Invertebrates, such as lobsters and snails (which are also delicious), conveniently (for those of us who love to eat lobsters and snails, and also feel sympathy for animals) have simple nervous systems made up of chain ganglia -- groups of neurons connected by nerve fibers. According to Professor Craig W. Stevens of Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, the chain ganglia network is so simple it doesn't require a brain. (A phenomenon that is replicated in certain higher primates, such as liberals.)

Thus, according to University of California at San Diego Professor of Anesthesiology Tony Yash (as cited by ABC News), the motor response and general squirming you observe while murdering a lobster are fully carried out by the ganglia without informing its pea brain. Indeed, if you cut off the head of the lobster, you would see the same motor responses. With the information not being sent to its brain, the lobster is never self-consciously seized of being aware of the emotional state we higher animals call pain.

Supporting this finding that lobsters feel no pain whilst being murdered, and that humans are merely projecting their emotions on to the dumb brutes, is, perhaps not surprisingly, Dr. Richard Cawthorn, Director of the Lobster Science Center at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada.

I confess that until looking into this matter I didn't even know there was a science of lobster. And I must warn the reader that I have not investigated to determine whether or not the big lobster industry has, per chance, partially funded the research at the Lobster Science Center and has thereby got its claws into the research findings. But, on balance, I would find that the ruling by the high justices at Whole Foods Market lacks merit.

It is a curiosity that when the U.S. courts consider death sentence cases of humans, a very low intelligence of the prisoner may be grounds for not executing the convicted murderer --- as he is judged too feebleminded to understand the moral nature of his circumstances. And yet in the matter of the lobster, a very low intelligence is seen as an argument for going ahead with the execution.

As both lobster and man surely should stand (or squirm) as equals before the high courts of justice, this insight, taken one way, may offer a new line of argument for animal rights advocates. Of course, taken the other way, it might offer a new line of argument for human prosecutors.