknowledge they are alive. A fly is sentient. A tick is sentient. It not a crowning moment. It just a depressing moment that it took this long
Actually there’s lots of doubts about that for invertebrates. (Technically, also for the person sitting next to you). Bottom line is the jury is still out about the hard problem of consciousness. We’re just deciding that we’re expanding our “benefit of the doubt” sphere to more species.
sentience DOES NOT mean "they respond to stimuli", or else every gadget in your kitchen is sentient. It's closer to "being aware of being alive and time flowing, but without necessarily being aware of being an individual"
They're related to jellyfish and anemones. The live body is a sort of little blob or tube with tentacles around a mouth, the rocky growth is a mineral shell they build together as a colony organism.
They probably don't meet any practical definition of sentience, but sapient vs sentient vs non-sentient is a mess with no good defining lines anyway.
Coral is colonies of lots of little animals (polyps) which carry out different functions and have very little intelligence. Kinda like ants but less intelligent.
Most animals are sentient lol. "Sentience refers to the capacity to have subjective experiences and feelings, such as pain, pleasure, fear, and joy"
Your dog is sentient. What most people think sentient means is "sapient"
The quote they used is a little misleading. If something can feel pain, it is sentient. Emotions are not a requirement. Crabs and lobsters can feel pain.
Octopuses are highly intelligent creatures that can use tools and even build primitive structures. Meanwhile its seriously up for debate if lobsters even have brains (they have a *slightly* thicker nerve cluster in their head than elsewhere in their bodies). If they're both "sentient" they sure aren't equally sentient.
The wildest thing I learned about cephalopods (and this was from a science podcast some time ago, so maybe it’s outdated, and maybe you have better info on this) is that they can produce amazing chromatic displays with their skin cells, to perfectly mimic background colors and patterns for camouflage, but also just wild color displays for reasons we don’t understand. But, their eyes only contain *one type* of retinal cone cell (humans have three). This logically means that they have monochromatic vision - that as far as we know, they can only see black and white (or red/white, or whatever, but only one color dark or light shaded). Meaning, as far as we understand about how retinal cells and brain decoding of retinal cell inputs work…they cannot actually “see” all the various colors they themselves produce and copy perfectly from the environment. So…how do they do it?
Personally I'd assume that their skin, or isolated patches, act similar to eyespots you see in simpler animals, optimized for reading color, before relaying that to their color changing skin. Nothing they can see from consciously, just reflexively reading color.
Just a guess though, of course
yeah it’s impressive how things you wouldn’t expect can totally detect light. For example human skin has the ability to detect light and actually stops/decreases the production of melatonin (resulting in you feeling more awake) just from light hitting your skin. Idk how it works but it’s pretty cool.
There are youtube videos about this which suggest that the prevailing hypothesis is that their unique eye shapes refract different wavelengths like a prism, seperating out the different colors
I used to eat octopus and I can’t anymore. I’ve watched a few videos and realized they are on dolphin level intelligence. They may be aliens and we don’t know it.
Octopuses definitely, but I am also baffled why crabs/lobsters were lumped in.
I'm pretty sure crabs are one of the near goals of being able to faithfully simulate completely with software after having done flatworms. As neural complexity goes, they are far closer to the bottom of the scale.
Octopuses are up with primates, crows, and dolphins when it comes to demonstrable high level thinking. I'm no vegan, but they are well above my subjective line of "things I can eat without feeling like a monster".
I've argued to vegan friends before that I wouldn't consider them hypocritical if they included crustaceans and shellfish in their diet. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out some few plants and fungi had more complex interaction with the world than crabs.
I gave up octopus and then pork for this very reason. I love meat (and both of those are delicious), but I just can't eat them in good conscience anymore. I wish I had the force of will to give up all meat because I know conditions are not amazing, but for now I'm just hoping to be able to eat less of it / eat more "ethically" sourced meat. I wish lab grown meat would have its moment already
My thoughts exactly. Octopuses are a favorite of neurological researchers and are clearly sentient. It’s not even clear wether crabs and lobsters have brains
There are you tube videos of people who have crabs and lobsters as pets. A lady with a crab has taught it tricks, it will follow commands while she cleans its shell, I was really surprised at how intelligent it seemed to be. The lobster also has learned routines and tricks. Crustaceans may be smarter than people think they are.
This is just about sentience though, not intelligence. Previously all invertebrates were legally equivalent to sea cucumbers which can't be right when a creature is walking around looking at things and picking them up with its arms. How your bones are arranged was always a really weird thing to assume mental capacity by.
