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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Many a seafood fan has parroted the popular idea that fish and crustaceans do not feel pain. New research, however, suggests that they may, revealing that their nervous system may be more complex than we thought—and our own awareness of pain may be much more evolutionarily ancient than suspected. [For more on pain, see the special section beginning here.]
Joseph Garner of Purdue University and his colleagues in Norway report that the way goldfish respond to pain shows that these animals do experience pain consciously, rather than simply reacting with a reflex—such as when a person recoils after stepping on a tack (jerking away before he or she is aware of the sensation). In the study, the biologists found that goldfish injected with saline solution and exposed to a painful level of heat in a test tank “hovered” in one spot when placed back in their home tank. Garner labels that “fearful, avoidance behavior.” Such behavior, he says, is cognitive—not reflexive. Other fish, after receiving a morphine injection that blocked the impact of pain, showed no such fearful behavior.
Although Garner’s findings fit with previous work that tentatively suggests that fish feel pain, some experts remain unconvinced that the reaction was not an instinctive escape behavior. Still, the new study raises ethical concerns. “If we’re going to use animals in experiments, and we’re going to use animals as food, then it is really important to understand the consequences of our actions for those animals,” Garner says.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Underwater Suffering?"
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45 Comments
Add CommentScience and scientists at one time seriously believed that human babies did not feel pain. Nnow they realize that they were wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy would another animal not feel pain?
Pain serves a purpose, even if the specific mechanics of how it is registered are different from other animals.
Anyone who has an open heart and who has ever caught a fish and then fillet it can easily see the fear in the fishes eyes and the reaction to the cuts.... I've always tried to be as humane as possible to fish and all living things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJeff; are you kidding? That is called anthropomorphism, not a study of fish and pain. A better analogy "if you have ever shot a rabbit and injured it rather then killed it, they scream like hell (which is true)". I am guessing you are not a hunter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you eat an animal, be prepared to cause it some pain right before you kill it. Just part of how the universe works. Doesn't matter if you buy your food at the store or hunt and fish or even if you are a vegetarian. For you to live, you will kill something.
Modern life has given us the possibility to be predators by proxy. We can easily forget that the meat that is neatly packed in a supermarket was a live being that was hunted down halfway around the world. If we buy it, we have to accept we are the predators that kill and yes, hurt other animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know so little about perception that we do not know if something simple like the pain of a cut is perceived less by someone else or if that person is just "braver". Even then, some people think they know so much about the perception of an animal totally different from us as to tell whether it feels pain.
I appologize for my wording, in this, my very first experience at commenting on this type of computer forum (is this a blog?). I wish I had reworded some things. To clarify:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not a vegitarian, and I realize that by eating I am inflicting pain to other living things. In actuality, I have not ALWAYS been kind to other creatures. I used to beleive the BS that I was taught by educated and uneducated alike that these creatures don't feel pain, and as a teenage boy growing up in Kentucky I killed animals just for the sake of being a "grown-up brave hunter".
Add some years of experience and observing creatures in the wild and anybody with an open mind can easily see that other creatures have much more complex feelings than most humans will acknowledge. Perhaps humans do this to lessen our feelings of guilt, which is a trait, that can be observed, whether we are harming animals or other people.
With age I have become more compasionate. I still might catch a fish and fillet it. But I will treat the fish as gently as possible and kill it as quickly/painlessly as possible. If I am not going to eat it, I would return it as gently as possible. When I was younger I might have just yanked the hook from its stomach, believing what my redneck uncles, nun teachers, and highly educated persons who perform such studies (although perhaps the closest they have come to experiencing nature is watching Sponge Bob) say about animals not experiencing pain and complex emotions.
Anyone who experiences nature with an open mind can readily see that animals experience much more pain and other emotions than most people recognize. Humans are not unique in this aspect. In modern days most people are so removed from nature that....well...they seem to need a scientific study to tell them the obvious.
Proadventurer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to disagree with your "might makes right" attitude. Though non-human animals may not experience fear in the same way humans do, they still suffer. If scientific research indicates that fish are capable of experiencing pain as well, I believe we have an obligation as higher-level thinkers to adjust our behaviors and do what we can to be humane. Any reduction of suffering is a good thing.
