The behavioural cue of ‘flexible self-protection’ is a way to establish whether an animal feels pain, scientists say
Crickets that received the hot probe “overwhelmingly” directed their attention to the affected antenna – they groomed it more frequently, and tended to it over a longer period of time, he says. “They weren’t just agitated and flustered. They were directing their attention to the actual antennae that was hit with this hot probe.”
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Over the many decades I’ve been alive, there have been regular articles saying “scientists discover that such-and-such an animal may feel pain.” And then its forgotten and people continue to treat animals terribly, until a couple of years later a similar article comes out. I can’t see where the thought would even come from in the first place that these animals wouldn’t feel pain, except for religious dogma and a desire to continue abusing animals while telling yourself it’s OK. There’s no reason to even suspect most animals aren’t feeling pain.
Meh, pain is just an indicator. Of course animals feel pain.
For some reason people automatically associate that with how we as humans experience pain and learn from it.
It’s not because my car is showing a “check engine” light, that’s it’s suddenly screaming in agony. It’s just signaling to the “brain” something is wrong. How the approach then continues is clearly different between many species and this is what researchers are trying to learn.
Saying animals feel pain is obvious, speaking of “abuse” less so when you stop comparing the “experience” of pain to how we feel it.
Wow, impressive gymnastics you’re doing here to try to make it ok to abuse animals.
Sure, let’s just assume that it’s fine and continue, I mean it’s not like it just keeps on being proven wrong.
What is your point exactly? What good does it bring, to try to find ways to justify something that is likely harmful? What good does it bring you, to assume that animals that feel pain probably don’t suffer still, other than just to delude yourself into thinking that it’s ok for you to inflict pain to them?
Source: was a cat 🐱
“Hey, Bill! Look! Look at this cricket when I stick its antenna with the hot probe! Look! See what it does? Look, I’ll do it again. Doesn’t like it, does it? I’ll just check it again. Nope! Wow! That reaction was a doozy! Hey, go get Eileen! She’d wanna see this, too! Hey, buddy! Here comes the hot probe … !”
I seriously don’t understand people’s assumption that insects don’t feel pain, or people who think bug spray is a painless option to kill. Seeing the bugs squirm for half an hour should probably clue you in. Personally it’s my last resort.
Pain is probably one of the original sensations. I doubt you could find any creature on Earth that doesn’t feel it. It is extremely useful for staying alive. I bet we will find out plants even feel some form of pain if we haven’t already.
There’s been several studies that say they might, but nothing entirely conclusive. Some say that the smell of freshly cut grass might be the grass screaming in pain and warning the rest.
It’s not to warn the rest, it’s even way cooler.
The smell is supposed to attract carnivores, and tell them “Hey there’s some tasty herbivores over here” so they take care of the problem.Supposedly that’s why we like the smell of freshly mown grass, too.
That’s cool AF, thanks.
For plants it wouldn’t make much sense since they can’t really run away or otherwise stop the pain
Also worth saying that for animals, when someone nibbles off your arm, that’s a serious injury which can strongly affect your survival chances. For plants, that’s just a regular workday.
Kind of been my hardest lesson in keeping houseplants, too. Seemingly most plants need to be nibbled on (or ya know, get cut back), otherwise they will try to grow towards the sky and hurt themselves in the process.
I’ve killed two basil plants, because you look away for one second and they just grow half a meter tall. To support the weight, they become woody at the base. And eventually, they can’t sustain the leaves at the top anymore, but when you cut them down to the woody part, they can’t grow leaves on that anymore, so RIP… 🫠
Well, since catch and release for insects is failboat, and managing an infestation of anything is a health hazard, bug spray ain’t going anywhere, pain or not
We could modify what’s in the spray to reduce the pain while the bugs die. Animal welfare is still quite relevant when you have to kill them.
Like mice, you can acknowledge something feels pain and still need to deal with pest type problems related to it (ideally in a targeted and humane manner). But it may affect some other things for the better such as mandatory killing of crustaceans before boiling, acceptable procedures for invertebrate animal research, eliminating use of live insects for fishing bait, etc.
Nature probably invented poison long before empathy. They both have their places among us.
Nature invented diseases that would kill you by the time you’re 30 and yet I don’t see you running naked outside to go die. Nature has never been something to follow, and especially not morally.
