Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things. Celebrating unthinking people cruelly eating a live animal or anything is 'wonderful' in what way exactly?

That is disgusting and cruel. I don't understand humanity.

This type of 'extreme cuisine' is nothing more than animal cruelty.
I'm an omnivore myself and Sashimi and Sushi are some my favorites. Octopus is not a favorite, it is rubbery and not at all appealing, even less so alive.

I agree, I think this amounts to animal cruelty. Octopus are extremely intelligent, and very sensitive to pain.

At least kill the goddamn thing before you cram it in your fat face.

ever see the movie 'oldboy'? main character eats a live octopus and it is very disturbing..

This is no more cruel than a hamburger commercial or any other video that shows people eating meat.

This octopus is a little closer to life than most of the meat we eat, but if (like me) you're willing to eat meat, you shouldn't shy away from what it means to raise and kill animals.

BTW, the phrase "live octopus" is a misnomer. With san nag-jik, the octopus' head is cut off and it dies, but the tentacles keep twitching because they contain nerve endings.

That is vile. do you have any idea how smart octopuses are?

Those octopus would do the same thing to you, given half a chance.

Is it also cruel to eat freshly shucked raw oysters (mmmmm...)? Seems to amount to about the same thing.

If the octopus were chomped by a shark in the ocean instead, would that make the shark cruel?

It's one thing to be against eating animals at all. I find it odd, but if that's what you are into, then OK. But if you enjoy any type of meat/seafood - it does have to be killed first. Heck, you have to kill a plant to eat it too. That live butter lettuce salad could be silently screaming in pain as you stab it with your fork as well...

I watched a National Geographic video podcast where Koreans were eating the octopus whole and still alive. I don't think I could do it...

Apparently, nobody who's commented actually watched the video. He states that his dish arrived after the head had been removed. They were disembodied, individual tentacles. It's no different than any other kind of meat, just fresher. You chomp into a raw leg of lamb ten seconds after it's killed, it's going to be spasming, too. If you want to complain about animal cruelty, which you should, complain about keeping live creatures in a crowded tank in a brightly lit restaurant. The death part is merciful. It's the life part that's cruel.

so much guilt and self hate, so much denial of what we are. so much is forgotten about what it is to be alive, about what our food really is and where it comes from. this is the result of luxury. like an armchair warrior sending troops to their deaths without having ever been in a fight. you are disconnected.

GRRR...that man should be slaughtered....IT WAS GROSS...how could anybody be that cruel ?

Mn, ths plc s flld wth sccr mms. Gt lf, lds!

This is utterly barbaric and unacceptable. In my country, you'd be doing jail time for something like that.
I've been an avid reader of BoingBoing, but I am going to stop visiting the site from now on.

I've wanted to try this for so long. :(

The only thing that kills the ideological debate (for me, at least) is knowing that zombies or aliens will--given the opportunity--eat me alive.

That is vile. do you have any idea how smart octopuses are?

And, if they were stupid, would it still be ok to eat them?

Seyo, I agree with you. We need to return to the state nature intended for us to live in. I've been hating myself lately for not killing my own food, so starting today I'm going to kill and prepare my own dinner - probably a ground squirrel. Or maybe I'll eat your mom.

And Tanner - yes, it is OK to eat stupid animals, that's why I will be feasting on your dad this weekend.

Wingo++
Seyo++

thanks for adding some thoughtfulness you two. even the grains and plants we eat must first be killed. i also appreciate your balanced tone; no need to respond to the emotionally charged troll bait laid here!

Eddie Lin of Deep End Dining has a good entry on live octopus tentacles, complete with video... he actually has to wrestle it out of his mouth at one point.

It's just like eating a tiny gobbet of wriggling Wacky Wall Walker. Seriously.

Curse those evil octopi!

Seriously, yes, anyone who does eat meat should not shy away from and should be informed about the animal raising, farming, and slaughtering process. I won't shy away from a burger, although I do think that the beef industry is pushing their product to the point of overkill (it used to be that an angus steak was highly prized, now it is just another thing on the fast food menu; makes you wonder what happens to the rest of the less valued meats).

Octopi are not on my favorites list, but if anyone wants to eat one this "fresh", it's on their conscience. Oh, and sharks are empty-eyed voracious eating machines. Like giant sea cockroaches, scavengers.

Still, the mental image of a gummy bear squirming around mouth, as it is trying to survive getting eaten is just plain disturbing...

Gummi worms anyone?

