It’s been a while since we last heard from the wackadoodles at PETA but they’re still out there producing groan-inducing content to give everyone else an unintentional chuckle. The latest example comes to us from Baltimore, where the group has released a new video and advertisement campaign supposedly intended to end cruelty to animals. (A goal I believe most of us would agree with.) But they aren’t talking about homeless cats and dogs or even farm animals. Now PETA wants you to understand that crabs are “clever little people.” As such, you shouldn’t be cooking and eating them. Yes, that’s right… crabs. Oh, the humanity! (Baltimore Sun)

Crabs aren’t people. Or are they?

In a 30-second video released Monday by the animal rights organization PETA, the nonprofit’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, calls the crustaceans “clever little people” — and urges actual people to think twice about eating them.

“Humans have always mocked those they find a little different. Crabs may look different from us, they may be small, but that’s no reason to harm them,” Newkirk says as the narrator of the commercial, which PETA said will began airing on Baltimore-area TV stations starting Monday evening.

Seeing is believing, so here is the advertisement. Don’t worry. It’s mercifully short.

The first line of the script reads, “humans have always mocked those they find a little different.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember ever once “mocking” a crab in my entire life. I’ve probably yelled at a few of them when I acted carelessly while fishing for them with friends down along the bay in Delaware and allowed one to pinch me. But even then, it wasn’t really the crab’s fault. What is the point in “mocking” a crab? It’s not like they understand you.

At this point, it really sounds as if Ingrid Newkirk (the president of PETA) is seriously just trying to be absurd in the hopes of drawing attention. She uses the word “mock” or “mocking twice in thirty seconds. She claims that “few people think anything of harassing or eating these clever little people.” I’ll cop a guilty plea to the “eating” part but I have also never harassed a crab.

Newkirk speaks of how crabs are “absolutely capable in their own environment.” Sure. I’ll grant you that. Every animal that survives the evolutionary battle to exist has to find a way to be capable, or at least capable of surviving and reproducing at a minimum. So how do crabs manage to survive? They eat small fish and crustaceans, along with anything dead they find lying around in the water. So aren’t the fish “clever little people” also, Ms. Newkirk? Crabs are not vegans. And if they are “people” they are every bit as guilty as we are for eating the crabs.

What a nutcase. If PETA was actually in the business of helping animals in need, particularly homeless pets, I would have a lot more sympathy for them. But they operate very few shelters and the ones they do run euthanize animals at rates far in excess of the Humane Society and other shelters. (That’s something that even Newsweek’s fact-checkers admitted was true.)

I have a reminder for Ms. Newkirk. Grubs are also very small. (Smaller than crabs.) And they’re alive. So stop telling everyone they should eat bugs, hypocrite. And consider going out and getting a real job helping actual animals.