Issues related to octopus and crab welfare have been neglected

July 23, 2024 4:48 AM

"Prof Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022."

Previously, a post focused on The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness

Birch, J., Burn, C., Schnell, A., Browning, H., & Crump, A. (2021). Review of the evidence of sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans.

posted by cupcakeninja (16 comments total)

I don't know if any of you follow Howie the Crab on social media but that crab certainly loves her human family and conveys it clearly.
posted by ananci at 5:57 AM on July 23 [2 favorites]

Any time a professor with a tree name is teaching me about “creatures,” my brain assumes I am learning about pokemon. Had to read this post twice because of my childhood programming.
posted by Rinku at 6:36 AM on July 23 [5 favorites]

A friend of mine rehabilitates pigeons, and had one as a pet ("he's too much of a dope to survive on his own"). It seems obvious, but it wasn't until I hung around them that I realized that pigeons have their own personality traits that make them different from other pigeons. I "got to know" this pigeon and in time could predict his reaction to things. I could be making the mistake of projecting human qualities on this bird, but no more than I make the mistake of projecting those on humans.

It's getting harder and harder for me to justify not being vegan to myself. I know too much now.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:41 AM on July 23 [6 favorites]

I would absolutely not to tell anyone else where to draw their line, but the actual criteria in the review for "sentience" are extremely ... narrow + tailored to be inclusive, in a way that mismatches the review's overall framing. I'm someone predisposed to the message, I already don't eat cephalopods because I believe they are sentient and some of them possibly conscious -- but I'm *extremely* skeptical of grouping caphalopods and decapods together in this way. Well, I would definitely be willing to agree that decapods can experience suffering in some respects (the focus of these criteria), and think it's very reasonable for people to factor this in to their decision-making, but there are just so many steps between that and what cephalopods are capable of.

More specifically, I would take huge issue with linking the extremely quotable (and quoted) passage "Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement", to the specific 8 criteria they use introduced on p. 7 (p. 17 for a more detailed discussion). I don't think they operationalize the first 4 in any way that we can know to capture a genuine notion of "feeling" (tbh, I don't think hunger, thirst should even be on the list of candidates as being relevant for sentience); and I'm not convinced they operationalize warmth (which they do seem to mean in a feeling, not temperature sense), joy, comfort, and excitement at all. In fact, they do even suggest this latter point ("However, we will focus in practice on the negative side of sentience, owing to the special significance of feelings of pain, distress or harm for animal welfare law") -- but somehow people quoting this study miss the passage.
posted by advil at 8:11 AM on July 23 [6 favorites]

Thanks for that thoughtful analysis. I can't eat crab but I stopped eating octopus a long time ago for exactly the same reasons as you.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:28 AM on July 23 [2 favorites]

For some years now I've been dropping bookmarks into a folder called "Animal Intelligence", mostly to clips on social media that flatly contradict received wisdom about how "unintelligent" animals should behave. Social media and smartphones have accelerated our ability to gather and share evidence about how animals feel and think, and the more that accumulates, the clearer it becomes that intelligence is a spectrum, like so much else, and we're on it and so are dogs, cats, apes, elephants, cetaceans, cephalods, crows, parrots and who knows what else. I think, therefore I am pissed off with Descartes.

(Don't read about what he did to dogs if you want to avoid the overwhelming urge to invent a time machine and go back to the 1600s to punch him in the snout.)
posted by rory at 8:50 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

My evolutionary pal Cédric was excessively phylogenetic in his determination of what was fit to eat. It was hard to tell if he was merely guying ovolacto"vegetarians" and/or piscatarians. Cédric's position was that it was ethical to eat Protostomes but not Deuterostomes because they are Us. This distinction hinges on whether, as early embryos, a single hole develops [Protostomata] into the anus and the mouth, if any, is ripped later on . . .
OR if there are two holes [Deuterostomata] mouth and anus from the beginning. Deuterostomes are
effectively vertebrates and echinoderms and this peculiarity of development has us recognise that sea-urchins and star-fish are a five-armed sister group to vertebrates. Cédric can eat crabs and polpo, therefore, but not eggs or halibut.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:32 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