To establish who I am: I'm a vegetarian. I was vegan for two years, but I couldn't maintain weight so I went back to eating eggs and cheese. I've been a vegetarian for ten years. However, I'm not a preachy vegetarian, and am in no way militant about vegetarianism.

From my perspective, this is no different from eating cow, pig, or chicken. In fact, it could be less cruel depending on how the animal spent its life. If you eat meat bought from a store, and are calling this animal cruelty, then you need to search yourself long and hard to try to stamp out the hypocrisy that's rampant in you. You've insulated yourself from the food supply so much that you don't recognize what your diet consists of.

Cows, pigs, and chickens also care whether or not they die. They hurt. They suffer. And the meat industry definitely does a lot of stuff that would (in my book) constitute cruelty. But one way or another, if you're going to eat it, it's gonna die. To the animal being killed, it's only a minor difference whether you're chomping into it while it's alive or after it's been tortured and killed in a slaughterhouse. In this case, though, the dismembered tentacles are not alive. They're squirmy, but not alive.

Oh, and.. if I ate meat, I'd love to try the squirmy tentacles. Not sure I'd have the stomach for it, but I'd try. :-)

Hi all! Couple interesting points you can read about in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus):

Even beheaded, an octopus is still processing. Only some of its 'brain' is in the body area, wheras the arms are 'smart'. These tentacles are not just a piece of meat, but a signifigant part of its brain, fingers, tongue, etc.

As you eat and taste the octopus, it is also tasting the inside of your mouth. The tentacles also perform taste.

Anyone do research on prion diseases related to cephalopods?

I recommend eating some of everything found on this planet (including humans). I even recommend eating salmon while it is still trying to escape. I do think, however, that eating a mostly live still-trying-to-escape octopus is not something to eat, as it may be concious, and self aware as you continue to chew.

Awesome, I would try it in a second. I saw a bit on a show (Food Network I believe?) and the guy ate a beating frog's heart. It ruled.

Even dead octopus tentacle sashimi is hard enough to eat. Every time I've tried it, the stuff resists at every step of the way -- it's hard to pick up with your chopsticks, it's hard to get in your mouth, it's hard to chew, it's hard to swallow. And the suckers still suck hard. I got the impression that my octopus sashimi was still trying to fight back at me. (At least, while fresh and untreated.)

I'd try this live stuff, but ever since I found that octopi are as intelligent as dogs, I've felt bad about eating them.

i've eaten live/raw baby octopus in seoul. i enjoyed it a lot, dipped in sesame oil and salt. also tried it with a korean spicy sauce called kochujung. in fact, we bought the octopus live from the noryangjin fish market downstairs and brought them up to the restaurant for them to prepare. they chopped it up into bite-sized pieces and served it on a plate. it was one of the best experiences in my life. i had no particular difficulty picking it up with chopsticks and chewing it, although it was wriggling. the omnivore's deliciousness!

@complainers: *Yawn* Wake me when it's stem cell caviar.

@#16 This is utterly barbaric and unacceptable. In my country, you'd be doing jail time for something like that.

Whaa? What country is this?

The main problem I have with eating meat is that it legal to eat some kinds of meat, but not others. I think that if we can kill and eat some animals, we should be able to apply the standard to all animals - including humans. If the bar we set for what can be eaten is intelligence, then we should set a rule saying that you can eat anything dumber than you are(or dumb enough for you to be able to catch). I have known many people who are probably no smarter than the average pig or monkey. If we could eat those people we would be setting a fair standard and improving the human gene pool!

Come on, people. The octopus's head gets chopped off before it's eaten - so it doesn't feel any pain, considering the center of its nervous system is gone. As far as cruelty goes, it's just as bad as eating any other kind of meat.

Tht's th cntry f LLLnd. hv flng t's fmls ndr th g f 20 mkng ths cmmnts.

Eating any animal, live or dead, is cannibalism.

For anyone up in arms about this, watch the aforementioned scene from the Korean revenge flick Old Boy. Dude eats a live octopus, much bigger than that one, head and all. In one bite.

I'm a meat eater and i'd avoid octopuses the same way i'd avoid say, a mountain gorilla.

theres just too much going on upstairs with that species. Give em a few million years and they'll be our underwater overlords.

we should be nice to them now.

@complainers: half of us BB editors are vegan or veg, and the other half are kind of grossed out by the notion of eating sentient and still-squirming Cthulhu analogues, so don't worry -- we're not advocating live octopus ingestion as a lifestyle choice. But, like, we're totally cool with other people doing their thing, and posting video on the internet if they so choose.

