Lobsters

Lobsters are sentient beings capable of feeling pain just like dogs, pigs, chickens, and humans. Lacking an autonomic nervous system that plunges them into a state of shock when « damaged,» they may suffer even more.

They exhibit complex behavior and possess considerable learning capacity. If these animals are not removed from their natural habitat, they can live for decades, or even more than 150 years. They recognize other lobsters, remember past acquaintances, and have elaborate courtship rituals. They carry their young for nine months. Sometimes they walk « hand in hand,» with older lobsters guiding the younger ones. Researchers who study lobsters claim that their intelligence rivals that of octopuses, long considered the most intelligent invertebrates in the world.

Used as food, they frequently suffer one of the cruelest fates an animal can experience. Before being killed, in the open air (transport, factories, grocery store displays), they are slowly asphyxiated and their ordeal can last several days. The accumulation of toxins in their bodies causes them pain. Normally solitary, they are piled on top of one another.

Even when confined in tanks (minuscule and inadequate aquariums that cannot guarantee proper conditions), these crustaceans, which can travel 100 miles (160 kilometers) a year in the wild, are reduced to immobility, and their claws—which they use to dig, feed, and communicate using complex signals—are tightly bound to prevent them from mutilating each other, as extreme confinement drives them mad.

Being immersed in a pot of boiling water while still conscious inflicts as much pain on these sentient beings as can be imagined, and they show it by frantically scratching the sides of the pot for sometimes a full minute before dying. They are often dismembered alive or have their claws and legs cut off without any administration of pain relief.