PETA Needs To Check Its Facts

When PETA got wind of a 140 year-old cock lobster, it knew it had to act and persuaded the City Crab and Seafood restaurant in New York to release it back into the sea off Maine, according to the BBC.

PETA's Ingrid Newkirk was pleased:

"We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace. We hope that their kind gesture serves as an example that these intriguing animals don't deserve to be confined to tiny tanks or boiled alive."

She doesn't have anything to say about the other lobsters or crabs or other stuff that the restaurant goes through daily.

Now I don't know who told PETA that George was 140, perhaps his birthday was inscribed on his shell somewhere? No wait, can't do that, because lobsters eat their old shells when they moult. Watching these beautiful creatures gracefully exit their shells is a sight to behold - what remains looks like a ghostly image of its former resident for a while before it disintegrates in the tide or is eaten. I've kept smaller lobsters such as crayfish over the years and despite what PETA are saying, you can't really get an accurate age just by looking at or even weighing them. Even within a species, a crustacean's weight and size are determined by its diet.

This from www.veganpeace.com (which seems fitting, considering PETA screwed up):

"The only way to gauge the exact age of a lobster would be by their shell. However, since lobsters shed their shells so often, it is impossible to determine their age. Knowledge of body size at age makes scientists believe that lobsters can attain a maximum age of 100 years. The normal life span is about 15 years. Lobsters can grow to be 3 feet long in overall body length."

According to an expert, the animal's (?) age bears no relationship to the taste either (that's after it's been boiled). Lobsters and crabs eat all manner of things and it's this that gives them that distinctive seafood flavour - excuse me while I go vomit.

Worse still for George (insomuch as the expert was concerned) being a cock lobster he wasn't actually a lot of use. A large female would be far more valuable since she could produce far more eggs - and therefore, lobsters - and was therefore more valuable to leave in the water.

Although no one knows for sure, lobsters probably only live about 40-50 years - even 100 years would be a wild overestimate.

PETA do have a point - though not about George's age - research suggests that crustys feel pain like we do: so a British inventor has come up with a gadget to electrocute them in about 5 seconds. Better than being boiled alive - slowly - (OUCH). A home version is available and you can find out more here.

http://www.crustastun.com/

TV Chef Lloyd Burgess suggests an alternative method:

"Live lobsters can be humanely killed by putting them in a plastic bag in the freezer for about two hours. They slowly lose consciousness and die."

What a way to go, boiled, suffocated and frozen or the electric chair - I'll never be able to watch Spongebob Squarepants again.

As an aside, starfish which are closely related to sea urchins, are thought by some experts to live essentially for ever - unless they starve to death, are eaten or otherwise destroyed. Weird. Weirder still, while they have tens of thousands of independently controlled hydraulic feet commanded by intricate and fiendishly complex nervous system, they don't have a discernible brain - as you or I would understand.

Bit like some of the journalists writing today, I guess.