Me again. Last year tl;dr News [7m YT] pointed out a) that the Act is very, 840 words, concise b) it allows The Minister some flex to broaden Team Sentient c) it only applies to future legislation . . . so battery farms can carry on as before.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:53 AM on July 23

A recent book, "The Light Eaters" by Zoë Schlanger, reports on the research supporting some form of plant consciousness. (As in the ability to react to conditions, to recognize kin groups and to share resources, and perhaps experience pain.)

By contrast to the scientific definition, the Buddhist definition of sentient being encompasses all critters, but does not include plants. However, there are different practices among the different branches of the teachings - some eat meat, some are vegetarian. But the fundamental essence is not to create suffering.

If we were to accept that plants can experience pain, and the electrical activity reported on in the book suggests maybe pain is experienced when plants are cut or killed... Our participation in the natural world as an omnivore is going to impact the lives of other beings, regardless of our food philosophy. With that thought, our objective must be to reduce the suffering of both plants and animals that we use as food.

Is it a Native American view? To be thankful for the sustenance provided and to only take what is needed? (How to honor that in a world of factory farming, and super-sized happy meals - I can't say. But I suppose farmer's markets and a vegetable patch are a way to avoid factory farming.)

Thought for food...
posted by geekP1ng at 9:59 AM on July 23

Yesterday I captured a grasshopper that was feasting on my strawberry plants. I captured the little guy and tossed him into my organic recycling bin, with regret. Maybe it's because I'm old, but I am reluctant to even swat bugs these days. I tell myself that I am protecting my strawberries, and that's good. But I still imagine the grasshopper slowly dying in the bin and feel ashamed. I'm not hard-hearted enough to be a gardener.
posted by SPrintF at 10:03 AM on July 23 [5 favorites]

It's fine by me to say - all things being equal - that intelligence is a spectrum. But for the questions we're considering here (e.g. sentience), it doesn't necessarily follow that it's useful to characterize sentience et al as such. Compare, for instance, a subcritical radioactive mass and a critical one.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 10:14 AM on July 23

Snark aside, this is a serious question. Is there a difference between fooling your humans/handlers into believing you are sentient by rewarding their desire to anthropomorphise you and actually being sentient?
posted by pmbuko at 10:17 AM on July 23

Yes. Clever Hans was no closer to sentience than other horses.
posted by Klipspringer at 10:41 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

My husband and I are edging towards veganism. Animal cruelty and global warming are the reasons. I find it harder to excuse participating in in the system that created impacts I oppose.
posted by rebent at 11:28 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

i understand that this is fraught ground to tread, so i promose i’m not trolling when i ask this question. is there an argument to be made for animal intelligence (or sapience, or consciousness, or whatever you prefer) that is not by extension making the case for veganism? i know the topics are connected, obviously, but although i believe in animal intelligence it has never made me consider not eating meat, only strengthened my belief in humane slaughter.
posted by a flock of goslings at 3:07 PM on July 23

Snark aside, this is a serious question. Is there a difference between fooling your humans/handlers into believing you are sentient by rewarding their desire to anthropomorphise you and actually being sentient?
pmbuko, the initial condition you describe, requiring "fooling," sounds like it involves an oppressive system.

sentient=able to perceive or feel things [oxford, via google]

so, to the extent that a given system keeps beings from feeling or perceiving it can also be said to be insentient.

a flock of goslings,

Bentham’s utilitarianism still deems the feelings of one nonhuman animal being worth far less than that of one human, therefore prioritising human welfare. For example, his theory defends raising and killing animals for food—something we cannot fathom how torturous and painful it must be for the animals—to satiate one person who, in most situations, has other things to eat. [iapwa]

tl;dr sentience wants to be free
posted by HearHere at 3:33 PM on July 23