Everything was in alignment. The Gods had spoken. I had no choice in the matter: it was Fate.

On Tuesday, I looked at my calendar and saw that there was to be be a full moon on Thursday. I checked the weather and it was predicted to be completely clearing up on Wednesday evening. I checked the sunset time: 8.05pm. The moonrise: 7.05pm. Perfect! I must go to my favourite spot on the coast for photographs after work. I would not have to worry about getting back from the sea to the road – an hour’s walk – before the last light of dusk faded, because I would have the moon to guide me. I walked the route in late twilight with no moon a few months ago, and I wouldn’t knowingly repeat the experience. It’s a wide open place with a disorientating topography, no dramatic features, several identical-looking paths leading off in different directions, and many bogs. But with the moonlight, I’d have no trouble. I couldn’t miss the chance so I finished work early yesterday and found my way by bus to Aberlady Bay nature reserve, a windswept estuary and stretch of coast in East Lothian, with golden beaches, sand dunes, salt marshes, grassy plains, mud flats and the wrecks of a couple of midget submarines.

I got there at about 6.45pm, and already I had the feeling that I didn’t have much time. The light was glorious, so I could hardly just rush past everything on my way to the rocks at Gullane Point. Because I got my camera out long before reaching the sea, I didn’t in fact reach it until a few minutes before sunset. Right from the start I had felt rushed and desperate, and I hadn’t been taking time over shots. This annoyed me, because I knew that I should just make a firm decision to do one thing or the other, instead of trying to cover everything, running and stumbling about in what must have looked a comic fashion (fortunately there was nobody about, except a group of deer, who didn’t notice me until I was almost upon them.) If I have the camera out, I should take my time, I told myself. And it was no way to be acting on such a lovely evening.

So when I got to the beach I decided just to stay there and make the most of it, rather than walking the additional half-mile to get to the rocky points and headlands, even though they had been my original destination. Well, the one thing I hadn’t checked was the tide. It was out. In many places a long, long way out.

But then I came across the resident tyre of Aberlady beach and I was happy for a good while.

High dunes separate the beach from the plains and marshes, so I couldn’t see the moon that was shining over them. I was looking forward to stepping up to the crest of the path over the dunes and looking out over the spectacular moonlit landscape.

And so it turned out to be. The only visible electric lights were far away across the bay, and the sky was still rose and russet and gold. The crossing vapour trails that had been in the north an hour before lay glowing across the moon, now shapeless and thin like teased out cotton wool.

At this point I hadn’t expected to be in a hurry, but I really didn’t have much time. This was on account of public transport timetables, not of the darkness. The full moon shone blindingly and lit my way just fine. It was an unforgettable experience, walking across open country on a spring evening with only moonlight and starlight to guide me. Sometimes I could hear the muted, odd night-calls of odd night-birds, and the general quiet was pierced every so often by the shriek of an owl. As the residual sunlight faded, the stark beauty and drama of the moonlit landscape became much clearer, every tree and blade of grass delineated sharply, everything casting long, unfamiliar shadows.

I don’t remember ever having been out in the country under a full moon on a clear night. I recommend it.

You might think that in these conditions I’d want to take a few photos. Well I only took one, and it wasn’t good. I packed everything away and decided not to try again. And then I said to myself: “How can I walk through all of this majesty without at least trying?” The answer was “I just want to get back home.” And then: “Is that what life is all about? ‘Getting back home?’” And still I marched onwards, and eventually came to a much less self-reproachful view of the matter. Apart from anything else, although the moon illuminated my way, it was still pretty dark. It’s almost impossible to execute the kind of shots I wanted when neither your eyes nor your auto-focus can find anything to focus on, and you didn’t bring a torch.

I thought about attempting a drawing of one particular scene, one of many that I passed by. A relatively tall tree, windblown and leaning like all of the other trees around Aberlady Bay; a silhouette like a monstrous hand reaching up to clasp the moon.

Image created by Photoshop genius - Las Tonterias -

A couple of years ago I saw Bill Oddie on his TV show “How to Watch Wildlife,” explaining how to attract squirrels. I was inspired by Bill’s amazingly successful technique: he just noisily rustled a paper bag full of nuts, and squirrels came to him from all around – came right up to him – and ate the nuts right out of his hand.

At the time it was important to me to make the most of my weekends, working as I was in a very stressful IT manager role, and I thought that squirrel-feeding/watching/stroking would be a perfect leisure activity. So one lovely summer day I went down to Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens, which I knew from previous sightings to be home to hundreds of the delightful bushy-tailed rodents.

I purchased a paper bag full of squirrel food, conveniently available at the Botanic Gardens shop, and then followed the procedure just as Bill had demonstrated. I found a suitable bench to sit on, underneath the great boughs of a venerable oak tree and in close proximity to several beech trees, pines, cedars, and one medium-sized bush. Perfect!

I quietly approached, sat down, and began to rustle. I didn’t want to make it too obvious, so I kept the bag in my pocket while I rustled it, and nonchalantly scanned my surroundings for signs of my quarry. I looked all around me, up in the branches of the trees, and in the nearby bush, but I couldn’t see even a hint of that unmistakable silhouette, nor could I hear any signs of mammalian life. A few pigeons nodded over in my direction but I wasn’t interested in them. I wasn’t there for the pigeons, was I?

After about five unproductive minutes I reckoned it was time to bring out the bag. After all, I reasoned, perhaps these squirrels hadn’t been conditioned, like those in Bill’s neighbourhood, to respond to just the sound of a paper bag. Perhaps they had to see it too. So I brought out the bag and held it aloft, so that there was no way any watching squirrels could miss it.

