It’s easy to stroll through a supermarket and ignore the bulky tank in the seafood section filled with an abundance of lobsters, crowded together and overlapping each other. Their claws restricted and they endure harsh treatment unknown to most; people mindlessly purchase them as a means of treating themselves to a night of crustacean consumption or impressing guests. Shoppers take these lobsters home and throw them in a pot of boiling water, tuning it out or walking away when the hear them scraping the sides of the pot in a final effort to survive.

Throughout human history, people have divided themselves from one another and animals all because they look different. Since humans look so different from lobsters and do not understand how they feel, they use this as an excuse to disassociate from how they feel and experience life. Is it fair to pretend animals do not feel and experience pain just because we cannot communicate with them in the same way we communicate with each other?

There are many similarities between humans and these ocean inhabitants. Like humans, lobsters carry their young nine months before giving birth. They can also live to be over 100 years old and are quite intelligent. According to neurobiologist Tom Abrams, lobsters have "a fully array of senses."

These facts aside, we should not value living beings simply because they are relatable to us. Lobsters have many differences from humans. Most importantly, they also have their own lives that should not be rightfully taken away because a person wants to boil their flesh and consume it for their personal pleasure.

We forget the experience a lobster goes through in the process of being brought to the table at an upscale seafood restaurant. Tank lobsters undergo immense torture in their confined environments, suffering from stress, low oxygen levels, and confinement in these cruel conditions. Those in the seafood industry have strived to and often successfully convinced consumers that lobsters and other crustaceans do not feel pain.

Dr. Robert Elwood, a biologist with Queen’s University in the United Kingdom who studies how animals experience pain, concludes “denying that crabs feel pain because they don’t have the same biology is like denying they can see because they don’t have a visual cortex.”

Just because something experiences life differently does not mean that it is immune to pain. Just because something is vulnerable and can be used for food or entertainment, does not mean that it should.

Researcher Gordon Gunter from the journal "Science" says the method of killing lobsters by throwing them into a scalding pot of water is “unnecessary torture.” Although what Gunter says is true, there is still no humane way of killing. If someone wanted to kill your family member, but tried to reassure you they would do so “humanely,” would you suddenly be okay with it? No.

Murder is murder, and it’s time to stop being ignorant to that reality. This concerns lobsters, cows, pigs, chickens, and any other animal. Opt for some BBQ seitan or tofu dogs during your summertime feasts this year and spare the animals from being forced to suffer and die for a meal.