Is jellyfish vegan?

After having kept jellyfish as pets (Atlantic bay nettles), I wouldn't really consider them to be vegetarian nor vegan. While similar to plants, seemed to have a greater sense of environmental awareness than my plants. Mine could sense light, have "off days", and interact with their environment. It's probably true that there's not much going on there due to the small amount of nerves that control everything, but even when mine would accidentally get caught on tank cleaning tools or get bumped around they'd react in a protective way and to me it's just similar enough to animalistic behavior that I'd not feel comfortable consuming them if I were vegan.

At this time it is impossible to know if they feel pain. They're a living creature.

No Brain? For Jellyfish, No Problem

“I think sometimes people use its lack of a brain to treat a jellyfish in ways we wouldn’t treat another animal,” Helm says. “There are robots in South Korea that drag around the bay and suck in jellyfish and shred them alive. I’m a biologist and sometimes sacrifice animals, but I try to be humane about it. We don’t know what they are feeling, but they certainly have aversion to things that cause them harm; try to snip a tentacle and they will swim away very vigorously. Sure, they don’t have brains, but I don’t think that is an excuse to put them through a blender.”

Jellyfish eat animals and animal byproducts, so no, they are not vegan.

Jokes aside, often vegans follow dietary restrictions for reasons other than an ethical or moral belief against causing pain. Many vegans don't even eat honey, so I imagine jellyfish is pretty safely in non-vegan territory.

They are animals, so no.

It depends on the definition of Veganism.

There’s is a popular school of thought that the diet‘s sole purpose to reduce suffering. If a living thing has no central nervous system (or brain), it has no thoughts and cannot experience pain or harm. It’s not much different than a fruit or vegetable. I know vegans that make exceptions for oysters - for example.

Others schools of thought are about avoiding animal products altogether, it doesn’t matter if it suffers or not - there’s no way to know. Therefore, it’s immoral to eat them if you can knowingly choose an alternative.

I believe that it is not, since scientifically it is an animal. However, some vegetarians (not vegans) will eat fish or certain animal products.

They're animals, so no.

Most Americans have no brain, would eating them make you vegan?

Nope. Animal product. Would be ok for pescatarians, however.

I've known people who chose not to eat mammals, birds, fish, decapods (lobsters, crabs, prawns), or cephalopod mollusks (e.g. octopus, squid); but who were okay with eating bivalve mollusks (clams, mussels, oysters) on the grounds that they did not have enough brain to experience pain.

I think those folks would be okay with eating jellyfish.

Rather than asking, "Is X vegan?" it might be more useful to ask, "What is person P trying to accomplish by 'being vegan'? Is eating X in conflict with that?"

A lot of Jelly fish are immortal? Just leave a few cells and wait for it to come back to life. Death-free food for the win

They have no brain but aren't they like almost entirely nervous system? That's all you need to feel pain; the brain just makes it more complicated than "ouch, move away from that."

would u even get anything out of eating it tho?

By a strict definition, no. But most vegans don't really care about scientific classification. Personally I don't think they're sentient and think it's fine.

I don't think animals care about weird human ideologies like veganism

Who TF eats jellyfish?!?

I found a couple of articles on this:

“No.”

“it’s complicated.”

No.

Holy shit this thread is full of dipshits that don't know anything about veganism. A bunch of even dumber fucks think plants are sentient or feel pain. You animal abuse apologist should actually take some time to understand why people are vegan.

Anyway OP, for this particular question you're going to find two vegan camps.

• Camp 1 - the majority of vegans - No brain. No conscious experience. Not sentient. There is no subject, so there is no one to grant rights to. You can eat jellyfish - but like every other vegan on the planet I'd ask why the fuck you want to eat then instead of literally anything else that's vegan. Then we remember that, it's just a gotcha question. Maybe focus on questions that seeks to reduce and reject the trillion+ other victims people not being vegan creates.

• Camp 2 - the minority of vegans - Isn't plant matter not vegan >:(

It's really hard to know if any particular animal feels pain. There are also hundreds of kinds of jellyfish with a variety of levels of intelligence. Some vegans would tell you that just because the nature of their intelligence is alien to us doesn't mean it's less valuable. Personally I find it difficult to empathize with any creature that lacks a brain, especially plants.

Vegan is a vanity label. It doesn't matter. Are you struggling to decide if it's ethical to eat a jellyfish? Well, don't bother. There's no good reason to eat a jellyfish in the first place.

I suppose jellyfish fishing is bad for the environment. I know nothing about it though.

They are alive, so no, not vegan.

Given a choice, if they run away from a stimulus all the time, it is very much "painful".

I've known people who chose not to eat mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods (e.g. octopus, squid), or decapods (lobsters, crabs, prawns); but who were okay with eating bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters) on the grounds that they did not have enough brain to experience pain.

Kind of unrelated but squids are often extremely intelligent, and are definitely not vegan in my book.

I’m not sure it can be answered; it depends on the person.

Some people go with the lack of a central nervous system.

So Oysters are okay by that standard

So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Vegan is a very wide array of things ranging to not eating red meat all the way down to not doing anything that could hurt a plant (only scavengering fallen fruit).

https://theminimalistvegan.com/types-of-vegans-and-vegetarians/

They are a living creature, so no, eating them is not vegan. It's not about the capacity of the animal to feel pain, it's about the capacity of humans to harm animals that most vegans take issue with, at least most that I know. Just because something can't feel pain, does that mean we should hurt it? I'm not vegan myself, and I don't think it's inherently wrong for omnivores to eat meat, but I do think that it doesn't matter if the animal can supposedly feel pain or not. We don't need to go looking for excuses to hurt other living creatures needlessly.

I'd say when it comes to veganism it's basically up to what you personally want to eat. I personally have no moral quandary with eating animals but if you do, I wouldn't call you a hypocrite for eating jellyfish. Plants feel pain too, in a similar way, I could see it being justified. Taxonomy shouldn't decide your morality.

Jellyfish belong to Cnidaria, which is a phylum under kingdom Animalia

TLDR: Jellyfish are biologicly animals