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Post by parsleyandwoof on Apr 29, 2011 22:14:47 GMT
I think crushing snails is CRUEL! Imagine being crushed yourself!!! If partly crushed snails are in epic pain then completely crushed snails will be in pain! Imagine being crushed by an elephant or squished by 2 tons of bricks! IT WOULD BE VERY PAINFUL! Boiling I'm not too unhappy about. If people walk to close to a fire they die instantly (If the fire is hot enough e.g Australian bush fire 2009) so that is O.K but I think freezing is kindest... Chefs use this so the mollusks they kill will not be in any pain. The snail should be knocked of fairly quickly in the fridge and not suffer when transferred to the freezer. I would recommend boiling to people without a freezer. I feel sorry for people who have to dispose of their snails but realize it would be crueler to keep alive any snail in terrible pain. Know I'm with you and feeling for you!!! parsleyandwoof!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2011 3:29:24 GMT
I'm not sure it's very helpful to use empathetic intuitions to attempt to ascertain how painful something will be for a snail. They're very different animals that probably have a very difficult experience of pain; in fact 'experience' in general is likely to be very different for them. I doubt they're actually conscious (in the way we think of being conscious).
A paper I read for one of my ethics classes said pain is related to 'nocioceptors', which snails do have. But it might be that without conscious experience they don't really 'feel' pain at all. One writer in what I read suggested that the line between animals which can feel pain and those which can't is the line between vertebrates and invertebrates.
On the other hand, I read an article about lobsters and what happens when they get boiled.
'However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming).'
but 'the absence of natural opioids [in lobsters] implies an absence of the really intense pain-sensations that natural opioids are designed to mitigate.'
still, lobsters are very different to snails, so I don't know how much this tells us.
I think this question about pain is a very open one. I certainly think though that we can't project our experiences of pain onto the snails'. Maybe they do feel pain, maybe they don't, but if it is the former, I doubt it's a level of pain that's so intense that we should be worrying significantly about the differences between euthanasia methods.
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coyote
Archachatina papyracea
Cochleas ego amo
Posts: 2,955
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Post by coyote on Apr 30, 2011 21:15:42 GMT
While crushing is quite a violent act to perform, if it is done rapidly enough the snail would hardly have any time at all to feel anything. I imagine this would most easily be accomplished with the smaller snails such as Cepaea and Helix.
An acquaintance of mine recently told me about the carnivorous land snail research she is doing, and she said this:
I was trying to anesthetize them (not necessarily euthanize). I was trying to get them to leave their tentacles out (I used scanning electron microscopy to look at the external morphology of the tentacular tips) but nearly ALL of the research on snail anesthesia is on aquatic or marine snails, which can simply aspirate a drug diluted in the water. Terrestrial snails, on the other hand, tend to not want to breathe water.... go figure! I ended up using a combo of chilled water with succinylcholine chloride and a bit of luck. That got them at least relaxed enough to cut their heads off quickly with a razor blade.
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hopea2
Achatina fulica
Posts: 14
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Post by hopea2 on May 2, 2011 10:11:56 GMT
I dont think crushing a snail is cruel as long as its not a adult gal because i wouldnt be sure if the first blow would kill it out right. If it was a baby to maybe 4cm then it should be quick and relatively painless. I sometimes think that fridging and freezing can be quite cruel because it is a slow drawn out affair. Snails like it warm so being put in the cold is uncomfortable and maybe stressful, where as if it is crushed(size dependant) it would be over in micro-seconds, even though it is barbaric it is quick, and if you are considering putting a snail down, it is in pain or distress and you want to put it out its misery, so the quickest option to get it out the pain might be the best option.
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Post by crossless on May 26, 2011 2:38:01 GMT
I put to rest many "road kill" snails every summer almost daily if it's rainy.. Snails which are suffering because they been run over with bike. It takes 1 to 2 quick steps to get them rest.
