BRITAIN:Sensitive chefs, avert your eyes now. An investigation into the most contentious of kitchen dilemmas has reached its unpalatable conclusion: lobsters do feel pain.
The question of crustaceans' ability to experience pain has become an unlikely obsession for some scientists. Two years ago, Norwegian researchers declared the answer was a firm no, claiming the animals' nervous systems were not complex enough.
The latest salvo, published in New Scientist today, comes from Robert Elwood, an expert in animal behaviour at Queen's University, Belfast. He set about finding an answer by daubing acetic acid on to the antennae of 144 prawns.
Immediately, the creatures began rubbing the affected antenna, leaving untouched ones alone - a response Prof Elwood says is "consistent with an interpretation of pain experience". The same pain-sensitivity is likely to be shared by lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans, the researchers believe.
Prof Elwood says that sensing pain is crucial even for the most lowly of animals, because it allows them to change their behaviour after damaging experiences and so increase their chances of survival.
The claim will add weight to campaigns by animal rights organisations which protest against lobsters being boiled alive.
But other scientists believe the debate is far from over.
Many think only vertebrates have advanced-enough nervous systems to feel pain, and suspect the prawns' reaction to having acid daubed on their antennae was an attempt to clean them.