Maciamo
21-07-06, 01:57
I noticed that all the vegetarians I know who are vegetarian by choice (not because of their religion) do not eat shellfish. I know several persons who chose not to eat meat because they like animals too much to kill them, or are appaled at the slaughtering conditions. This may be true for the conventional meat like beef and pork, but not for fish, who do not really suffer when dying (research have shown that their brain is not developed enough to feel pain). This is even less true for molluscs (mussels, clams, scallops, oysters, squids...), which do not have a brain at all ! Molluscs do have organs (heart, digestive system...). Apart from squids and octopodes, most molluscs do not have eyes.
I even wonder why clams, oysters, scallops and mussels are classified together with squids and octopodes, as the former lack the tentacles and eyes of the latter (quite a huge difference in biology). I guess it's another aberration of the linguistic classification of life beings, like callling aubergines, pumpkins and courgettes "vegetables", but strawberries and bananas "fruits" (and tomatoes sometimes one, sometimes the other), when they are all the fruits of plants with lots of seeds inside. They should all be called fruits, to be logic.
Likewise I have my reserves about calling a clam an "animal" as it lacks most of the characteristics life beings need to be called so : a brain, eyes, an hearing system, a way of moving itself (feet, tentacles, fins...). They just have a way to "eat" (= transform energy) and reproduce themselves, like all plants. I would say they are more like "advanced plants" rather than animals. It's not because their taste is closer to meat that it is "animal meat" (let's call it "vegetal meat"), exactly in the same way that it isn't because tomatoes and aubergines taste more like vegetables than they really are, from a biological point of view.
Back to my title's question, why would a vegetarian choose not to eat clams or oysters if these do not have a brain, and hence a consciousness and do not feel pain, just like vegetals ? It sounds like a major incoherence to me. After all, even some plants eat meat (carnivorous plants or omnivorous ones like coral).
I even wonder why clams, oysters, scallops and mussels are classified together with squids and octopodes, as the former lack the tentacles and eyes of the latter (quite a huge difference in biology). I guess it's another aberration of the linguistic classification of life beings, like callling aubergines, pumpkins and courgettes "vegetables", but strawberries and bananas "fruits" (and tomatoes sometimes one, sometimes the other), when they are all the fruits of plants with lots of seeds inside. They should all be called fruits, to be logic.
Likewise I have my reserves about calling a clam an "animal" as it lacks most of the characteristics life beings need to be called so : a brain, eyes, an hearing system, a way of moving itself (feet, tentacles, fins...). They just have a way to "eat" (= transform energy) and reproduce themselves, like all plants. I would say they are more like "advanced plants" rather than animals. It's not because their taste is closer to meat that it is "animal meat" (let's call it "vegetal meat"), exactly in the same way that it isn't because tomatoes and aubergines taste more like vegetables than they really are, from a biological point of view.
Back to my title's question, why would a vegetarian choose not to eat clams or oysters if these do not have a brain, and hence a consciousness and do not feel pain, just like vegetals ? It sounds like a major incoherence to me. After all, even some plants eat meat (carnivorous plants or omnivorous ones like coral).