After another five squirrelless minutes I resorted to throwing the nuts on the ground. I’d been reluctant to take this last step, as it just seemed too easy. In any case, Bill hadn’t needed to do that.

Already I felt something of a failure.

Surrounded by nuts and pigeons I sat expectantly. Then hopefully. Then in bafflement. What was going on here? This place was squirrel-central and had been for as long as I’d been going there. All I wanted to do was feed them, some of the tamest squirrels in the land – squirrels that wouldn’t normally have any fear of humans. Why would they reject my advances like this? Was it something about me that was repulsing them?

I couldn’t understand it, and I don’t mind saying that I grew quite embarrassed, and then downright angry. Here I was, taking time out of my precious weekend to offer food to these creatures – and asking for nothing in return! Well I wasn’t going to be made a fool of any longer, so I stashed the bag of nuts back in my pocket, stood up and stormed off in the direction of the exit.

But then, as the path approached a large collection of rhododendrons, I saw a lone squirrel hopping about on the ground, apparently in search of food. The enthusiasm that I’d so recently lost suddenly returned to me, and I quietly crept towards it, taking the bag of nuts out of my pocket and rustling it in an enticing fashion. This was the moment I’d been waiting for, and it would be more special, more dramatic, because of what I’d gone through. I envisioned those blissful future moments, just me and my squirrel friend sharing nuts on the lush grass in the summer sunshine.

Then it noticed me, and looked me up and down for a few seconds. I upped my game, throwing a few nuts from the bag and speaking softly in encouraging tones, all the while growing nearer and nearer – to the squirrel, and to that fateful moment.

But, suddenly, it just turned and hopped away into the rhododendrons, without any panic or fear whatsoever. I chased after it, hoping against hope that it might eventually come round. I dived after it into the tangle of branches and struggled to follow, but it just scampered off into the darkness of the undergrowth, never to be seen again.

The anger welled up in me again, this time tinged with intense humiliation. I felt defeated – an utter failure. I tried to walk proudly away without a care, but I couldn’t do it: I just skulked, went home and crawled into bed, where I replayed the day’s events a thousand times.

Needless to say, ever since then I have hated squirrels.

Note: this story originally appeared in a Flickr group, Photographic Editing Offences.

Lobster pain may prick diners’ consciences (New Scientist)
Blow for fans of boiled lobster: crustaceans feel pain, study says (Guardian)
No backbone? Lobsters still feel pain (Times)
Prawns do feel pain, say scientists (Daily Mail)

The study was carried out by a team led by Robert Elwood at Queen’s University, Belfast. They’ve been spending their time “daubing acetic acid on to the antennae of 144 prawns.”

“Immediately, the creatures began grooming and rubbing the affected antenna, while leaving untouched ones alone, a response Prof Elwood says is “consistent with an interpretation of pain experience”. The same pain sensitivity is likely to be shared by lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans, the researchers believe.”

Prof Elwood says that the results are consistent with pain. This is true, but it’s a rather weak claim: the results are also consistent with the absence of pain. That an animal reacts physiologically and behaviorally to adverse stimuli does not imply that there are concomitant emotions or feelings of unpleasantness – or any consciousness at all. Even plants react to adverse stimuli. Nociception, the physiological mechanism behind animal responses to adverse stimuli, is important for those that possess it because it allows them to avoid damaging situations. Consciousness need not have anything to do with it.

But what is pain anyway? Here’s a reasonable definition, from the International Association for the Study of Pain:

“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”

Defined in this way, pain is a subjective conscious experience. It follows that it is impossible to prove that animals feel pain, because animals cannot tell us how they are feeling. That the findings of scientific studies imply the presence of pain is an interpretation based on the assumed presence of consciousness.

If, on the other hand, you would rather define pain only in terms of physiology and behaviour, you can’t then suggest that crustaceans feel like we do, after conveniently dropping pain’s conscious aspect.

The aforementioned Lynne Sneddon is quoted as saying:

“Shrimps do not have a recognisable brain. You could argue the shrimp is simply trying to clean the antenna rather than showing a pain response.”

And Richard Chapman, from the University of Utah’s pain research centre said:

“Even a single-cell organism can detect a threatening chemical gradient and retreat from it. But this is not sensing pain.”

So crustaceans cannot feel pain because they do not have the right anatomical and physiological apparatus, ie. the apparatus that we know is involved with human pain sensation. In the Guardian article Prof Elwood gets the last word on this:

“Using the same analogy, one could argue crabs do not have vision because they lack the visual centres of humans”

His comment is misleading. The analogy is wrong. One of the reasons it might be inappropriate to use the word pain to describe animal responses is because of the emotional connotations of the word. Vision has no such connotations, so it doesn’t sound odd or controversial to say that a crab can see. We can therefore use the words vision and see without problems because they contribute relatively little to an anthropomorphic view of crabs.

In any case, crab vision – like the crab response to adverse stimuli – is radically alien to human vision, partly because crabs “lack the visual centres of humans”. To say that a crab can see is not to say that it is experiencing anything like we do.

Is it right to say that a robot with eyes – such as Domo – can see? Many would say yes, more for convenience than anything else. Saying so does not imply that you think the robot has any of the thoughts and emotions associated with conscious vision, because seeing does not imply them very strongly. I think that this is the way in which we would say that crabs can see.

Now, what if you program a robot to respond in the same way as we do to adverse stimuli? Does it experience pain? I think most people would say no, because pain, unlike seeing, has strong connotations of emotion and consciousness, which few would grant to robots.

Why should we infer pain in a prawn any more than we would infer pain in such a robot?