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Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

sydney.edu.au

41–50 of 236 posts

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#41

Why wouldn't they feel pain? It's such a superior attitude to even consider that only humans could feel pain. It's also obvious that any complex organism feels pain... It the most basic evolutionary protection mechanism. Anything that didn't feel pain would soon be evolved out.

Even the featured article puts pain in quotes and is like, “for simplicity, we’ll call it ‘pain’” So actually it’s not obvious that animals perceive the world as we do. Maybe you can only generalise our experience to warm blooded vertebrates.

No, animals don't perceive the world as we do but it's not stretching things at all to say that they do (have to!) register some of the basic realities of life such as warmth, cold, pain (i.e., 'this is bad - something's not right and needs to be sorted') and absence of pain. The nuts and bolts of this are bound to be similar or identical given that we share a lot of basic biochemistry with all life forms. For example the citric acid cycle (a fundamental engine for energy production) operates together with its associated pathways universally in plants and animals.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#43
Seems like there could be a mythical story or similar here.

Hero asks the gods for gift of healing. Gods grant the gift along with pain so that we know when we are injured (and of course, in need of the gift.) No gift from the gods comes free.

I'll be sure to be more careful with my insect friends. And I'll be more vigilant in compassionate killing.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#44
post #27

Does my computer feel pain when I decrement %eax?

The computer is a part of you, and you should feel all the pain for trying to access out of bound memory

Thanks to cheap copying and the internet, developers can now ship that pain to any number of users instead of keeping it to themselves.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#45
post #43

Seems like there could be a mythical story or similar here. Hero asks the gods for gift of healing. Gods grant the gift along with pain so that we know when we are injured (and of course, in need of the gift.) No gift from the gods comes free. I'll be sure to be more careful with my insect friends. And I'll be more vigilant in compassionate killing.

reminds me of the story of Melissa the Bee.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#46

Why wouldn't they feel pain? It's such a superior attitude to even consider that only humans could feel pain. It's also obvious that any complex organism feels pain... It the most basic evolutionary protection mechanism. Anything that didn't feel pain would soon be evolved out.

It's not about can only humans feel pain and other animals not. It's more: do some animals do not feel pain. I don't think many would argue dogs or even mice do not feel pain.

I am not a biologist, but from working in labs that do research with model organisms (like drosophila) what I understood is that there is little evolutionary advantage of being able to feel pain if you cannot heal it anyway. Also if there are no nerves in some regions feeling of pain is unlikely. I remember that someone told me that experiments show that drosophila with servered legs don't change their way of walking, and do not limp as animals do that feel pain. So the notion got adopted that they cannot feel pain and experiments on them are ethically save as they do not suffer.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#47
post #43

Seems like there could be a mythical story or similar here. Hero asks the gods for gift of healing. Gods grant the gift along with pain so that we know when we are injured (and of course, in need of the gift.) No gift from the gods comes free. I'll be sure to be more careful with my insect friends. And I'll be more vigilant in compassionate killing.

This would be a sick joke from the God, because as the article imply, they still feel the pain after healing. It's worse than we have it.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#48
post #43

Seems like there could be a mythical story or similar here. Hero asks the gods for gift of healing. Gods grant the gift along with pain so that we know when we are injured (and of course, in need of the gift.) No gift from the gods comes free. I'll be sure to be more careful with my insect friends. And I'll be more vigilant in compassionate killing.

This would be a sick joke from the God, because as the article imply, they still feel the pain after healing. It's worse than we have it.

Lots of people with long term pain have healed but still feel pain.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#50
post #24

I wonder if one could make a case for having to be more humane in insect farming? Current practices include steaming and crushing insects to death. (The Economist | Grub’s up https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/06/... )

There are 'humane' electric shock machines available for crabs. They supposedly cause instant painless death. Obviously the size would make it impossible to use the same machine but maybe something similar.

http://www.polar-systems.co.uk/industries-applications/seafo...

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