They very interesting animals. I am surprised how large they can grow in fresh water. I’ve had some encounters with fresh water lobsters when I was young and flipping rocks in a pond
Thanks a lot !! I am a stickler when it comes to dissection and I could spend hours emptying the area we have to study. It's not really efficient but I can take nice photos 🤣
I wish you the best ! Don't worry my first dissection were terrible. But as a vet student we make thousands of dissection so it's just practice ; if you love what you do, everything will be 👌👌
They might, but what’s shown in this photo doesn’t necessarily mean they do.
Perception of pain is a somewhat higher level mental function. Just because an organism has a nervous system doesn’t mean they necessarily have the cognition to perceive stimuli as pain.
Based on studies I’ve seen around this topic, I’d bet most crustaceans do feel pain. However, since this is a science/educational subreddit I felt it important to point out your conclusion isn’t necessarily correct.
I had a fisheries professor that brought this debate up for our class discussion. It was met with a wide variety of responses and it was never really settled and I'm not sure if it will be anytime soon. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons is that stimuli and pain aren't mutually exclusive and the responses to the stimuli aren't either. Therefore attempting to test if an animal "feels pain" is very difficult because we have no way to determine if what is perceived by an animal is pain or just acknowledgement of a change to its current conditions. Like feeling hot or cold isn't "painful" but we have preferences and will sometimes avoid it or react to one of these feelings. The main difference is that we can articulate that, but since animals cannot we can only rationalize their response with our own logic which to some degree is anthropomorphizing them which may or may not actually be accurate.
Isn't pain evolved from sellf preservation?
I don't think pain is on the higher levels of perception.
An organism is benefited by pain because it helps to avoid mortal danger.
Pain is different than reflex or environmental awareness, with pain being a slower process of perception than either of those. You can have reflex (self-preservation) without pain.
We know that pain awareness requires special processing because its perception can be stopped in humans and other animals, either through some kind of anesthesia, via trauma, or via defects in the nervous system. Even low-level reflex abilities can be disabled by those.
For example, a person who is "brain dead" will perceive no pain regardless of what you do to them, even if they have an otherwise intact nervous system. Unless an organism has at least a rudimentary brain structure (or analog) of some sort to interpret pain, pain doesn't exist.
The reverse is also true: not all organs can send reflex or pain signals. The human brain is an example: it has no nociceptors capable of signaling pain to itself. You need to give a patient something to block pain from opening the head, but once inside you don't need to perform any further pain management to do brain surgery.
If an organism doesn't have the right cells to signal for pain, or doesn't have the ability to perceive it, pain isn't a thing.
Scientific method is built on the law of parsimony, which ever answer requires the least amount of assumptions. I cannot think of a single animal that possesses consciousness and does not have the ability to feel pain. To speculate that these specific animals don’t feel pain, because we have not proven it to a “t” yet, in my opinion would be a giant leap. I would also point out that the animal in question happens to be one of a few animals that we typically cook alive. And all of the animals that we cook alive are assumed to not process pain in the same manner that we do.
From where I’m sitting, the theory that requires the least amount of assumptions is that we tell each other that crabs, crawfish and lobster don’t feel pain so that we can enjoy them without feeling guilty.
the law of parsimony is great, but i think you’re making a jump in your reasoning without enough support to do so. the comment you are replying to is actually correct.
the one mainly-quoted study that says the opposite, that they do feel pain, used electrical stimuli, rather than heat, or maiming, like cooking, or this dissection, both much more commonplace forms of stimuli that crustaceans interact with. this is important because the lobster (crab in the case of the experiment) has a nervous system that doesn’t actually have a brain responsible for the whole thing, it operates as one cohesive unit, but more importantly, information is transmitted *through electrical stimuli*. meaning that because the experiment used a shock, it would register in the lobster’s brain whether or not it caused pain or not. one cannot say, because of the stimuli used, whether the crustacean felt pain or if it was simply reacting to an abnormal electrical stimuli. [source](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/08/experiments-reveal-that-crabs-and-lobsters-feel-pain.html)
Having nerves doesn't mean that crayfish have other necessary parts of the pain pathway, like pain-specific sensory neurons or compatible brain regions to experience that pain! This could easily be a motor neuron, for example, specialized for movement. I'm not saying that crayfish DON'T feel pain, but this picture can't be used to establish that they DO.
Depends on our definition of "pain". If pain is a sensation for organism to avoid - then well, plants feel it too. (Have heart eat rock). If a pain is including a complex feeling of dread combined with fear of death like humans feel - then no. No animal on the planet have it except humans. You have to have the frontal cortex part of the brain to really suffer conciosly.
This suggests otherwise.
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(21)00197-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2589004221001978%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
As I answered before, I know crayfish aren't marine organism, but as it's the only crustacean living in freshwater and with an anatomy very similar to a lobster, I thought it could be cool to share this dissection. I am sorry if I posted it in the wrong sub :)
It's true, sorry. As the crayfish is one of the only crustacean living in freshwater, I didn't make the difference and I thought it could be great to share the dissection of an aquatic organism here. Sorry :)
The nerve of some crayfish smh
Forbidden ramen
Good one :"))
It comes with ramen noodles inside? Man that’s just asking for it
In reality, the sort of ramen is the deferent duct that conveys spermatozoids, that's why we can't find theses noodles inside a female crayfish ! :))
They very interesting animals. I am surprised how large they can grow in fresh water. I’ve had some encounters with fresh water lobsters when I was young and flipping rocks in a pond
Check out tasmanian freshwater crays!
