From Michael Elson:

Re: Crabs suffer, remember pain, study finds (March 27): Now that article is right up my street. I’ve long held the belief that all creatures feel pain, which is in direct contradiction to what we were taught in school. Mainly, “all cold blooded creatures do not feel pain.” Ever since I first heard that - 65 years ago - I didn’t believe it. In consequence of that I have always without exception, treated all living creatures with care, especially the smaller little animals, right down to insects - my favourite little creatures.

I am nauseated when I see on TV, those fishing boats off Alaska catching thousands of huge crabs. The men just throw them in the air into a metal container 20 feet away. I am positive that many legs and eyes get smashed, as well as the shells being cracked too. Proportionately, I’d just love to hurl one of those men into the air, to land in a steel box 100 yards away. I strongly doubt that he would survive. Pity - I’d like him to feel the pain.

Science isn’t as smart as they would have us believe, and very many people think scientists are REAL smart people. That kind of person represents those who don’t have opinions themselves, and are quick to spout science quotes to their friends without a single thought about the veracity of the subject or statement, purporting to be ‘well informed’. They must be very dull people, not to mention thoroughly ignorant.

Pain surely is of universal survival importance.

So what’s so valuable about warm blooded creatures feeling pain and reacting to it, versus the ‘expendable’ cold blooded creatures who supposedly do not? I think the problem is that we don’t have instruments powerful enough to register pain in little creatures - very especially those poor frogs who give their very lives in the most horrible fashion in those vivisection classes at schools and colleges, but more so in my favourite little animals - the insects. I’ve seen insects handled extremely cruelly on TV where legs and wings are pulled off a living fly or other unfortunate little creature, and it horrifies me that grown adults can do such a thing. If you are a scientist, please let me rip off one of your arms whislt you are being held captive strapped on a dissecting table.