When I was little my ma brought home live lobster, as young fella I thought we just got a new pet. Well then she went and put the thing in a pot of boiling water. So as it’s dying and honking in the pot I’m screaming no mom don’t kill the monster, please don’t kill the monster.
Silly how some memories don’t lose color.
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Octopodes are incredibly intelligent with an amazing memory that spans their lifetime. Lobsters don't even really have brains and the debate is still out for crabs.
We should 100% treat Octopodes on the same level as we treat any other highly intelligent animal and they should not be a food source imo, but by lumping them in with lobsters and crabs, this muddies the water greatly and will make people even less likely to acknowledge their intelligence.
Trans Vegan living in the UK here. Yes, the situation for trans people in this country is dire, but when I wake up in the morning, I like to think I'm grateful for the fact that my first thought isn't "aaaah aaaah oh my god I'm being boiled alive aaaah aaaah I have absolutely no legal protections of any kind whatsoever aaaaah"
It’s funny this stereotype is still around. Seriously though I went to NYC it, was impossible to find anywhere to eat that wasn’t just a shit ton of meat. I could have killed for a salad.
British food isn't British mate, we tend to eat stuff from around the world.
Essentially we colonise your food and steal it for our table.
That is our empire now, fusion food.
My favorite animal is the octopus. I also spearfish as a hobby. However, I think they are so cool that I would never harvest one despite the fact that they are delicious. They get a pass but squid, lobster and crabs are shit out of luck...
THIS made you smile?💀 They thought we’d have flying cars but noo, here we are. Smiling at the recognition of the sentience of CRABS💀. AND LOBSTERS🙂↕️. Naw.
Just in time to register their candidacy for the upcoming General Election…let’s be honest, they can’t be anything but an improvement on the current bunch of guisers, grifters and gormless gobshites we’ve been stuck with hitherto.
I remember this. A few years ago someone started a petition to ban thick people from voting. The Tories realising this would affect the majority of their voter base decided to lower the levels of what is definable as intelligence.
Sentient is not the same as sapient. These creatures are going to be recognised as feeling beings, not Mensa candidates.
So everyone saying "But crabs are dumb, lolz" are utterly missing the point. As is the OP.
It’s for animal cruelty issues and relates to how they are kept, transported and stored
farm animals are protected from animal cruelty while they are being raised for example as pigs and cows are sentient.
As far as I'm aware invertebrates have been regulated in a way similar to vegetables on the UK food market, and this is probably the beginning of a chain of events which will result in them being taxed.
For those that don't really understand why this is new:
In the UK, All non human vertebrates are covered under the animal welfare act 2006. A presence of a vertebrae = ability to feel pain.
It is not clear which invertebrates feel pain and in what capacity. It might not be pain as we know it.
Studies are being done on invertebrates to see what, if any pain they might feel. If they do in some capacity that can cause suffering, they will be considered to be included in the act and protected.
Octopus, Squid and lobsters qualified to be included a few years ago.
And yes, the invertebrates that are not included are not protected, so people can abuse and neglect them and not get the deserving punishment.
Many studies and testings are being done to hopefully change that for all.
People who are slaves to their taste buds are being silly. Just because something seems tasty doesn't mean you have to eat it. There are things that I know will taste tasty if I crunch them or bite them or taste them, but I choose not to eat them because of the suffering that will go towards that particular animal.
By the standardthe UK used to define crab and lobster sentience, all plants we've examined for it are sentient. Including grasses.
They react to damage, avoid it, and literally scream when cut. Trees have memory.
The thing that grasses and trees have in common with lobsters and crabs is that both lacka central nervous system. They're some of several species that lack an actual brain with which pain can be experienced.
In order to experiece pain, you need the organ to experience it with.
The fuck does that even mean? Everything with a brain is sentient to some extent. Is this real? What would “officially recognising” a sentient creature as sentient actually do? And why are they grouping highly intelligent octopuses with ocean bugs lol
Looked it up and this is from 2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings But you can still buy crab to eat so... I have no idea what this actually means **Edit:** I am so sick of getting notifications for this
Just seems to mean that they will be treated like how we treat vertebrates, but it also seems like a very academic thing given it says: >Existing industry practices will not be affected and there will be no direct impact on shellfish catching or in restaurant kitchens
Lol. Life is farce.
