Consider the Lobster Analysis

The Festival is known for the high number of attendants it attracts every year. According to Wallace in the article “Consider the Lobster”, in 2003, during the 56th Annual Maine Lobster Festival, 80,000 people attended the festival (50). This festival was themed “Lighthouse, Laughter, and Lobster”. The planners did not fall short of their theme; there were concerts by Orleans and Lee Ann Womack, beauty pageants, Amateur cooking competition, and the Maine Lobster Festivals main cooking tent with more than enough lobsters for everyone. However, this theme did not apply to animal lovers and to the lobsters; the festival was not full of laughter but a lobster massacre festival. Even scientists don’t have proof if the nerve system of a lobster can detect pain.

Hence we cannot assume that the animal does not feel pain simply because the nerve system is different from that of a well developed mammal. However, according to Wallace, both scientists and ethicist agree that there are two ways to determine pain, “One is how much of the neurological hardware required for pain-experience the animal comes equipped with, nociceptors, prostaglandins, neuronal opioid receptors. ” The other one is “whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain”. An animal can either display both of these ways while in pain or one of the mentioned ways. The behavior of tearing up one another show that the animal experiences stress when it is not in its natural habitat, even worse when it is trapped in a container.

Another evidence that shows that the Lobsters can actually detect the conditions around them is that they are easily trapped in summer. This is because they migrate to the shore where they can find warmer waters to shed their shells in. According to Wallace in the article “Consider the Lobster”, experiments have shown that the animal can detect temperature changes of a degree (62). The animal is said to migrate constantly in search of good temperature. However, Elwood, a scientist who has studied the crustacean for a long time thinks that the reactions are more than simple reflex. He conducted a research on the crustaceans where he applied acetic acid on the antennae of prawns. The prawns began grooming their antennas with their front legs, but they stopped the grooming when Elwood applied anesthetic on their antennas.

He also carried a research with the crabs. The moment he applies electric shock on a part of the crab, the crab would rub that spot for some time. Hence the animal it has to be eaten by some other animal too and in this case, it’s the human beings. However, eating lobsters is not the main issue, how we eat lobsters is the issue. The fact that the lobster is trapped is already stressing enough for the animal. Boling or steaming the animal to death is too much; maybe we should reconsider how we consume the animal. After all these debates between lobster consumers and animal activists, there is no conclusive evidence to shows that Lobsters actually feel pain.