NEW YORK (AFP) - A Japanese restaurant in New York took pity on a 140-year-old lobster and announced Friday that it would not end its days boiled in a pot but instead swim free in the Atlantic Ocean.
 Craig has been exhibited to customers in an aquarium but its owners at Halu Japanese Restaurant & Grill in Brooklyn announced they would have the ancient 20-pound crustacean shipped to Maine, where it is to be released into the sea Saturday. Local law there forbids taking lobsters above a certain size.
"Kudos to Halu for allowing Craig to live out the rest of his days in his native habitat," Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animals rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said in a statement.
PETA has organized a campaign to liberate restaurant lobsters and avoid them from being thrown alive in a pot of boiling water.
According to invertebrate zoologist Jaren Horsley, lobsters have a "sophisticated nervous system" and feel "a great deal of pain" when cut or cooked alive.
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