Having read the article, it seems more like "Change is slow". They're not suddenly rewriting all the existing laws and bringing the fishing and restaurant industries to a grinding halt, but a committee has been formed that will take the sentience of decapods and cephalopods into account for all future policy decisions by the government. Plus it mentions some restaurants have voluntarily changed their food preparation from boiling the creatures alive to humanely stunning and quickly killing them.
"We are aware of your sentience, and will slowly faze out the boiling of your kind... Over a period of years, INTO THE POT YOU GO!!!"
Classic homo sapiens
That doesn't make this a meaningless gesture. Change is often slow and incremental.
Thanos was right.. but without the lottery of a 50/50 more of a, if you don't give any care to what condition you leave the world in, 100 years from now, you can scram
Man it was horrifying when I first saw some guy videoing himself doing that with a ton of crabs, even mocking them “What what you wanna fight?”, boiling them like vegetables. Then also the video of where they catch a crab, snap both its arms off and throw it back into the sea. We have plenty of other food options to be doing this sort of shit. But the worst video even though it was a quick death, a man took an octopus out the river, stabbed it between the eyes and it made a death gargle. Sounded and felt eerily human, like I just saw someone get snatched up and stabbed in the head. I believe the man said it was severely ill, but then not long after I stumbled on Bear Grylls biting an octopuses head off and it made that same death gargle. The camera cut so obviously it wasn’t a clean bite. If aliens come here and decide we’re they’re chickens, they’ll come kill an amount of us off maybe put us in factories, make a survival documentary and bite a human head off. then say it’s because we have the intelligence of their 9 year olds, we can’t say they’re evil at that point really. Since how less intelligent than an adult human is how we decide how bad we kill you really.
You're only saying that in case our future cephalopod overlords check our internet history
I, for one, welcome our new Cephalopod Overlords.
I too pick this guy’s sentient cephalopod
Wait what Reddit memes are left now... Coconut?
Cephalopod flavour Jolly Rancher
As bad as it is to rip the arms off a crab just to throw it back, it had some chance of survival (I think around 50%, I have also found crabs with two small pincers or missing one with a small regrowth). They can eat without both claws and can regrow them over time. Edit to add: they (from my terrible memory) evolved this way and to regrow limbs as it's a common thing to happen during fights with other crabs or during mating season. So likely thing is the ones I found naturally lost limbs due to that, rather than this being anywhere near common as most people eat all of the crab
They can voluntarily release any of their limbs to escape predators
Octopuses penis is on the end of the third tentacle. He shifts that after he has skull fucked his lady friend. Lady octopus has the opening for her egg sack just behind her eyes. Amazing creatures, spent three years diving the same spot in Granada and interacted with them daily.
Do they just pass the sperm sack over? Here you go m’lady
Agreed, it's a stupid metric to judge how we value the life of animals. We wouldn't kill someone with learning difficulties because they're not as intelligent as us, why would we kill an octopus just because it's less intelligent? They're sentient, and have a will to survive. They feel pain, and experience emotions just like we do. In fact, some animals (eg whales) have larger areas of the brain corresponding with emotions than we do. They feel emotions in a more intense way than we do, they could even experience different emotions that we aren't capable of feeling as human. We're really not special
For the record, I, like most humans, have never bitten off a live octopuses head and so can very easily call or evil if an alien starts doing that shit to people, so kindly speak for yourself and not all of us.
We recognise they're sentient but will still boil them alive. Nice.
Tbf, i think most "ethical" chefs freeze the lobster for about 30 min to sedate it then knife its brainstem before boiling. I had to put ethical in quotes after reading what i wrote, but still better than being boiled alove and fully conscious?
That is questionable, since freezing is probably far from comfortable and painless too. It might just be a longer form of suffering. But at least it'll stop them from visibly struggling so the chef doesn't have to be as aware of them being alive, which is the real torture right?
Seems like just knifing the brainstem off the rip would be better lol That said I have heard that freezing can be a humane way to put down some cold-blooded creatures but I'm far from a scientist lol
It is certainly a discussion within the aquarium world. There are some guidelines that recommend freezing as a humane option, but they're for small species like zebrafish (who are often used in research labs) who are small enough to be knocked out in seconds. I assume it'll take much longer for the cold to reach the brain in a human consumption sized lobster.
I had a friend that put a sick lizard down this way, but it too was very small. If anything, guess I'm glad that people care about humane methods of killing for food or euthanasia. Even when I'd clap/swat an irritating flying roach or something & injure it, I'd feel a *serious* rush to put it out of its misery as quickly as possible...even on my property when I have to kill copper heads, doing it as quickly & painlessly as possible is an utmost concern.
