Do Crabs Feel Pain? Study Reveals New Findings

Researchers found that crabs are capable of feeling pain, proving most suspicions wrong, since the thought that crabs lack of brain parts wouldn't allow them to feel pain, according to a study at Queen's University in the UK.

Researchers Robert Elwood and Laura Adams wanted to find out whether or not crabs can endure pain, so they gathered 40 crab specimens and placed them into plastic tanks, which had wires attached to them.

Twenty of the crabs were given electrical shocks every 10 seconds for two minutes. The researchers found that the shocked crabs had more aggressive behavior than the crabs in the control groups. The shocked crabs crawled around, displayed threatening postures and some of them even tried to climb out of the tank.

The researchers found that the shocked crabs had high levels of lactic acid in their haemolymph, which is a fluid found in crabs, similar to blood in humans.

Their observations indicated that crabs do feel pain, like many other creatures and human beings alike.

The findings of this study were published in the journal Biology Letters.

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