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My family does this, I remember watching them try to crawl out of the pot for the first few minutes so it's not true

Just picturing that makes me feel terrible

Was the water boiling when they were put in?

I have boiled a lot of lobster and crab live. In my experience, they stop twitching in 5 seconds or so. I find this method faster more humane than chopping through their carapace and rooting around their head with a knife looking to scramble their brain while they struggle.

The latter is not a task I expect many home cooks to be good at.

They key is to have the water at a rolling boil and have enough volume that it doesn't cool when you add a 2 lb lobster head first.

I suspect a lot of the horror stories are from people who added lobster to a pot with too little water.

I was around as a kid when my aunt boiled some crayfish alive. The way they run in the pot and the sound they make still haunts me to this day whenever I see these little animals. I don't need science to tell me if something feels pain or not when being boiled alive...

The sound is expanding gas escaping their shell. They don't have lungs or vocal cords.