Chilled Lobster Said to Take Heat Better : Animal rights: Researcher says ice treatment helps insulate crustacean from initial assault of boiling water.

Gourmets who feel guilty listening to the thrashings of a lobster in boiling water should first put the crustacean on ice, according to a recent study.

But don’t bother trying to hypnotize one--that’s just silly--and don’t fret too much if ice is not at hand, because lobsters have no brain and cannot feel pain.

The University of Maine study was commissioned by supermarkets who were assailed by animal-rights protests over the sale of live lobsters, a mainstay of the state’s economy.

Each year, millions of lobsters are caught by Maine fishermen and sold throughout the world to people who crave their tender meat dipped in drawn butter.

Once considered an inferior meal by a patrician class that could not be bothered with the formidable task of cracking them open, lobsters are now regarded as an expensive delicacy.

Still, they are avoided by many who cannot endure the sounds of their tails thrashing around when they are prepared in the preferred way--boiled alive.

Even in Maine, buyers of lobsters sometimes cannot bring themselves to cook them and may “liberate” them back into the sea.

Enter Professor Robert Bayar of the University of Maine’s Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences.

Bayar said he was prompted to come up with the least anguishing--to the cook--method of preparing lobsters when supermarkets told him they were being hassled by protesters and had trouble winning over some queasy potential buyers.

“They always have some customers who are concerned about cooking a live lobster,” Bayar said. “It’s one of the things that makes people reluctant to buy them.”

So Bayar challenged his graduate students find out if there is a humane way to cook a lobster.

Answering the call was Michael Loughlin, a former Navy officer now working toward a master’s degree in agriculture.

Loughlin volunteered his services as a chef to anyone on campus who was planning a lobster dinner--eliminating the need to sacrifice lobsters for science and, coincidentally, significantly reducing the cost of the study.

In all, 200 lobsters were prepared in different ways. Lobsters were eased into warm water. They were dropped into boiling water. They were steamed. And they were hypnotized.

Loughlin said the most tail-thrashing was done by lobsters started in room-temperature water, then brought to a rolling boil. The thrashing was most pronounced at 86 degrees and lasted about two minutes.

Steaming seemed to reduce the reaction, but the lobsters nearest the top of the steaming rack stayed alive up to 20 minutes longer than those nearest the heat source.

Lobsters kept on ice for 15 minutes, then boiled, thrashed in the pot no longer than 30 seconds, and some did not thrash at all.

Did they feel any pain?

The researchers described the lobster’s reaction to heat as a reflexive one. “They’re reacting to a stimulus. Sort of the way muscle fibers react to stimulus,” Bayar said.

“They react to heat,” Bayar said. “They have temperature sensors,” which is not the same as having a brain.

“There is no brain,” he said.

The study also debunked an old theory that lobsters could be hypnotized to reduce their reaction to hot water, Bayar said.

Lobsters can be hypnotized by hanging them upside down and rubbing their tails--a nice way to say goodby, perhaps, if you really feel the need to communicate, but no way to cook one.