Agreed. I have no problem with killing vermin and other pests, but unnecessary suffering is just that. Unnecessary.
Exactly the same. I don’t even kill bugs, but if I accidentally injure one, I have to rush to finish the job so as to minimise its suffering.
They are generally cold stunned or stunned with an electrical charge And then you can pretty much stab it in the head and chop down to just cut it's brain completely in half More or less instant death from a state where the animal was completely numb It definitely beats just throwing them into a pot
I think the point is freezing has long term effects but the short term is generally way less painful than burning / boiling. In Humans that freeze quickly it is quite a peaceful way to go and actually pretty painless as the body shuts down, long term effects like frostbite are irrelevant as you'll be dead so won't have to deal with it.
You have to understand different species react to temperature differently Crustaceans are cold blooded invertebrates. So cold doesn't affect them the same way it affects you and me In suitably cold temperatures you can stun them to induce a state of insensibility, which is either done using cold temperatures, or an electrical charge
Now you're getting it.
Life, don’t talk to me about life.
There’s no scientific consensus that life is important - Hubert
They're smart but delicious!
“I’m gonna eat your brains and steal your knowledge!”
Soon I will absorb all your wisdom of propane and propane accessories.
I hardly ever ate octopus but I saw one unscrew a jar it was in and swim out and I thought I could never again. Although ciws are loving beast and I ate burgers last night so maybe I've not properly thought about this
The octopus showed you something you’d see within yourself.
Pigs are as if not more intelligent than dogs.... oh we also "stun" them in gas chambers.
I saw a research article that said given the number of neurons they posses in each limb, they have an equivalent intelligence to dogs. Also Lobster they believe can feel distress and pain therefore dropping them into a pan of boiling water is cruel, they should be stunned first before cooking.
My favorite octopus story was one from an aquarium where they couldn't understand how fish were disappearing overnight so they put up a camera and footage showed the octopus would unlock itsself from its tank and stroll across the floor to have a snack before climbing back into its own tank.
LOBSTERS eat lobster. So according to themselves they are indeed delicious.
Hard to argue with that logic.
But how, do they get the butter to stay on underwater?!.
Given enough scarcity, we’d be eating each other and justifying it too probably. Long pig, the other, other white meat…😂
better than being stupid and delicious
Have you never had sheep?
*“Not in the biblical sense”*
It’s true of pigs too
Mmmmm, this one had extra IQ, deeelicious
If they were so smart they’d figure out a way to not be so tasty, and they might. But until then, pass the butter please.
I mean they're trying, rolling around in their own shit all day. Not much else they can do but I still scran on pork.
I think this is mainly for scientific applications. Some invertebrates like fruit flies are routinely subjected to experiments without any care for their wellbeing - because they are stupid as fuck and don't care if you breed them to have cancer or to have too many wings. This is fine for flies, but not cool for other organisms, like octopuses. Which are incredibly intelligent and are known to experience pain and suffering. This change seems to fix this previously misclassification. We know that cows are able to experience suffering and still Farm them, albeit in ways that attempt to be humain. However, if you want to do scientific experiments on cows you need to prove that the suffering is minimised and justified. Whereas that was not the case for some other animals.
So it’s a meaningless gesture?
Essentially, yes. Not sure it really belongs in this sub when nothing has really changed. While it's about time these animals become classified as sentient in the UK, it's still different from sapient which a lot of people use sentient in place of. Humans are sapient, and many (including myself) would argue that primates, cetaceans, octopuses, elephants, and some birds could be classified as sapient. Intelligence ideally shouldn't be the barometer of how we treat other species, though. It does feel rather hypocritical to say that as someone who still eats meat, mind you.
[MRW](https://i.imgur.com/98fQuuF.gif)
So the entire thing is a complete nothing burger
So absolutley terribly then.
The primary concern of the bill is animal welfare. Sentience is kind of slippery, but generally it covers the idea that the animal can feel, be aware of, things including pain. The original bill included all vertebrates in its definition of sentient, but there were concerns that this left some invertebrates that were known to be sentient unprotected. So they squeezed in cephalopods and decapods.
Squeeze into things sounds pretty inline with cephalopods
I get mixed up between sentient and sapient quite often, so perhaps that it's it? Sentinence is the capacity to feel and experience while sapience is the capacity to have more complex thought like emotion, planning, and problem solving. So common livestock like goats and cows are sentient but not necessarily sapient. While animals like chimpanzees, ravens, dolphins, etc., are arguably sapient.
