this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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You need to define what the word alive means first.
If you cut a roach's head, it stays sort of alive in that the body responds when trying to touch it or expose it to harm but it won't do anything if left alone. just standing still until eventual death.
A decapitated roach might still be able to "feel" pain but in my personal opinion - I am no expert in the matter - it doesn't feel stress, trauma or have bad memory of the incident. Just pain and an appropriate reflex to it.
In this context "alive" means "still able to feel and process pain."
How does the decapitated roach feel the pain? The processing unit has been disconnected from the source of pain.
No it hasn't been. Cockroaches, lobsters, and other arthropods have a decentralized nervous system. They have ganglia throughout their entire body instead of one centralized brain. These ganglia can react to stimuli independent of the other ones.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-cockroach-can-live-without-head/
So does this mean stab the lobsters or don't stab the lobsters? I was raised on the NE shore and have cooked hundreds of lobsters, I used to do the trick of putting them face down and stroking the spine, that would work ok but they wake up when you move them to the pot. I started stabbing the lobsters a few summers ago after a chef I worked with told me I should be, but I wasn't convinced it was a lot more humane and it's not fun if there's kids around lol.
I can't tell you for sure which is quicker or more painless. I'm not a marine biologist and even if I were I don't think I'd have the answer on another creature's consciousness. Personally I think it's really just cope and it's splitting hairs at that point. You just need to face the fact that you're killing and eating a living creature.
I've got no qualms with killing and eating something, I make an effort to dispatch those animals as quickly and humanely as possible, thus the question.
Yes, "decentralised", "can react to", but what about perceiving? That's what modern mortality cares about. Most plants react to stabbing but since there isn't any processing unit of such signals, we humans don't take moral punishment from doing so. We don't emphasize non-sensual creatures.
Honestly they may not be able to perceive in any way we would recognize. Arthropods are about as distant as you can get from humans while still being in the animal kingdom, were in Maine and they're in American Samoa. So while they most certainly perceive the question of sentience in the more traditional sense is up for debate, though there is at least one species of spider that has a proto-brain so it isn't universal.