Blanket octopuses snatch poisonous tentacles from Portuguese men-of-war and wield them like swords. Several restaurants in Koreatown in Los Angeles serve sannakji, including T Equals Fish, which PETA investigated. Only the tentacles are still moving. Current subscribers: You will continue to receive e-mail unless you explicitly opt out by clicking, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, © Girl Scouts of the United States of America. US restaurants have started to serve live animals like octopus, which joins a long list of cruel food practices such as drowned bird and boiled rat. Paltrow wasn’t wrong: These eight-legged marvels are intelligent! A nutritionist told INSIDER it's not recommended because the suckers make octopus a choking hazard. It's wrong and if that's the only way you can enjoy a food, you need to really reconsider. Among common animals that are eaten alive include octopus, frogs, and fish. Octopus are smart, sentient beings. They pass down knowledge and personality traits from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, the dish is as cruel as it sounds. In September 2016, PETA went inside restaurants in Los Angeles that mutilate and serve live animals. eleonora galli / Getty. to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way. A YouTuber with 3.4 million followers has been widely condemned for a video which shows her eating live squid and octopus. Stern commends Swift for taking a political stance. In the latter country, it is called Balut. In South Korea, live octopus is very popular on many restaurant menus, maybe because everyone is eager to try the delicacy. Octopuses, very clever creatures Even if problems such as overfishing and decreasing the number of fish are solved, keeping the octopuses in the farms is cruel. Live octopuses are chopped apart limb by limb for “sannakji” and served to diners, with their arms still writhing. The reason for that is because they contain ganglia which can operate separately from the octopus’ body. According to the chef, after every arm and leg has been cut off, he will kill an octopus by ripping open the mantle and tearing out the intestinal contents. While eating live octopus is relatively new in the U.S., this cruelty has been practiced in other parts of the world for some time—including in South Korea, where entire restaurants center around eating these animals live. Must we eat our way through the animal kingdom? Currently, PETA is aware of a few dozen U.S. restaurants that serve live animals or portions of live animals. Does people even u derstand how much octopus suffer when they eat it alive? Warning. Terms for automated texts/calls from PETA: PETA’s Guide to Celebrating a Vegan Kwanzaa, Bring On the Veggie Sushi—Easy Ways to Find Vegan Iodine Sources, iy_2020; im_12; id_24; ih_13; imh_10; i_epoch:1608844229270, py_2020; pm_10; pd_28; ph_11; pmh_03; p_epoch:1603908213586, link-block; link-block_link-block; bodystr, pn_tstr:Wed Oct 28 11:03:33 PST 2020; pn_epoch:1603908213586, https://www.peta.org/living/food/eating-octopus-cruel/. In it, Choi Min-sik—the lead actor—eats a whole live octopus. They possess long- and short-term memories, use tools, alter their appearances to camouflage themselves, and are brilliant escape artists. These intelligent beings are great escape artists, they’re genetic marvels, they change color to camouflage and communicate, they can operate a camera, they have good aim, they don’t enjoy being fenced in, and—without a doubt—they feel pain. Eating live animals is the practice of humans eating animals that are still alive. According to CNN Travel, eating live octopus grew in notoriety in large part because of the infamous scene in Oldboy, a 2003 Korean film. One must have a lot of guts to swallow down a whole live octopus. Click the button below to speak up for these animals. Huge Progress! Remember: Eating live animals—specifically sea life—is not only cruel, it can also be extremely dangerous for humans. Sannakji is live octopus that has been cut into small pieces and served with its arms still squirming. The Chinese eat it raw to get the full taste of the egg white, the little yolk left, and the live … In a 2015 report on Vice titled ‘How An Octopus Feels When It's Eaten Alive’, Hilary Pollack wrote: “The designations of welfare, cruelty, and simple squeamishness are not always clear-cut -- especially in issues surrounding the types of animals that we don't hold particularly near and dear. Two Canadian restaurants, Gal’s Sushi and Marado Sushi, are apparently serving a Korean dish called “sannakji” which translates into wriggling octopus. PETA’s Guide to Making an Epic Vegan Ice Cream Sundae, Here Are PETA’s Fave Vegan Hot Snacks—Including ‘Accidentally Vegan’ Hot Cheetos, PETA’s Guide to Being Vegan in a Small Town, “Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Stay up to date on the latest vegan trends and get breaking animal rights news delivered straight to your inbox! Live octopus is a choking hazard. PETA’s Horse-Doping Investigation Changes Racing as We Know It, Bold PETA Latino Billboard Rocks Phoenix With Vegan Nochebuena Message, Bean Is Celebrating His First Christmas Indoors With a Loving Family, Native American People Push to Rescue Lolita: “She Was Stolen”, PETA’s 2020 Outstanding Activists Are the Inspiration We Need Right Now. Researchers, about one-third of global fishing, is made to feed other animals and many fish feed hunters are the subjects of overfishing, he added. iy_2020; im_12; id_24; ih_13; imh_10; i_epoch:1608844236739, py_2020; pm_10; pd_28; ph_11; pmh_03; p_epoch:1603908213586, link-block; link-block_link-block; bodystr, pn_tstr:Wed Oct 28 11:03:33 PST 2020; pn_epoch:1603908213586, https://www.peta.org/blog/restaurants-serving-cruel-sannakji-live-octopus/. Some enjoy cuddling with each other. The chef keeps the animals alive—and in agony—until customers have ordered every one of their arms and then kills them by ripping open their mantle and tearing out their intestines. The octopus is chopped up into small pieces before being served to you so it’s already dead. Her videos also tap into the ASMR trend thanks to the highly stimulating sounds of chewing and slurping. And they do not deserve to be chopped up alive and eaten. “[T]he octopus, which you’ve been chopping to pieces, is feeling pain every time you do it. However, eating a live octopus is not as simple as you might think. Stand up to cruelty. YouTuber sparks outrage after eating live animals in ASMR videos despite fears of coronavirus link to exotic animals. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. Blotchy, the octopus that Inky left behind at the National Aquarium, could have done the same (but was smarter not to, given that octopuses die within about 10 minutes of being out of water). He said prayers of apology to the octopuses he ate, and it took the actor “a long time to recover.”. "While raw octopus can be eaten and is considered a delicacy when freshly killed, this does not excuse the slow painful death you are putting these creatures through." Eating an octopus live is inhumane - as is boiling crabs alive. 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