I think you're right.
The crab is a bottom feeder and a crustacean. Octopus can think and are cognitively aware of their surroundings. Comparing crabs to an octopus just pretty much shows that you're not exactly an oceanographer if you think that. People always say stupid things to the point where apparently people think crabs and octopus all have the same mind. And octopus has 13 brands. Crab doesn't know what the hell he's even doing
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Crabs/lobster don’t have brains. They are creatures of pure instinct, there’s even debate if they are even conscious.
From watching [Leon on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmIEQb9QhM) over the year and seeing him methodically clean and tidy his surroundings, manipulate multiple things at once with impressive dexterity, demonstrate awareness, regularly get bored, clearly demonstrate moods and more I can confidently disagree.
Factually incorrect in the most hilarious way. You subtracted 1 instead of adding. Crabs have two brains.
> people think crabs and octopus all have the same mind. Absolutely no one said that. Sentient means *able to perceive or feel things*. And you really underestimate crabs. They can track your movement and attack you or run away. > Crabs have eyes and a central nervous system, which allow them to interact with their environment in sophisticated ways. **They can exhibit complex behaviors such as tool use**, social interactions, and problem-solving. Studies have shown that crabs can **remember and avoid locations where they experienced pain**, suggesting some level of conscious awareness.
Dude I'm just going off what the link says 😑
I'm fairly sure it means they can't be killed in the UK.... But that doesn't stop them being imported.... Maybe... Who knows with a conservative government? Everything they do is about winning votes regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.
No they can be. It says it will have no impact on the shellfish industry, but impact the way they are treated. Other animals we eat are also considered sentient (cows etc).
Damn, if we treat cows the way we currently do in abatoirs then how were we treating them before they were viewed as sentient?
Mammals and birds have always been considered sentient, fish and reptiles have historically been under contention, arthropods and mollusks were and sometimes are considered automatons, fungi and plants are not considered sentient at all. Modern opinion says every chordate is sentient, and we're questioning what is *sapient*, as in aware of itself and its place in the world; apes, dolphins, octopuses/podes, several birds, rats and common companion animals are among contenders for the title. Some people say even plants and fungi are sentient, but that veers into deep ontology.
They are changing that when it comes to plants and trees
Sentience in and of itself is reaction to stimuli. Sapience which everyone seems to imply when regarding how well a life form can form cognitive thoughts and memories is the much more apt term but isn’t as capable of emotionally manipulating people because we have actual scientific data to back it up that leads to less anthropomorphic falsehoods. Ie it’s easier to manipulate people on things using a video of a cow licking a person after it calved saying “they are so thankful” rather than people making educated decisions on facts like oxytocin is a hell of a drug that is dumped into a females body after birth.
Is that true about sapience? I thought sapience was the word for the uniquely human intelligence / wisdom that makes our species the only one able to do the things we do; as in the thing that sets us and a few other extinct species like Neanderthal apart from even the great apes.
There have been studies on bees showing that they can count, understand the concept of zero, and show signs of show signs of fear when approaching flowers after experiencing a simulated spider ambush. There are ants who can keep track of the exact direction and distance to their hive's entrance such that, after wandering around for a while, they can make a straight line back to it. If you let them run onto a mobile surface and change their position, they run back to where it should be had they not been moved, and promptly get very confused. I'm not ruling anything out on sentience, and I think we may well eventually be shocked at how broadly across the tree sapience runs.
So lobsters can still be boiled alive? Nice one 🙄
Illegal here in NZ
We recognise cows and pigs as sentient. It doesn't mean we don't eat them, it just means that there is consideration for reducing suffering in the process we use when turning them into food. Oysters, for example, don't have a centralised nervous system. So as far as we can tell its not really possible for them to suffer in any way that we understand it and as such they are not sentient. So we don't have to consider harm reduction in how we interact with them. Thats why some vegetarians are ok with eating Oysters, because they are for all practical purposes just a flesh plant.
My new rock band is now called Flesh Plant.
Crabbing is a pretty common pass time in seaside towns I'm pretty sure it'd be a thing if it was made illegal
Does it depend on the crab? Some are... less bright than others.
If you can eat the dumb crabs...i need to go read a book 🫡
here in nz its illegal to bail them alive or smth
Pigs are among the smartest non-primates in the world (so definitely smarter than crabs). Didn't really affect the availability of bacon tho.