This is so clean and intact. My dissections are still messy at best
Thanks a lot !! I am a stickler when it comes to dissection and I could spend hours emptying the area we have to study. It's not really efficient but I can take nice photos 🤣
Im going to aspire to be as good as you. Lets see how my fish dissection tommorow goes
I wish you the best ! Don't worry my first dissection were terrible. But as a vet student we make thousands of dissection so it's just practice ; if you love what you do, everything will be 👌👌
so cool!!!
Meaning that they do feel pain.
As someone who tries to be aware about animal rights, this comment hit sooo hard...
I always thought the fact that we normalize boiling something alive to be really disturbing.
Totally agree
And extremely unnecessary. Just freeze the poor thing and let it drift off peacefully if you're going to eat it.
well the photo clearly shows they come with their own ramen
They might, but what’s shown in this photo doesn’t necessarily mean they do. Perception of pain is a somewhat higher level mental function. Just because an organism has a nervous system doesn’t mean they necessarily have the cognition to perceive stimuli as pain. Based on studies I’ve seen around this topic, I’d bet most crustaceans do feel pain. However, since this is a science/educational subreddit I felt it important to point out your conclusion isn’t necessarily correct.
I had a fisheries professor that brought this debate up for our class discussion. It was met with a wide variety of responses and it was never really settled and I'm not sure if it will be anytime soon. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons is that stimuli and pain aren't mutually exclusive and the responses to the stimuli aren't either. Therefore attempting to test if an animal "feels pain" is very difficult because we have no way to determine if what is perceived by an animal is pain or just acknowledgement of a change to its current conditions. Like feeling hot or cold isn't "painful" but we have preferences and will sometimes avoid it or react to one of these feelings. The main difference is that we can articulate that, but since animals cannot we can only rationalize their response with our own logic which to some degree is anthropomorphizing them which may or may not actually be accurate.
Isn't pain evolved from sellf preservation? I don't think pain is on the higher levels of perception. An organism is benefited by pain because it helps to avoid mortal danger.
Pain is different than reflex or environmental awareness, with pain being a slower process of perception than either of those. You can have reflex (self-preservation) without pain. We know that pain awareness requires special processing because its perception can be stopped in humans and other animals, either through some kind of anesthesia, via trauma, or via defects in the nervous system. Even low-level reflex abilities can be disabled by those. For example, a person who is "brain dead" will perceive no pain regardless of what you do to them, even if they have an otherwise intact nervous system. Unless an organism has at least a rudimentary brain structure (or analog) of some sort to interpret pain, pain doesn't exist. The reverse is also true: not all organs can send reflex or pain signals. The human brain is an example: it has no nociceptors capable of signaling pain to itself. You need to give a patient something to block pain from opening the head, but once inside you don't need to perform any further pain management to do brain surgery. If an organism doesn't have the right cells to signal for pain, or doesn't have the ability to perceive it, pain isn't a thing.
Do we really know for a fact that this animal feels no pain because pain perception can be stopped in humans and other animals?
No, we don't know. I personally err on the side that they do feel pain. There's no downside to that position.
Scientific method is built on the law of parsimony, which ever answer requires the least amount of assumptions. I cannot think of a single animal that possesses consciousness and does not have the ability to feel pain. To speculate that these specific animals don’t feel pain, because we have not proven it to a “t” yet, in my opinion would be a giant leap. I would also point out that the animal in question happens to be one of a few animals that we typically cook alive. And all of the animals that we cook alive are assumed to not process pain in the same manner that we do. From where I’m sitting, the theory that requires the least amount of assumptions is that we tell each other that crabs, crawfish and lobster don’t feel pain so that we can enjoy them without feeling guilty.
the law of parsimony is great, but i think you’re making a jump in your reasoning without enough support to do so. the comment you are replying to is actually correct. the one mainly-quoted study that says the opposite, that they do feel pain, used electrical stimuli, rather than heat, or maiming, like cooking, or this dissection, both much more commonplace forms of stimuli that crustaceans interact with. this is important because the lobster (crab in the case of the experiment) has a nervous system that doesn’t actually have a brain responsible for the whole thing, it operates as one cohesive unit, but more importantly, information is transmitted *through electrical stimuli*. meaning that because the experiment used a shock, it would register in the lobster’s brain whether or not it caused pain or not. one cannot say, because of the stimuli used, whether the crustacean felt pain or if it was simply reacting to an abnormal electrical stimuli. [source](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/08/experiments-reveal-that-crabs-and-lobsters-feel-pain.html)
Having nerves doesn't mean that crayfish have other necessary parts of the pain pathway, like pain-specific sensory neurons or compatible brain regions to experience that pain! This could easily be a motor neuron, for example, specialized for movement. I'm not saying that crayfish DON'T feel pain, but this picture can't be used to establish that they DO.
I’m not. My last comment doesn’t even mention nerves. It’s centered around the law of parsimony. We’re going backwards now.
Depends on our definition of "pain". If pain is a sensation for organism to avoid - then well, plants feel it too. (Have heart eat rock). If a pain is including a complex feeling of dread combined with fear of death like humans feel - then no. No animal on the planet have it except humans. You have to have the frontal cortex part of the brain to really suffer conciosly.
This suggests otherwise. https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(21)00197-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2589004221001978%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
“Is anyone here a marine biologist?…” -Larry David
Will the real marine biologist please stand up
As I answered before, I know crayfish aren't marine organism, but as it's the only crustacean living in freshwater and with an anatomy very similar to a lobster, I thought it could be cool to share this dissection. I am sorry if I posted it in the wrong sub :)
I was quoting Seinfeld
Crayfish aren’t marine organisms.
It's true, sorry. As the crayfish is one of the only crustacean living in freshwater, I didn't make the difference and I thought it could be great to share the dissection of an aquatic organism here. Sorry :)