I mustered up the gumption to dig in the big scrum of shoppers in search of live blue crabs...They (crabs!) cannibalize each other when jumbled up in piles. Try to pick one up, and one gets a string of crabs attached like barrel of monkeys. Eventually the weight of the crabs causes either the claw or one of the puny legs to separate from the body, and you a clutch of crab bodies and their separated limbs in the sink. I still can't bring myself to pull off the apron while the little crab legs are waving frantically for dear life.
Each child took turns playing with tongs and lifting up string-o-crab...one of the few times in their lives that they would play with their animal friends before eating it. Could you kill your own food, if your life depended on it? Back in the day before the butcher's guild, saran wrap and polystyrene plates came around, people did it as a matter of course. Sometimes I feel squemish cutting the tendons on a chicken drumstick, never mind removing the head off of a cow.
