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.”
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.
Dude what is this news? Of COURSE insects feel pain? A child can see this clearly, as I did when I was a young’un. They twitch and scurry when injured or burned. Don’t ask. Anyway.
Why would they be different from animals and FISH that was apparently news as well, that they feel pain and anxiety when caught and killed. Oh and crayfish and lobster when boiled alive 😂😂😂 why wouldn’t they feel pain? It just seems so stupid to me to assume they wouldn’t.
Here I thought we already knew this and did it anyway because… We gotta eat, right? Animals kill and eat barely-even-dead prey all the time, it’s just nature, right??
But I grew up and learned humans don’t think other animals feel pain whatsoever. Like bruh wuuuut??? Whatchu think was going on?!
Now whose putting human emotions on a bug. They are not small humans and do not have the same emotions.
I’m not talking about emotions. Pain is not an emotion. Pain is a sensation.
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?
I’m not a scientist, I’m sure there’s a clear ethical code doing these experiments.
Instead choosing to stay blind is a dumb choice. How can we improve animal welfare by being blind.
Research like this can improve the circumstances and decisions we need to make regarding pain. Blindly assuming can often do more harm than good.
Instead of pointing fingers, try to reflect and think about it. I can easily point out several cases where your assumptions do harm.
How can it do harm, to assume that other living beings might be suffering? What kind of situation could ever be worse, by just being a bit less self-centered?
Source: was a cat 🐱
Also the fact that bug’s are silently going extinct and nobody cares to notice, seriously stick your head out the window right now and listen, that is a silent apocalypse my friend.
75% decline of flying insects population in germany
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/19/europe/insect-decline-germany/
I wish some bugs would go extinct, bed bugs, mosquitos, ticks, maybe yellow jackets. Seems like those populations are strong than ever.
I’m not sticking my head out the window right now. It’s covered with termites.
I opened the window and a wasp came in.
Now I’m selling my house.
I could make aong crazy post about this. This is bad. I wanted to be an entomologist my whole childhood and i consider myself an amateur one. There are no bugs. Where there should be ants and earthworms, there are none. After a rain worms should be all over the place, the castings should be found everywhere. I keep looking and they are not there. I went to at least 20 lakes last summer in my canoe fishing with my kid and looked for aquatic insects. There are none. So there are so small fish. So there are no big fish. I just went all over florida just last week, i saw a couple of butterflies. No mosquitos, no ants, no spiders, no anything. Every year my building is really close to lake erie and gets covered in insects in the spring, havent seen a single one. I keep looking and haven’t found anything.
When I was a child my dad’s garden was full of all kinds of butterflies. Then the ownership of the field on the other side of road changed and almost from one day to the other they were all gone and never returned.
They didn’t like the new owner and moved out?
I really don’t get the idea that people don’t think animals or bugs feel pain or distress.
Like if it’s got a nervous system I’m sure it has some concept of pain.
The very idea that others don’t feel pain, when they’re animals, just like we are is so fucking insane that I just don’t can’t deal with those people.
It’s tick season, I’m using bug spray…
Agreed. Went backpacking with my dog last weekend, who is on Simparica AND was treated with permethrin 2 weeks prior, and that little shit STILL ended up with 3-4 dozen ticks on him. He’s a golden, so meticulously going through his fur removing them was a long annoying process for both of us. Thankfully they were all dead because of the insecticides. There is zero chance I’m not using bug sprays. Ticks are out in full force and I have zero sympathy for them. With as many diseases as they carry, it’s a me or them scenario, and it’s not going to be me.
Who thought they didn’t?
Probably the same peotle that burned insects with magnifying glasses
Nope, we called that killing them.
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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
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.
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.
If it bites me I’m killing it, self defense. I don’t care about its pain. It doesn’t care about mine.
Gotta join the chorus here. I’m not sure why anyone’s surprised to find that something with functioning neurons can feel pain. Wild guess, because I’m not a neuroscientist, but that’s gotta be one of the very first things they were ever responsible for conveying, right? “Ouch, don’t” has pretty universal utility.
Has there been a consensus somewhere that insects (in the animalia kingdom along with fish, birds, reptiles, mammals (humans), etc) do NOT feel pain? I thought everyone knew that intrinsically.
“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 lovr how there are a half dozen or so "well obviously duh’ comments in here each with a half dozen or so replies all stating ‘well not so obviously’
Pain would cause an animal to flee. Why wouldn’t every living thing have some sort of pain tolerance?
