A: None. Half-naked PETA members can’t change anything!

69b4/1234910312-peta-5.jpgSorry. Juvenile. But seriously, I was just down at the PETA protest, in front of the Aquaculture America Conference at the Washington State Convention Center, and the three mermaids and one merman lying on the sidewalk, pretending to be asleep, didn’t seem to be changing much of anything.

I stood there for awhile, and didn’t hear any dialogue about the cause that I read about in the press release:

“What’s PETA’s beef with fish farms? Scores of scientific studies prove that fish feel pain, are smart, can use tools, and have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures, yet farmed fish spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy pens. Many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. They are crushed, suffocated, or cut open and gutted, all while they are still conscious. Humans who eat fish suffer too. Fish flesh is contaminated with toxic chemicals—including mercury and PCBs—that are known to cause cancer and brain degeneration, and it is also the most likely of all foods to make you sick from bacterial contamination.”

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I was hoping someone would talk to me about sea kittens. Or hand me an interesting pamphlet. Maybe I didn’t stand there long enough. To me, it seemed like just a bunch of dirty old men taking photos with their cell phones. Maybe the sexy PETA approach isn’t working? Or is it?

More photos after the jump…

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Kelly O—formerly a Stranger staff photographer, music writer, Drunk of the Week columnist, and more!—finished art school and a soul-crushing internship at a corporate advertising agency in Detroit,...

85 replies on “Q: How Many Half-Naked PETA Members Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?”

  2. Here’s whats even more hilarious; The camera people outnumbered the protesters like 2:1

  7. Huh. They didn’t compare chickens to holocaust victims, or dog breeders to kkk members – in fact, no offensive slurs at all here! Keep it up, PETA, and I might stop being ashamed that I share some of your beliefs on animal treatment!

  8. Fish farms are extremely bad for the environment and are a major threat to wild fish. I guess PETA doesn’t care to even mention that.

    Farmed fish also tastes like shit.

  9. Considering the joke was derived from a feminist joke (feminists don’t change anything), how does it feel to have a pussy, you god damn worthless bitch?

    Laugh at people who are compassionate about things. LAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH.

    Your worthless fat ass cunt wouldn’t be employed if people didn’t come before you to fight for things that seemed silly at the time.

  16. are they supposed to be dead mer-people? or sleeping mer-people? why agree to protest as a topless mer-person and then hold your arms over your boobs? are those american apparel tights? so many questions. god, peta blows.

  17. I’m beginning to think (insert) WOMEN’S rights activists need to start being treated just like the (insert) MEN they so empathize with.

    LET’S BEAT THEM LIKE MEN!

    you commenters kinda disgust me.

  21. Confidential to Vegan Merdude:

    Is it still No Dick Day?

    Just because you don’t eat meat doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stuff some artificial beef in your package if you’re going to be showing it off like that — especially if you’re trying to get attention and get people to post it to blogs and such. If you’re ever wearing skin tight pants, you don’t want people to be reminded of Clara Peller’s catchphrase.

    Yours in protest,
    Logopolis Mike

  22. Keshmeshi is correct. And even a blind squirrel (i.e., PETA) finds an acorn now and then. Farmed fish (for most species) is bad news, and is contributing to the destruction of wild fish runs in this region AND to the death of Puget Sound.

    Stunts like this from PETA make everyone who cares about stuff like this look like a moron. We are not. Friends don’t let friends eat farmed fish.

  23. @9, um, no, people fought for things that matter so YOU can protest the stuff that does not. the only thing that matters about fish is whether it’s grilled properly, not too well done.

  27. @23, you’re an idiot. The only thing that matters? So extinction doesn’t matter? Where’s your fish going to come from then? Really, it’s of no interest to you whether critters can live in Puget Sound or not? You know it’s dying, right? You know that Hood Canal is a dead zone now, right? You know that fish farms are one cause of that, right?

  31. once again, peta has done more today to make the world a better place than the slog could in a week. yet the slog laughs thier hipster laugh and mooches another round of pbrs…

  33. @31
    You mean peta has done more today on slog to help lift it from boredom. Has been kind of a slow day on slog. Oh, and I am too old to be a hipster but I can still laugh, do I still count?

  35. They look like the diseased fish that they’re protesting about. Is that intentional? I certainly wouldn’t want to eat a cold, mottled merlady who’s been laying out on the sidewalk all day. Time for some high grade sushi instead.

  39. Did it get attention from the media: Check.

    Did it get attention from blogs: Check.

    Did people pass on the pics worldwide: Check.