I should clarify that I'm not speaking for all Boingdom here, but: I do think it's interesting to weigh the relative cruelty/suffering factor of chopping the octopus head off, then consuming the freshly killed body, compared to -- I dunno, one of those really large pig factory farms in which these very intelligent mammals are kept in unsanitary and crowded conditions, killed in a manner that might relaly freak you out, then we eat the meat many weeks or months later. I don't believe it's fair to condemn people (in this case, mostly Korean-American patrons) who eat critter-flesh that just happens to be a lot fresher than what most American consumers eat. Might be more distasteful to you, but maybe that's more of a cultural issue. I don't see where this is fundamentally all that different than picking up a package of lunchmeat at Safeway.

That was singularly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The symbolic struggle of humanities' greatness against the forces of nature represented in the act of a reporter eating a disembodied octopus. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Anyway, most octopodes have a life span of less than 5 years, even in captivity, so it's not like you're killing a lobster; those things live for more than a century and can grow to be over 6 feet in length.

Wow... very glad to see that other BoingBoing readers were as disgusted as I was. It makes me feel a little less lonely.

The eating of meat is well established to be completely unnecessary in the vast majority of situations.

"Tasty" is no justification for brutality. Since we know better and since we have alternatives, there is no excuse. Eating meat is either willfull ignorance or unthinkable selfishness no matter the animal. That said...

...eating a creature as sensitive and intelligent as an octopus is pure horror show.

Great, another "isn't that yucky and so weird food that we white people don't eat. wow that's so weird and icky and stuff and the iraq"

First, fresh octopus, with some yuzu and vinegar is absolutely glorious. It is a delicacy. Don't judge if your palette is not evolved. Go eat your twinkies.

I won't debate the merits of eating animals, but it's safe to say if you eat any meat you have no business making a moral complaint unless you get pleasure out of total hypocrisy.

When I visited friends in Korea, I had this dish at a seashore restaurant in Busan (Pusan). The taste of salt water drowned out whatever octopus taste there might have been. Bleh. So you end up with a kind of whirring octopus, wasabi, salt water, Hite beer stew in your mouth. I' wouldn't eat it again, but it was definitely an interesting experience.

Anyway this dish is kind of a big deal in Korean culture. Let's not be too ethnocentric about other countries eating habits. I mean, in my family, we dip broccoli in mayonnaise for gods sake.

God - i love you when you eat octopus head. Forget the tentacles - when the octopus is staring at you with its beautiful eyes, staring at you - and you take a fork and pop the eye out and eat it. It is delicious! I suggest to anyone - don't eat the tentacles - but ask after the chief cut the head off if you can have that instead - now that is a special treat. I know - it might be creepy that the octopus knows you are eating its head - but honestly - its is a wonderful chewy taste. I suggest you all show try it.

My Korean friends told me to be careful when trying this dish; since the suckers still suck, if you swallow before chewing thoroughly, the tentacles can stick to the back of your throat and choke you.
Revenge from the octopus afterlife.

Glad to see that a few voices of reason have spoken up from among the calls of "How dare other cultures do things we don't agree with! STOP THE GENOCIDE OF THESE INNOCENT OCTOPI!!!!"

Seriously tho, it's really disconcerting to see so many culturally insulated & ignorant comments on the big board today. You've gotta remember guys...my culture isn't better than yours & your culture isn't better than mine. We're simply different is all.

Here in Japan, for example, still wiggling octopi, fish & other sea critters are an absolute delicacy as it's a sign of the extreme freshness of the product. I've personally tried sushi where the fish is still gasping on the table and wiggling in my mouth and shrimp that where alive 30 seconds prior and they really do taste amazing.

And ya know what? If you don't agree w/ that, ain't no thang, dude, as I respect other people's views. Just respect mine the same way, ok?

Hokkaido Hillbilly and Domodomo ask us to be culturally sensitive and not judge this act as cruel. Just because this is a common practice in other cultures does not make it morally acceptable. If that was a valid argument, then I guess none of us can condemn the Holocaust, slavery, etc. That would be "ethnocenstrism."

There are a lot of strange comments here. I didn't realize that BB had such a following of PETA freaks.

>If that was a valid argument, then I guess none of
>us can condemn the Holocaust, slavery, etc. That >would be "ethnocenstrism.

Dude, I don't think Jewish OR Korean folks would appreciate comparing eating live octopus to the holocaust.

comment #45 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

Not that I have much to add here, but I've not been able to eat octopus of any kind since I learned that they're as intelligent as cats.

Sea kitties.

#32 posted by Anonymous , September 6, 2007 2:49 PM:
That's the country of LaLaLand. I have a feeling it's females under the age of 20 making those comments.