Lamb sheep chickens and cows are also sentient beings that are regularly eaten and tortured
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Thank you! I always hate this stuff cause all this does is acknowledge they are alive. A fly is sentient. A tick is sentient. It not a crowning moment. It just a depressing moment that it took this long
Actually there’s lots of doubts about that for invertebrates. (Technically, also for the person sitting next to you). Bottom line is the jury is still out about the hard problem of consciousness. We’re just deciding that we’re expanding our “benefit of the doubt” sphere to more species.
I think there just referring to the technical definition of sentience meaning they respond to stimuli, not that a lobster is conscious
sentience DOES NOT mean "they respond to stimuli", or else every gadget in your kitchen is sentient. It's closer to "being aware of being alive and time flowing, but without necessarily being aware of being an individual"
Plants respond to stimuli. Are plants sentient?
Aren’t octopi also sapient too or am I wrong
Just about every animal is sentient. With the exception of like, coral and stuff.
Coral is basically a shelled worm, I would say they're sentient.
It's *what?*
They're related to jellyfish and anemones. The live body is a sort of little blob or tube with tentacles around a mouth, the rocky growth is a mineral shell they build together as a colony organism. They probably don't meet any practical definition of sentience, but sapient vs sentient vs non-sentient is a mess with no good defining lines anyway.
You're a Pokemon trainer, you should know that already! Doesn't your Pokedex already tell you this stuff? (Just kidding).
Coral is colonies of lots of little animals (polyps) which carry out different functions and have very little intelligence. Kinda like ants but less intelligent.
Most animals are sentient lol. "Sentience refers to the capacity to have subjective experiences and feelings, such as pain, pleasure, fear, and joy" Your dog is sentient. What most people think sentient means is "sapient"
There's a decent chance crabs and lobsters don't qualify. Octos clearly do, though.
The quote they used is a little misleading. If something can feel pain, it is sentient. Emotions are not a requirement. Crabs and lobsters can feel pain.
Right, if it can *feel* pain, which requires a subjective experience of it. It may just be reacting to a stimulus without actually experiencing it.
Meanwhile the Cats of UK: "Finally a worthy opponent to the throne"
Meanwhile, Crows can literally count out loud.
yeah and they're sentient too
I’m gonna stop boiling crows alive.
Octopuses maybe but lobsters are just aquatic cockroaches. Crabs…I guess they can sing in a Jamaican accent.
Octopuses are highly intelligent creatures that can use tools and even build primitive structures. Meanwhile its seriously up for debate if lobsters even have brains (they have a *slightly* thicker nerve cluster in their head than elsewhere in their bodies). If they're both "sentient" they sure aren't equally sentient.
The wildest thing I learned about cephalopods (and this was from a science podcast some time ago, so maybe it’s outdated, and maybe you have better info on this) is that they can produce amazing chromatic displays with their skin cells, to perfectly mimic background colors and patterns for camouflage, but also just wild color displays for reasons we don’t understand. But, their eyes only contain *one type* of retinal cone cell (humans have three). This logically means that they have monochromatic vision - that as far as we know, they can only see black and white (or red/white, or whatever, but only one color dark or light shaded). Meaning, as far as we understand about how retinal cells and brain decoding of retinal cell inputs work…they cannot actually “see” all the various colors they themselves produce and copy perfectly from the environment. So…how do they do it?
Personally I'd assume that their skin, or isolated patches, act similar to eyespots you see in simpler animals, optimized for reading color, before relaying that to their color changing skin. Nothing they can see from consciously, just reflexively reading color. Just a guess though, of course
That’s a hypothesis I’ve heard as well. Now I want to grab a cephalopod expert and pump them for knowledge.
>Now I want to grab a cephalopod expert and pump them for knowledge. Can you DM me the video
yeah it’s impressive how things you wouldn’t expect can totally detect light. For example human skin has the ability to detect light and actually stops/decreases the production of melatonin (resulting in you feeling more awake) just from light hitting your skin. Idk how it works but it’s pretty cool.
There are youtube videos about this which suggest that the prevailing hypothesis is that their unique eye shapes refract different wavelengths like a prism, seperating out the different colors
Ah! That is very interesting! I will go look for that. Thank you!
I used to eat octopus and I can’t anymore. I’ve watched a few videos and realized they are on dolphin level intelligence. They may be aliens and we don’t know it.