    Mission Accomplished. And for maybe $40 tops.

  42. Kelly O there was someone distributing leaflets. You even got a picture of it. There was a coordinator from PETA there talking to the press. You can also easily find out more information about fish by using this cool search engine called “Google”
    I guess you expect information to be spoon fed to you. So here you go:
    http://www.highstrangeness.tv/articles/f…

    took all of 5 seconds

  45. Well, judging from the number of posts, it is clear that geese are more valuable than fish.

    Peta could have changed this public perception, if they had only force-fed their mer-people.

    Maybe next time.

  49. @44

    a hipster is just a nerd who didn’t know how to be “cool” until the internet gave him a recipe so simple even a nerd could do it

  50. What is it with petards and implants, anyway? Nooooo yogurt shall pass the gates of the temple that is my body … but silicone? Top me up!

    And fish using tools? If you want to see the higher stages of tool-using aquacultural civilization, ya gotta go with sea monkeys. And who are sea monkeys’ natural enemies? , that’s who!

    If not for marauding sea kittens, our clever, industrious friends would probably have put a sea monkey on Mars by now. Death to sea kittens!

  52. @50
    where are the implants? all I see are some natural, soft but firm looking, pliable, and FULL (yet green and arm/tape covered) breasts!
    Example- Pic 1, girl second from the right squishes her bosom down so much, they have to be real…the red head also has a great natural shape to her rack as well.

  53. Seriously how do you take people dressed (or rather NOT dressed) as a FAKE creature seriously protesting about this subject? I could totally see this as making more sense if they were painted like fish, and had the whole “save our schools” thing, but as mermaids no one there had a CLUE what was going on. And really most of the atendees at the conference are doctors and scientists. This was the MOST boobage they had/were going to see in a long time.

  54. Did it get attention from the media: Check.

    Did it get attention from blogs: Check.

    Did people pass on the pics worldwide: Check.

    Doe anyone know what they are protesting? No, but they have erect green nipples.

  60. As pointless as I know it is to argue, I hate seeing science abused. This statement from the press release:

    “Scores of scientific studies prove that fish feel pain”

    Is flatly untrue, and I’m in a position to know. First of all, the minute you hear “studies prove…” you know you’re talking to somebody who doesn’t understand the practice of science very well. Hang out in a thread where global warming deniers are doing their thing and you’re sure to get a full lesson on how all that proof stuff works. Secondly, “scores” of studies sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me, as there are only a handful of labs in the world both equipped and interested to do the kind of combined behavior & physiology studies you’d need to even ask the question. And one of those is a lab in the UK which is the primary source of “fish feel pain” studies that get the BBC all riled up at anglers about every other year. Unfortunately, that lab is run by an apparently competent physiologist who nonetheless consistently makes egregioius interpretation errors about her own data because she doesn’t seem to know anything about behavioral science. Every time I see a new one from her lab, I wonder how they keep making it through peer review.

    The capacity of fish to experience pain is an open scientific question but at present the preponderance of evidence leans toward “no .” It does not follow from that, however, that consideration needn’t be given to their humane treatment in laboratory or aquaculture settings.

    Dammit, PETA is stupid.

  61. “Scores of scientific studies prove that fish feel pain, are smart, can use tools, and have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures”

    Well, even if all that is true, um fish also eat…fish! They’ll eat their own young. Come on.

  64. 61 – the point is that if fish have sophisticated social and intellectual lives it means they probably are capable of pretty high levels of suffering. so what if they are cannibals, murderers and tyrants. so are we.

  65. 60 – piminnowcheez
    “‘Scores of scientific studies prove that fish feel pain’

    Is flatly untrue, and I’m in a position to know. “

    Just what is your position? What qualifies you to say this? Before we accept your assertion that little evidence exists that fish feel pain, it would be nice to know why you are so qualified.

    It IS a fact that most animals possess reflex mechanisms to avoid noxious and/or damaging stimuli; whether or not this means they feel “pain” may be more of a philosophical issue for some. But I would rather assume that, especially for vertebrates, whenever the reflex to avoid bodily harm is triggered this involves a sense of pain.
    I am a behavioral biologist but not an expert in “pain.” However…I personally feel that science may never really know what pain is, and that we should just use common sense.
    A live fish gasping for breath on the deck of a ship is suffering, somehow.

  69. 65 – onion

    “What qualifies you to say this?”

    I’m a behavioral neuroscientist who uses fish as my model system. (I literally do brain surgery on fish.) I’ve also followed the Sneddon vs. Rose argument on the subject closely both for the obvious reason and because it’s an interesting bit of science sociology.