Usually I jump so it's quicker for them. I have seen one healthy snail eating alive one cruched snails which was eating other cruched snail. Dude that was really really sick and heart breaking!! And I took healthy one on my hand and jump on two injured ones and placed them in bush and set healhty one free there to eat them if snail wanted without getting injured too. Hrr.
I think freezing is best way to go. Snail get quick shock because temp is changing and sleeps away. I think it don't take long if snails is normally in +20 to +29 degrees and you put it straight to freezer which is - 18 to -25degrees. And I only use quick freezer side of freezer so I can place snail just on the freezing resistors so all the coldness goes in that container where snail is.
Most people use carbon dioxide example putting down rodents but if snails can survive with small amount of air so then it's useless to eve try. :/
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Post by red608 on May 28, 2011 20:48:10 GMT
I don't personally believe freezing is the best method. I've only had to put one snail down and based on that one experience I can never bring myself to freeze anything other than eggs, nothing "alive" so to speak. The snail I froze had not only moved around the container(I checked periodically and he'd moved) but because of his illness and being swollen he did not retract into his shell. I can never get the image of the horrible position he ultimately froze in. Never again will I put a snail through that. I will step up and give them instantaneous death by squishing them in some fashion.
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Post by graemepryce on Aug 15, 2012 19:49:04 GMT
I've never been to keen on the idea of putting snails in the freezer. Has this come from some genuine vetinarian advice or has it just sprung from people thinking that as eggs are killed in the freezer, snails are too?
I think it may be different for GALS but british snails like C.Hortensis and H.Aspersa naturally survive through snowy icy winters anyway so I think if you put an ailing snail of those breeds or similar in the freezer then find it dead a day later, there is a good chance it would have died anyway and all you have done is make its last hours more uncomfortable, and as snails adjust their body temp you may actually prolong it's suffering.
I thnik the best option is always to seperate it and let nature take it's course, in a quiet dark moist box somewhere. If you absolutely can't stand to let nature do it for you it is kinder to do something instant like completly crush it or if you can't stomach it, ask a trusted friend to take it away and do it for you. I can't imagine how gross it would be to have to crush a full size fulica though, I have never had to thankfully.
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Post by pinkunicorn on Aug 15, 2012 19:57:29 GMT
Crushing, if done with enough force, is the quickest. I can't do it myself, so I've had my partner crush a few suffering slugs. I wonder how dropping the animal into boiling water would do? Really boiling, not just hot, but bubbling hard. How many seconds until its tissues have damaged enough to cause death? Would the snail go into shock at the first contact with the boiling water and lose sense of pain? Or would it feel the burning until fully dead? Considering the body size I doubt it would take longer than a minute for very large snails, much less for small snails. But minute is a long time. It should be five seconds at most, better if not even that long.
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latebloomer
Achatina immaculata
The Snail Botherer
Posts: 251
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Post by latebloomer on Aug 16, 2012 14:27:45 GMT
I did ask my vet about this and he said the humane way would be to put it in the fridge to lower its metabolism to dormancy first then into the freezer to finish its life. Personally I would just wrap it in moss and let it die in peace. We can never know what pain is experienced by anything so different to our own species. Small snails would die immediately if crushed but the big ones, I just dont know what would be the quickest.
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Post by squidlydidly on Aug 19, 2012 22:05:45 GMT
What about heat? Is it kinder to use extreme heat rather than cooling? Would it be faster? Just an idea? Surely they would die instantly if they came into contact with it??
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Post by brunni on Aug 20, 2012 18:03:24 GMT
What would you choose, if you had the chance to decide how you "go" ? Freeze to death BBBRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Burnt to death AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crushed dead Wop !!!!!!!!!!!! Quicker the better. How many snails "go" daily in roadkill ? On a motorway its lightning fast ; in a suburban area maybe a few milliseconds longer ? Other alternatives anybody ??
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latebloomer
Achatina immaculata
The Snail Botherer
Posts: 251
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Post by latebloomer on Aug 24, 2012 12:23:22 GMT
None of the above, but if it was either/or it would be crushing (quickest) then cold (maybe shut down and sleep) then heat, which however short lasting, would be agonising.
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