Today while bass fishing I caught a bluegill and he stabbed me with his dorsal spines. I guess it was a little revenge for the hook in his lip. I kayak fish at least 80 days a year and catch 1300-1500 fish, mostly trout and char (brookies and kokanee). I often think about the pain that I inflict and it becomes apparent when I get stuck with the hook. I don't view pain as most people do because I live with it every day. I'm a clubfoot with plantar fasciitis, and with my joint pain and the burning in my feet, I have come to see pain as my constant companion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOccasionally I accidently kill a fish, but my bald eagle friend who follows me around loves me for it.
I don't think the study in this article proves anything. As we lawyers like to say...correlation is not causation. And there's not even much correlation here.
We must avoid two things,!/ anthropomorphism, projecting our humanity upon other animals, and 2/ anthropocentricity, assuming that we alone as humans possess something that other animals do not have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat we can say is that fish behave in a way that suggests that they might feel pain.
We can then adjust our behavior accordingly.
I think it is simple. Every living entity does feel pain in some way when there is some threat to it's health. And fish like other higher animals certainly feel it the same way like us humans. They may not have the ability to tell it to us, but it's a fact that should just be acknowledged.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif it has a brain, it feels pain :P
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnot very convincing... seems that this is entirely based on a single scientist's subjective interpretation of fish's "weird behaviour" and other fish's "druged behaviour".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthough i personally believe that fish are able to feel pain. when you're cutting through one, it definitely doesn't like it. i always take my cleaver and just separate the fish's head from the body. then i'm sure it won't feel the filleting knife...
brutal...
Common sense and deduction says they feel pain. Pain evolved as a self-defence mechanism (the effects of leprosy are an example) so why wouldn't they feel pain? To deny it by calling it anthromorphism is just the sadist's way of excusing himself. To me any animal that can show love becomes like a human, at least in a soul-like sense. Likewise, any human that deliberately inflicts suffering on innocents is devoid of love and becomes less 'human' than these 'animals'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnthropomorphism, Anthropocentrism are impressive words. They are all hollow sounds!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an unavoidable fish right inside you. If you find a trait of your parent, you are not surprised. if you found one from your grand parents, still you are not surprised. And work still backwards. You would end up in a fish. After all, the genes we carry in us were in some form in fish before they became what we call "us". Don't you remember the lovely book, "Your Inner Fish" by Prof. N. Shubin?
How arrogant it is to think that we got something out of the blue from our own brilliance neglecting or ignoring all our great great ancestors? Could pain or pleasure or any other trait come to us without our ancestors having evolved it?
No surprise, fish feel the pain.
Humanity is Massacre, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumanity is Massacre, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/the-infamous-rene-descartes/504/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis whole assertion by people that animals do not feel pain because they are human has been going on for centuries. The above link describes how no less an intellect than Descartes believed such foolishness. He nailed dogs to the wall and considered their screams of pain as nothing more than the mechanical sounds, like the sound of air coming out of a balloon when you pop it. Gradually, slowly, people have started to see past their noses and consider that animals suffer (we are animals, it might be pointed out), and to say that is not to anthropomorphize, but to just face a responsibilty to other animals that humans may not want to own up to.
I meant "because they are "not human"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study or at least the article reporting on it is messed up beyond salvation, no doubt as a result of the messiness of the subject of consciousness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"In the study, the biologists found that goldfish injected with saline solution and exposed to a painful level of heat in a test.."
Hang on, if we are trying to determine if fish feel pain , how can you "apply a painful level of heat", they mean painful to a human? To other animals?
More:
"Such behavior, he says, is cognitivenot reflexive" , what does that mean? and how do they know is one and not the other?
And yet more:
"after receiving a morphine injection that blocked the impact of pain"
How do we know it blocked the impact of pain, if pain is the very thing we are trying to determine?
