We have been very cruel.
I never did buy into that bullshit about them not feeling pain... it always reeked of "I don't want to think about it because I might have to change my mind."
Reminds me of another food practice that I find even more disturbing -- that one where they pour soy sauce into a cephalopod to make it dance. They say "Oh but it's dead and that's just the sodium causing its nerves to fire!"
I get the impression that people who recite that don't actually stop and think about what that means and are just satisfied that it sounds sciencey. Doesn't seem to occur to them that firing nerves is pretty fucking meaningless as a description of what's going on, since that can describe basically any function of a living organism.
I did some actual reading into how that dish is served and how it relates to the creature's physiology. Many posts and articles on the subject claim that the "head" of the creature is cut off before serving, therefore it doesn't have a brain and can't be experiencing anything. From what I've read, cephalopods don't have the same sort of central nervous system that most vertebrates do. They do have a central brain of sorts, but it's not located in that bulbous thing most people would think of as the head. Its brain is a ring shape that runs around the base of its body, surrounding its mouth. Each tentacle also has a sort of semi-autonomous mini-brain of its own. It's debated how much of the creature's thinking and experience takes place in its central ring-shaped brain. The majority of its nervous system is actually located in its tentacles. The bulbous thing sitting on top of all that is where all its other internal organs are located - basically its gut.
So when they serve dancing squid/octopus, they place it on a plate, chop off its "head", and usually serve it within a minute or two. If they wait much longer, the dancing effect doesn't take place or isn't as impressive. Customers are encouraged to pour the soy sauce quickly for this reason.
Think about this. As compared to human physiology it's more like a disembowelment than a beheading. Even worse, it directly exposes the part of the octopus that contains its central nervous system, and that's the part that the soy sauce is then poured into. And how quickly does any creature die from disembowelment? Certainly not in a minute or two. It's been proven that even victims of actual beheading can remain alive and aware for at least a couple minutes. Either type of injury will completely disable the victim to the point that they stop struggling pretty quickly, though.
And Bay12 has had more than one conversation about how fascinating the intelligence of cephalopods is.
So imagine for a moment having your guts ripped out of your body, the top of your skull removed, and then, while you're still conscious but helpless, soy sauce poured into your brain so that it goes completely haywire as spectators take pleasure at the sight of your convulsions.
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1247314 times)