You wouldn’t want to take a bath in 70°C water. That would be painful. That’s the temperature of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone. We had a dramatic demonstration of how awful it would when a bison stumbled into the spring and was cooked to death.
That’s horrific, but unsurprising. We last visited Yellowstone several decades ago, after a major fire had swept through the place. It wasn’t exactly wholesome for the kids — black charred snags everywhere, heaps of bones where some animal had died in place, and the hot springs were surrounded with skeletons in the muck. It would have made the visit even better if the kids could have watched a massive animal die a horrible painful death. Yellowstone isn’t Disneyland.
I’d rather spare them this sort of thing, though.
Yellowstone’s thermal pools might not be capable of dissolving organic matter, but bodies tend to disappear quickly once they fall in. When Il Hun Ro, 70, fell into the Abyss Pool in the West Thumb Geyser Basin around July 7, the only evidence at the scene was several “dark clumps” and Ro’s shoe-clad foot, which was recovered from the water.
Nature isn’t kind.
No, nature isn’t kind – but animals and, even more so, people can be kind and being so, being co-operative and imaginatively empathic* at least is kinda our superpower and how we best survive as a species of largely weak tootless naked apes.
.* As in having the imagination to put ourselve sin another’s palce and thus stategise and act accordingly – and in imagining and then working out how to co-operate with each other in mutually beneficial as well as purely reciprocal and transactional ways. Not that thsi silimited to Humans given forex the huamn rel’ships with very different lifefrosm such as Honeyguides (birds guiding people to honey and getting rewarded for it), working with orcas / dolphins and more.. Dogs natch too!
“Lobsters, OK” PZ? Is it really OK to do that to any animal? I’m an omnivore but avoid lobster if I think that it might be cooked alive. I’d be grateful if you’d refer me to the rules about what can and can’t suffer pain.
submoron @2
It wasn’t done in any deliberate active sense. It inadvertently happened to the bison and also to a person as PZ added.
I remember reading a book called Death In Yellowstone, which detailed a number of different incidents where people had died in the park. One incident was where someone had tried to go swimming in one of the hot springs: he was basically soup by the time rescuers could get to him.
Hemidactylus @2. Point taken but it still wouldn’t be a happy thing for the lobster to suffer even inadvertently. Perhaps slightly OT but if lemmings really drowned themselves would it have been OK to ‘harvest’ them from the sea and would vegetarians regards that as less bad than abattoir meat?
The title is sarcastic. I don’t think it’s OK to boil anything to death, but we tend to detach ourselves from invertebrates.
I haven’t eaten lobster in a long, long time, but when I did, I’d always punch a kitchen knife into the cephalic ganglia before throwing them into the pot.
i have visited yellowstone a few times. and i have visited some of the hotsprings. very lovely. very dangerous. there are signs telling you to stay on the walkway.
some people just don’t pay heed to the warning.
a quick google search said 22 people have died in the hotsprings since 1872.
most were preventable. Darwin Award worthy.
reminds me of the American Werewolf in London line:
“Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors.”
Thanks PZ. All clear now.
submoron @2
thanks for your post. no one should be boiling anything to death.
Not only is nature not kind, but nothing with a conscience would have designed — intelligently or not — the world we live in.
From somewhere in Whole Earth Catalog or its successors:
And some people walk through the park, off trail, barefoot. Not kidding.
Autobot Silverwynde #12
Not to mention those who approach the bison and try to pet them, or worse, kick them.
@13: Oh yeah. YouTube has footage of these jack wagons trying to pet the fluffy cows. One dingus tried flexing in front of one. Sadly, people try to warn these dipshidiots. I say if they want the Darwin Award that freaking badly….
Here’s a dilemma. I like seafood. I just said nothing should be boiled to death.
But…clams? How do we humanely consume sessile molluscs? The only way I know to prepare butter clams is boiling water. For some molluscs the alternative is to eat them raw and alive.
Are you certain molluscs can feel pain? Do they have a CNS?
Walter, in these matters, erring on the side of caution is the best approach. Or so I think.