    “It IS a fact that most animals possess reflex mechanisms to avoid noxious and/or damaging stimuli… “
    That’s true; the sensory side of that reflex mechanism is called nociception and there is robust evidence that fish have nociception. But nociception isn’t the same as pain, which is a psychological state. If you’ve ever touched a hot burner, you probably jerked your hand away before it started to hurt. That’s because two different receptor types were involved and their respective nerves have different conduction times; the faster one was sufficient to induce your withdrawal reflex, but only the slower one generated a sensation of pain.

    “But I would rather assume that, especially for vertebrates, whenever the reflex to avoid bodily harm is triggered this involves a sense of pain.”

    You’d assume that because you’re a human, a social animal that experiences an adaptive benefit from predicting the behavior of others in your group. Since your own behaviors are correlated to subjective states that you experience, you infer subjective states in others from their behavior. This works reasonably well to a first approximation when applied to other humans who of course are doing the same thing to you, but the relationship between your subjective states and your behavior are not causal, and only loosely correlative, so it’s an inferential error when applied to another species. When you see a live fish “gasping for breath” on the deck of a ship, you assume it’s suffering because you would be suffering if it were you. But it’s not you, it’s a fish, an animal with a vastly different brain from yours, evolutionarily formed by vastly different survival imperatives than yours.

    Following is a link to a pdf of a useful discussion of the subject, Rose’s “Anthropomorphism and the mental welfare of fishes.” I would propose with all respect that if you’re a behavioral biologist and don’t already have an appreciation of anthropomorphism as an inferential error, you would be well served to become familiar with it.

    http://www.int-res.com/articles/dao_oa/d…

  72. This article’s author wrote, “I was hoping someone would talk to me about sea kittens. Or hand me an interesting pamphlet.” That’s surprising because the photo right below this shows Rachel of NARN (upper middle, in blue) handing out “Take a Closer Look at Fish” pamphlets, while Ashley of PETA (upper left, in black) is interviewed by a reporter about how fishing hurts people, the environment and the fish themselves.

    If you’re interested in learning more about fish, visit: http://www.fishinghurts.com/feat-hiddenf…

  73. Leave Mary Sue alone.
    If your granddaughter can’t lie in the middle of a busy sidewalk topless without a pack of losers making lame jokes what has this city cum to???

  74. 72 – David, NARN

    Looking at the page you linked, I notice that it leads with a quoted claim about the experiential lives of fish, but then refers exclusively to evidence of their cognitive abilities.

    It’s true, fish learn and remember and do some types of problem solving. Some species, including one that I study, engage in fairly sophisiticated social behaviors (for fish). That doesn’t make them dogs and cats. Something I always see in these discussions of animal welfare is an ignorance of behavioral science and what it allows you to infer that doesn’t do the animals in question any favors. For instance, the article at your link discusses fish as if their cognitive abilities were all the same; yet bony fish make up the largest and most diverse class among all vertebrates – different species are *really different* from each other. Some are “smart” some aren’t; some are social, some aren’t. These differences are important to any argument one would want to make about what their inner lives are like.

  75. some fish are smart, some aren’t; some are social, some aren’t… what friggin’ difference does it make? Do you base your decisions on how to treat others based on sociability or intelligence? We don’t know what the experience of being farmed or killed is like firsthand, those arguments are useless. I imagine it is unpleasant. If you’re OK with that unpleasantness and OK with contributing to the farming and killing, fine, quit being a douche and just admit it already. Sheesh.

  78. You may have noticed I wrote “firsthand”. As in, any sloggers have firsthand experience being a farmed or killed fish? OK then. I followed this point with a comment about it probably not being a very nice experience, so, still not sure what you’re arguing here exactly. But yeah, totally, as long as there is any human suffering in the world we are NOT ALLOWED to give a shit about anything else. My bad, I should have stayed on point like you did, organic Indian hemp shoe guy or girl.

  79. what about that cute girl in black with the camera? i’ll take em cute before i take em green any day.

    peta could get a better angle teaming with enviromentalists. fish farms killing the hood canal AND hurting the fish too would get better attention here. saving the endangered puget sound is pretty popular.

    @56, A: i liked their first 7″

  80. You can argue the point of whether or not fish suffer or feel pain as much as you want, but really what it comes down to is that there is no need in this day in age to kill any animal (aquatic or otherwise) in order to survive (or be healthy). The way we treat our fellow living creatures is simply barbaric. Why do we feel that we have the right to decide whether or not another living being can or can not feel pain, or worse, whether or not we have the right to kill and eat them? You can’t argue survival. To many vegetarians and vegans (and entire vegetarian societies for centuries) have proven that one can thrive without meat in their diet.