I'm female, 18, and I wouldn't mind trying this at all.. I've had plenty of exotic food, and yes, like what Hokkaido Hillbilly said, shrimp still alive a minute ago tastes a thousand times better than one that is 'cooked'.

I understand how some might find it disgusting, but then, I think that you should just starve to death if you believe that its against 'animal cruelty' - what about plants? Everything that is Alive dies..

I don't know who suffers more and who is more intelligent: pig or octopus. This is more about the man who eats this. The essence of the "dish" is twitching tentacles, which is in fact death convulsions. ENJOYING something like that is utterly cruel. Pure horror.

Even if you are not veg, you should have some respect for other beings and for their suffering. Doesn't matter how intelligent they are.

One can argue that pigs, chickens, etc. are treated badly too. That is true for most of the farms, but not for all. In any case the animal is not killed in front of the person who is going to eat it for the extra sadistic pleasure.

I've had the appetizer, both in Seoul and in the States.

It's typically served on a (writhing) platter, drizzled with sesame oil, with chili sauce, soy sauce, salt & pepper on the side.

Making it even more - err - unique is that Koreans use metal chopsticks. Which give much better purchase to tentacles than wood ones.

Typical salaryman situation (I was there when I was an ad exec). It was a "let's freak out the Blond American" late night drinking situation. Most of the guys were native S Koreans, older, conservative, numbering about eight. There were two Korean-Americans (smart, vivacious women who were play-acting being 50s women for the crowd) and me. Just to set the situation up.

Parenthetically, I've travelled all over SE Asia, for extended periods of time (no hotels - eww!), generally ending up staying w/ friends that live there. Basically as a guest, living local. This entails accepting things we're unused to here, including eating some pretty oozy, twitchy, raw stuff. I've also been in Europe and greater Asia, where they also have oozy stuff.

So, in this case, it was the wrong whiteboy to be challenging to eat.

It's odd. Tastes like slightly fishy, crunchy gelatin. Not much flavor. Ever had octopus sushi? Like that only snappier, gooeyer and less flavor. If only your sushi gripped your chopsticks, binding them together, then clenched in a ball, then snapped against your cheek on its way to your mouth. Then once inside an explosion of squirming, tentacled-sucking, sesame-oiled salty chili cephalopodness. The sensation of chomping something between your molars that's fighting back is - err - unique. Kind of like a roller-coaster in your mouth.

Ate more than enough to assage the other people around the table. Actually wasn't too bad after the initial novelty. Tasteless, which is the real regret. (I've had live baby shrimp while in northern Thailand which is REALLY good, making up for its volatility - this was more kenetic but less flavorful)

What really made the event, though, was when one of my friends (a Sailor Moon appearing, Korean-American, perky, wholesome looking young woman) watched the Men doing Manly things. And without a word, scooped up several tentacles and deftly quaffed them. Took a whiskey shot, then did it again. The conservative Korean salarymen were shocked, still, silent, mouths literally agape. I started laughing and then so did they and she was the hero of the night.

(Afterward, she was SO annoyed at the whole group of men pushing her into the '50s role, but hey, business).

It's not something I'd do often. But it's not as bad as one would think. And it's something that's a part of their culture. If you're there as a guest, you owe them respect. They certainly give it to you when you're there - turnabout is fair.

Of course, this only applies within ethical limits. But they're young octopi, which spawn literally many hundreds per birth. Most would be ravaged by fish anyway. I feel much guiltier eating the tuna, the swordfish, the shark, the lobster that many of you probably blithely consume without a second thought. Well, I would if I ate them anymore. Which I don't. So let's not point fingers, okay? :)

I also had the opportunity to try this in Taegu S.Korea.

Trai_dep's account is spot right on. The strangest part of the whole deal was peeling the suckers off the inside of my teeth.

We had the dish at a friends home and selected the octopus ourselves out of a tank at the nearby fish market. The twitching continued for 30+ min after the animal was butchered.

Cap -

Oh gawd, that's right. I must have blanked out the sensation of the tentacles clutching the sides of my teeth. (clutching head between my hands, dropping head to my knees and shivering slightly as the memory returns).

And yes. Octopi ARE wonderful, inquisitive animals. Remarkable.

It sucks being a carnivore at times. Let's also try to remember that more neatly packaged, yet glorious fish species are being over-harvested. And that changes we're doing to the environment eclipse the harm we do by fishing by many hundredfold. Reduce your footprint and convince others to do as well. You'll be doing a lot more good than by targetting this one culinary idiosyncracy. :D