Here: https://academic.oup.com/ilarjournal/article/52/2/185/659960
Nociceptive Behavior and Physiology of Molluscs: Animal Welfare Implications
“Abstract
Molluscs have proven to be invaluable models for basic neuroscience research, yielding fundamental insights into a range of biological processes involved in action potential generation, synaptic transmission, learning, memory, and, more recently, nociceptive biology. Evidence suggests that nociceptive processes in primary nociceptors are highly conserved across diverse taxa, making molluscs attractive models for biomedical studies of mechanisms that may contribute to pain in humans but also exposing them to procedures that might produce painlike sensations. We review the physiology of nociceptors and behavioral responses to noxious stimulation in several molluscan taxa, and discuss the possibility that nociception may result in painlike states in at least some molluscs that possess more complex nervous systems. Few studies have directly addressed possible emotionlike concomitants of nociceptive responses in molluscs. Because the definition of pain includes a subjective component that may be impossible to gauge in animals quite different from humans, firm conclusions about the possible existence of pain in molluscs may be unattainable. Evolutionary divergence and differences in lifestyle, physiology, and neuroanatomy suggest that painlike experiences in molluscs, if they exist, should differ from those in mammals. But reports indicate that some molluscs exhibit motivational states and cognitive capabilities that may be consistent with a capacity for states with functional parallels to pain. We therefore recommend that investigators attempt to minimize the potential for nociceptor activation and painlike sensations in experimental invertebrates by reducing the number of animals subjected to stressful manipulations and by administering appropriate anesthetic agents whenever practicable, welfare practices similar to those for vertebrate subjects.”
—
Contrast: https://academic.oup.com/book/45856/chapter-abstract/400798293
2 Who Believes Our Pain?
“Abstract
The research tells us that Black people’s pain is perceived, diagnosed, and treated differently than White people’s pain; Black people’s pain is dismissed and diminished, and they are not treated with compassion and concern. Using narratives from Black people who tell their stories of pain, this chapter identifies clinicians’ racial biases about Black people’s bodily and mental characteristics (e.g., a belief in their “hardiness”), the racist behaviors these biases encourage, and their experiences with institutional racism as the main social determinants of poor pain management. In this chapter it will be a given that (1) racism is a social determinant of health, (2) Black people have poor pain management because of racist behaviors and practices, and (3) leaving Black people in pain is incredibly cruel.”
@PZ #6:
I don’t eat seafood myself, but if I had to cook crab or lobster I’d take that precaution too.
Years ago I visted friends in Hong Kong and went out for a meal one evening with a Buddhist nun. We ate at one of the street cafes whose menu consisted entirely of beef curry, chicken curry and crab curry (rice optional). My friend opted for the crab curry, given that no vegetable curry was available, saying that while her religion didn’t normally allow for the consumption of seafood it was technically acceptable because crabs didn’t have a brain. I experienced a few seconds of moral turpitude before hunger overruled my better nature and I declined to outline decapod anatomy to her.
Crabs and lobsters have been shown to learn from experience and, in some instances, to use tools. Even if they have a very, very low level of self-awareness they can certainly feel pain, and consequently I’m not going to boil them slowly to death.
@PZ, #15:
How about, indirectly or not at all?
Kill a small number and analyse them chemicallyRecreate the flavour and texture profile from vegetable and mineral ingredients
Hey, what happened to my ordered list?
I have a spider.
“I haven’t eaten lobster in a long, long time, but when I did, I’d always punch a kitchen knife into the cephalic ganglia before throwing them into the pot.“
Lobsters have their nerves/brains spread throughout their body and you can’t just stab them in one spot to kill them, iirc. I think you need to cut them completely in half to make sure they’re dead
Clams do not have a brain, strictly speaking. They have a tiny cerebropleural ganglion, a pedal ganglion, and a visceral ganglion, and that’s about it. They’re probably as intelligent as your enteric nervous system.
Is this really a dilemma?
Some people like to have sex with humans non consensually.
Is there really a dilemma there?
Pleasure is hardly a justification for something that’s very obviously unethical and the only reason we continue doing it is because that’s what we’ve always done, much like how the only reason a belief in god persists only because that’s just what everyone believes.
Having spent the last couple days in the company of banana slugs, I saw a mollusk brain at work. Clams to slugs to octopi – don’t dis mollusks based solely on clams.