I don't think there is any doubt that all animals and possibly some plants feel pain. I also feel pain. But the fact that I experience hunger pain plus the instinctive wish to remain alive entitles me to eat what I can catch. Note to vegans: the pitifully starving and painfully diseased wild animals prowling around the margins of your farm fields that used to be their habitat think no better of you than of the hunter. In fact, only agriculture has allowed the enormously despoiling human populations now on earth. Vegans, the guilt is heavy on your shoulders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think fish can certainly feel pain. Without feeling pain, how could fish have the fear feeling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose people who hold idea that fish and crustaceans do not feel pain are totally hypocritical, since they need a reason to reduce the feeling of guilty.
Actually, for human beings, eating animals is normal, since man is an instinctively omnivorous animal. It is not necessary to stop eating fish if the fact that fish can feel pain is proved. If plants also have the feeling of pain, what can we eat?
But we should also be gentle and we'd better kill animals as quick as possible for reducing the pain.
There is a difference between feeling pain and consciously experiencing pain. Clearly fish feel pain as a nervous system response. But are they consciously aware of it? Now you get into the debate about what is consciousness. Amputees often experience pain in a limb that no longer exist, i.e. purely phantom pain. It is not real, but imaginary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't have a clear understanding of what pain is in humans, much less in organism as low as a fish. Fish do not have the part of the brain where pain is registered into consciousness. Therefore, they may feel it, but they never experience.
Re: post from voiceof reason:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not expecting to change your mind, but I am concerned that your statement will mislead others who may be more open. It is a well-established scientific fact that agricultural land use to raise food to raise the animals we eat uses up many times the land compared with just raising vegetables that people eat directly. It's not even close.
An excerpt :http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30610-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
"A shift in society toward plant-based diets would reduce these problems simply by reducing livestock populations and their demand for land and other resources. On a per capita basis, the land requirements of plant-based agricultural economies are only a fraction of those with high rates of meat production. With fewer animals to feed, it might be possible to rebuild world grain reserves, ensuring dependable supplies for direct human consumption in countries facing food scarcity. Reducing land use by cutting meat production would also be a very effective way to ensure that wilderness areas are maintained and even expanded. Wilderness is crucial to providing biological diversity, climate control, and a store of carbon dioxide."
By the way, this is not some unheard of idea, many independent scientific studies and sources confirm this.
Nevertheless, you wrote:
"Note to vegans: the pitifully starving and painfully diseased wild animals prowling around the margins of your farm fields that used to be their habitat think no better of you than of the hunter. In fact, only agriculture has allowed the enormously despoiling human populations now on earth. Vegans, the guilt is heavy on your shoulders."
People don't like to feel guilty or feel responsible, and I doubt this will change your mind. But I am hoping to have other people consider the damage that eating animals does to not only the animals themselves (pain and suffering) but also to the Earth itself. Without so much meat eating, much of Earth's surface could be returned to wilderness, in which animals could lead natural lives.
I'm not even saying people should all become vegans. I am saying people should consider the harm they do by eating so much factory farmed meat, and consider eating more vegetarian meals and less meat. For people who care about pain, suffering, and the environment,and can accept responsibility for their actions, it is a chance to practice what they preach.
It is great sport to tweak the excessively earnest. But there is no doubt that if neither culture of animals nor of plants were practiced today (a la 12,000 years ago), there would be no large scale human-caused anything. Our numbers are supported by agriculture. My point is that smug vegans are very much part of the problem - if any such problem exists. That said, there is of course no ethical justification for causing gratuitous suffering among our animal kin. But to COMPLETELY avoid causing animals to suffer requires that one must forgo food, clothing, and shelter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is not whether to "COMPLETELY" avoid causing any sufferring at all, causing the human race should not exist. Who said that? That is a straw man argument. I would imagine engaging in such a false debate -which is not the one under discussion- would help one avoid the actual issue. The issue is that animals needlessly suffer on a much wider scale than necesary by the choices we make. The cause of that unnecessary suffering is not primarily Vegans. To claim so is simply untrue and has no basis in reality. The cause of that are typically nice normal people who don't think about it and go on eating inhumanely raised animals typical of our culture. Again, I am not seeking to change your mind but just merely state the actual issue at hand (no absurd "straw man" argument about humans not existing) so that people open to thinking about these matters can make an informed decision about what and how they want to eat, and the degree of suffering they choose to inflict.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDude. I'm not here to debate. I'm here to tweak the smug. You make pretty good points, but do you get any? It is fun here outside the box. Don't be so stuffy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo extend kechu's remark, if it avoids pain, it feels pain, at least momentarily. The article suggests that it doesn't count if the animal doesn't remember the pain. I don't see the line there, and I'd like to see where it's ever proven they don't remember.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was raised on farms and caused some pain in my time, but not casually or excessively. The excuse I developed is that the consciousness of at least the animals I eat is so much lower than mine that the worst pain it can experience is less than my pain of hunger, or other need.
