Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:06 on 2025-06-24 Permalink Reply  

• Chris 10:26 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  So thoughts on this activism vs throwing paint on paintings?

• Kate 10:55 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  They’re not comparable. The animal rights people are actually demonstrating around the creatures they want to save, whereas throwing paint on great art is not because of disapproval of the art, but is a gesture meant to emphasize the seriousness of the climate situation.

• Nicholas 13:52 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  Chris, this would seem to me more effective. Though I don’t see the difference between live and cooked lobsters, or lobsters and other animals (though if anything the other animals are likely more intelligent), but it absolutely makes sense to choose your most sympathetic case, just as activists did for baby seals, and would do with the worst kind of pollution, etc.

• Orr 14:07 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  They should just hand out copies of David Foster Wallace’s “Consider The Lobster.”
  That stopped me from ever eating another lobster.

• Tee Owe 15:05 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  I understand that being boiled alive is not so humane, but there are other ways to kill a lobster – is it a question of live vs dead, would it be considered ok to sell dead lobster, if killed differently? Let’s not forget that we tolerate sale of dead cow, sheep, chicken etc – I am not arguing for or against here, just observing what we do, as a society.

• CE 15:15 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  What were they planning on doing with the lobsters? Drive them out to the gulf of St-Lawrence and set them free just to be caught again? Did they have a vehicle set up with the proper tanks to keep them alive?

• Kate 17:45 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  There’s a Buddhist practice that involves buying live animals set to be sold for food, and letting them go instead of eating them. But, as noted in that Wikipedia article, it often doesn’t do the animal any good (could you release lobsters into the St Lawrence and expect them to thrive?) and can introduce invasive non‑native species.

  I don’t have any idea whether those activists had something like this in mind.

• CE 19:04 on 2025-06-24 Permalink

  Lobsters live in salt water so they’d have to take them pretty far down river before they would find a place where they could live. I don’t know what kind of effect throwing them into the harbour would have but it might be a fate worse than death if living in fresh water causes them suffering.

• thomas 08:53 on 2025-06-25 Permalink

  @Tee Owe The quickest way to kill a lobster of to plunge a cleaver straight down into the carapace with the tip of the blade where the claws meet the body and slice the head in half. To sedate the lobster one can place it in the freezer for 15 minutes prior. This technique has the added advantage in that you can divide the lobster into body, tail and claws and one cook each section separately.

• Ian 10:14 on 2025-06-25 Permalink

  OK well if we attribute and internalize moral responsibility for the suffering of lobsters, why stop there? It seems rather arbitrary, all things considered.

  “All the research on nerves, the brain, and phenomena such as pain had originally been done on people. All the important biological terminology, therefore, was already taken. This meant it would not be scientifically correct to transfer the definitions to plants that exhibited very similar structures and processes. And so, neurobiology was reserved for animals, which is why a similar periodical for plant research is called Plant Signaling & Behavior and not Plant Neuroscience.”

  Plants feel pain and might even see (Nautilus)

  More reading on this highly researched field, from one of the discipline’s most recognized (and Open Access) peer-reviewed journals:

  Smart plants: Memory and communication without brains (Plant Signaling & Behavior)