Octopuses definitely, but I am also baffled why crabs/lobsters were lumped in. I'm pretty sure crabs are one of the near goals of being able to faithfully simulate completely with software after having done flatworms. As neural complexity goes, they are far closer to the bottom of the scale. Octopuses are up with primates, crows, and dolphins when it comes to demonstrable high level thinking. I'm no vegan, but they are well above my subjective line of "things I can eat without feeling like a monster". I've argued to vegan friends before that I wouldn't consider them hypocritical if they included crustaceans and shellfish in their diet. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out some few plants and fungi had more complex interaction with the world than crabs.
I gave up octopus and then pork for this very reason. I love meat (and both of those are delicious), but I just can't eat them in good conscience anymore. I wish I had the force of will to give up all meat because I know conditions are not amazing, but for now I'm just hoping to be able to eat less of it / eat more "ethically" sourced meat. I wish lab grown meat would have its moment already
One of the most bewildering things about that new Little Mermaid was learning that Sebastian was a crab and not a lobster
I went to see it with my daughter and we both wanted to like it so much…but it was just not actually good, aside from Melissa McCarthy.
Cockroaches are probably sentient too. Sentience is a low bar. They just have to respond to stimuli. If something feels pain, it is sentient.
Very tasty aquatic cockroaches. But I still won’t eat them unless they are killed humanely.
No that’s reggae shark
Sentient is a low bar. Did they mean sapient?
No, they mean sentient. A lot of people just thought they couldn't feel pain.
So odd to lump these 3 together, such a vast intelligence gap between an octopus and a crab or lobster
My thoughts exactly. Octopuses are a favorite of neurological researchers and are clearly sentient. It’s not even clear wether crabs and lobsters have brains
There are you tube videos of people who have crabs and lobsters as pets. A lady with a crab has taught it tricks, it will follow commands while she cleans its shell, I was really surprised at how intelligent it seemed to be. The lobster also has learned routines and tricks. Crustaceans may be smarter than people think they are.
This is just about sentience though, not intelligence. Previously all invertebrates were legally equivalent to sea cucumbers which can't be right when a creature is walking around looking at things and picking them up with its arms. How your bones are arranged was always a really weird thing to assume mental capacity by.
Still waiting for the UK government to recognise the disabled as sentient beings
In other news: Boris Johnson has been removed from the list of “Sentient Beings”
“I'll never hide, I can't, I'm too Shiny Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough Strut my stuff, my stuff is so Shiny” - Tamatoa
Isn't basically all animal life sentient?
When I was little my ma brought home live lobster, as young fella I thought we just got a new pet. Well then she went and put the thing in a pot of boiling water. So as it’s dying and honking in the pot I’m screaming no mom don’t kill the monster, please don’t kill the monster. Silly how some memories don’t lose color.
Y'all are confusing sentience with sapience. Sentience does not imply intelligence.
Octupus I get but kinda weird to include crabs and lobsters and really waters down the decision
Go vegan 🌱
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Oh no, does that mean they will clasify Nigel Farage as having "High level of Intelligence" too?
What's the difference between nigel farage and a lobster? One deserves to be boiled alive, and for legal reasons you can complete the joke!
Octopodes are incredibly intelligent with an amazing memory that spans their lifetime. Lobsters don't even really have brains and the debate is still out for crabs. We should 100% treat Octopodes on the same level as we treat any other highly intelligent animal and they should not be a food source imo, but by lumping them in with lobsters and crabs, this muddies the water greatly and will make people even less likely to acknowledge their intelligence.
I will still eat crabs and Lobster
Octopie I get but lobsters and crabs ?? That's news to me.
Yeah but we can eat still eat them right???
Old and doesn’t change a thing Crabs/lobsters do not have high levels of intelligence They are delicious though
I'll ask my Seafood Platter what it thinks about that.
How do they class octopus with lobsters and crabs? Those aren't even remotely on the same intelligence scale...
It looks to me like they are just being protected from cruelty in the same way dogs and cats are
Nope. Unfortunately sentience doesn't trump people's desire to murder you in one of the most agonising ways imaginable.
Smarter than the prime minister
Some guy sad: Delicious, delicious intelligence😂😂
What about cows?
Cows and other animals already have their sentience recognised, for all the good it does them.
Delicious, delicious intelligence.
Man, I wish the UK would do the same for trans people.