    I am not a huge fan of PETA for many, many reasons, and I do feel they often detract from the cause they are trying to ‘help’, but really, how friggn’ high and mighty do you think you are to say “I don’t think this animal feels pain the same way we do, so let’s raise them in horrific conditions, gut them alive, and eat them?”

    Why would you WANT to? It’s simply a matter of gluttony. Somehow you feel that your taste is more important than a life. Or thousands of lives over the course of your own.

  81. piminnowcheez

    If you truly think that a live fish gasping for breath while out of water is NOT suffering (call it what you want to – physiological distress?), then it is a real shame that you are responsible for the well-being of animals so regularly. I would question whether someone like you actually uses the proper anesthesia on the live animals you undoubtedly perform surgery on.

    And you should be a little more tactful when lecturing another behavioral biologist about anthropomorphism. And btw, as per a previous post of yours (#60), yes, evolutionary biology can and does inform us quite a bit about about the origins of morality in humans. If you were a well-rounded “evolutionary biologist,” you might know this. However, perhaps all you do is sit in your lab and poke at the brains of live but anesthetized fishes and you have lost track of the bigger picture?

    I do believe that the suffering that your line of work causes in animals is actually worth it (for humans). We need to know some of the things you are learning. I am not knocking behavioral neuroscience. However, your attitude during your posts makes it obvious that one downfall of science is conceit. You give us a bad name.

  82. piminnowcheez

    “The capacity of fish to experience pain is an open scientific question”

    your words. so if it IS still an open question, we all should err on the side of preventing, as well as we can, potential or hypothetical pain (or suffering). you know, just in case.

    but wait! you said so yourself:

    “It does not follow from that, however, that consideration needn’t be given to their humane treatment in laboratory or aquaculture settings.”

    I’m not so sure why your tone sounds so full of disagreement; you actually seem to concur with most of us here that within reason, we should prevent uh what shall we call it…physiological imbalance? in vertebrates.

  83. onion:

    I regret that my comments came across as tactless. It can be difficult to gauge tone in emails, comments, etc. I was trying to make my point briefly and clearly, but also tactfully.

    it is a real shame that you are responsible for the well-being of animals so regularly. I would question whether someone like you actually uses the proper anesthesia on the live animals you undoubtedly perform surgery on.

    It’s precisely because I am responsible for the well-being of lab animals that I’m interested in this issue and take it seriously. I do use the proper anaesthesia, at the appropriate dosage. I do consider the capacity of fish to experience pain an open scientific question, and I do think that captive fish deserve humane treatment. Determining what constitutes humane treatment for fish, however, requires that one make informed inferences about the experiential lives of fish. This is not an informed inference:

    If you truly think that a live fish gasping for breath while out of water is NOT suffering …

    because it makes the very same anthropomorphic error that I referred to before. I KNOW that you or I would be suffering if we were found gasping for air. That doesn’t tell us anything about what fish feel.

    The very reason I bother to argue in a thread like this — why I sound so full of disagreement — is to defend the state of behavioral science: the brain is a hard nut to crack, for sure, but that doesn’t mean that it remains an utter mystery. Brain structures are well-conserved among vertebrates, and different parts of it are reliably associated with particular functions. The reason that I (still) assert that the preponderance of evidence suggests that fish don’t feel pain is that they don’t have the parts of the brain that other vertebrates use for feeling pain. The evidence is pretty good that fish have nociceptors, and that fish experience physiological stress. But if you look upthread, you’ll see I first entered this conversation saying that the statement that science has proved that fish feel pain is untrue. And I stand by that, it’s just flatly, completely untrue; science has proved nothing of the sort.

    if it IS still an open question, we all should err on the side of preventing, as well as we can, potential or hypothetical pain

    this strikes me as something like arguments about global warming; denialists focus on the scientific uncertainty as a reason not to act. I wouldn’t want to carry this analogy too far as the cases are obviously quite different, but the point is that if we want to rely on the scientific evidence as a cue for how we should act, then doubting the best available evidence “just to be sure” is doing just the opposite.

  85. I don’t like the taste of farmed fish. Spearfishing is both humane and fun, there is no bycatch, or undersized take. If the spearfisher is skilled the target fish dies immediately without painful suffering. PETA should support their local spearfish community and fight against inefficient harvest methods like longlining and dragnetting.

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