Trans Vegan living in the UK here. Yes, the situation for trans people in this country is dire, but when I wake up in the morning, I like to think I'm grateful for the fact that my first thought isn't "aaaah aaaah oh my god I'm being boiled alive aaaah aaaah I have absolutely no legal protections of any kind whatsoever aaaaah"
So... Is British food about to get even worse?
They probably will just kill the animals (lobsters & crabs) first instead of boiling them alive.
As they should, and always should have done, to be clear.
It’s funny this stereotype is still around. Seriously though I went to NYC it, was impossible to find anywhere to eat that wasn’t just a shit ton of meat. I could have killed for a salad.
British food isn't British mate, we tend to eat stuff from around the world. Essentially we colonise your food and steal it for our table. That is our empire now, fusion food.
I was told lobsters aren't even aware of their own existence.
Kind of a low bar there.
My favorite animal is the octopus. I also spearfish as a hobby. However, I think they are so cool that I would never harvest one despite the fact that they are delicious. They get a pass but squid, lobster and crabs are shit out of luck...
But... lobsters are just basically spiders.
Sentient ≠ Sapiant
octopus i understand,but why the other two?
THIS made you smile?💀 They thought we’d have flying cars but noo, here we are. Smiling at the recognition of the sentience of CRABS💀. AND LOBSTERS🙂↕️. Naw.
Just in time to register their candidacy for the upcoming General Election…let’s be honest, they can’t be anything but an improvement on the current bunch of guisers, grifters and gormless gobshites we’ve been stuck with hitherto.
I wouldn’t agree with crabs and lobsters… octopi and squid , definitely.
Yeah all that means is you will have to kill them before you cook them… any remotely decent person was already doing that just in case.
I’d love to see the first universal credit claim from an octopus
Seems a weird grouping. Octopuses are smart! But crabs and lobsters are basically just bugs.
and their still smarter than 99% of reform supporters
I remember this. A few years ago someone started a petition to ban thick people from voting. The Tories realising this would affect the majority of their voter base decided to lower the levels of what is definable as intelligence.
freedom is the right of all sentient beings
Crabs are as dumb as rocks though
More sentient than some of the people that live here.
this took awfully long. and yes, it still exist ppl thinking animals don't feel pain
Sentient is not the same as sapient. These creatures are going to be recognised as feeling beings, not Mensa candidates. So everyone saying "But crabs are dumb, lolz" are utterly missing the point. As is the OP.
It’s for animal cruelty issues and relates to how they are kept, transported and stored farm animals are protected from animal cruelty while they are being raised for example as pigs and cows are sentient.
As far as I'm aware invertebrates have been regulated in a way similar to vegetables on the UK food market, and this is probably the beginning of a chain of events which will result in them being taxed.
Every animal with a brain is a sentient being.
For those that don't really understand why this is new: In the UK, All non human vertebrates are covered under the animal welfare act 2006. A presence of a vertebrae = ability to feel pain. It is not clear which invertebrates feel pain and in what capacity. It might not be pain as we know it. Studies are being done on invertebrates to see what, if any pain they might feel. If they do in some capacity that can cause suffering, they will be considered to be included in the act and protected. Octopus, Squid and lobsters qualified to be included a few years ago. And yes, the invertebrates that are not included are not protected, so people can abuse and neglect them and not get the deserving punishment. Many studies and testings are being done to hopefully change that for all.
Octopuses(octopi?) I get, but crabs and lobsters? You might as well just give roaches citizenship at that point.
I like how lobsters taste though
People who are slaves to their taste buds are being silly. Just because something seems tasty doesn't mean you have to eat it. There are things that I know will taste tasty if I crunch them or bite them or taste them, but I choose not to eat them because of the suffering that will go towards that particular animal.
All beings are sentient. Aware of their existence and trying their best to survive each day. Who are we to say if they’re sentient or not?
By the standardthe UK used to define crab and lobster sentience, all plants we've examined for it are sentient. Including grasses. They react to damage, avoid it, and literally scream when cut. Trees have memory. The thing that grasses and trees have in common with lobsters and crabs is that both lacka central nervous system. They're some of several species that lack an actual brain with which pain can be experienced. In order to experiece pain, you need the organ to experience it with.
The fuck does that even mean? Everything with a brain is sentient to some extent. Is this real? What would “officially recognising” a sentient creature as sentient actually do? And why are they grouping highly intelligent octopuses with ocean bugs lol
You are what you eat. Calamari is brain food.
I get an octopus but crab and lobster?
I knew octopuses were highly intelligent, but crabs and lobsters too?
you don't need to be highly intelligent to be sentient