I heard a story once about an American doctor practicing in India. A native helper talked about the sanctity of all life. The doctor took a small piece of the helper's food, softened it in water and put it under a microscope to show the mobile life in what was being eaten. The helper starved to death not long after. Until we can make food directly out of sunlight, we have to find ways to justify killing for it, and often killing somewhat sentient creatures. There's nowhere to draw the line.
Voiceof reason...I like to shake things up, also. But I'm not a tweaker. Get a new line, dude. Also...I agree with you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we could just hear the silent cry of the dying fish...........
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we could just hear the silent cry of the dying fish...........
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDaniel writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There's nowhere to draw the line."
and:
"I was raised on farms and caused some pain in my time, but not casually or excessively. The excuse I developed is that the consciousness of at least the animals I eat is so much lower than mine that the worst pain it can experience is less than my pain of hunger, or other need."
People, with their larger brains, do all these psychological gymnastics do assuage their guilt. It really helps them feel better. But for the animals, it doesn't make any difference.
If there's nowhere to draw the line, we all have green lights to cause maximum pain, is that what is being implied. What a rationalization. Since there's no way to avoid all harm, why worry about causing tremendous pain? Why bother reducing it at all, if it can't be perfect?
People do things all the time to make themselves feel better and rationalize their actions. Just wouldn't want to be the animals that have to live with the humans that can run the world in cruel ways and then not worry about it because of these defense mechanisms. We can and should do better.
@ kechu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy then does the brain not feel pain?
@kechu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yet the brain does not feel pain. How odd.
we cannot live unless we acknowledge that we need to destroy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand God approves it.
We cannot live unless we acknowledge we need to destroy,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand God approves of it
Tyler...I was in a fight club in the 70's. But we called it "donnybrook".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comment about fish feeling pain, but the question being "do they remember feeling it" was quite insightful. I often catch fish that I can tell have been caught before by the other damage to their mouths. Humans often make the same mistake twice, or more. Are humans no more intelligent than fish?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@kechu i'd disagree with that. something may indeed have a brain and lack the ability to feel pain. There are cases of humans having non-working pain receptors and who feel little to no pain. Pain evolving would require a brain capable of interpreting that signal first. So at some point going back on the evolutionary time line, we have to come across the line where pain evolved, and before that, creatures did not feel pain. (An imperfect explanation, but it does well enough.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI no longer kill minor pests that can do me no harm. instead, I either trap them and release them outdoors or else I ignore them and let them get on with their brief lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI simply cannot fathom why anyone professing to be human can want to see any living thing that poses no threat suffer for no reason. Never have - never will.
I do not even kill minor pests that can do me no harm anymore. I either catch and release them outdoors (if warm) or else leave them alone to continue their brief lives unmolested.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will never fathom supposed human beings who enjoy the taking of life or the infliction of pain for no valid reason.
I have seen the figure that 60% of all wild animals are eaten alive. As humans we can avoid suffering in animals. I don't agree with some people who comment that because nature is cruel we can be too. If Jesus left us a message it was surely to be kind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShowing that fish can learn to avoid hot water when they are not on morphine, but can't when they are, does not show that fish feel pain. Computers and robots can learn "adaptive" behaviors using bayesian algorithms, symbolic hypothesis testing, or associative networks. The fact that the behavior stops when you inject the fish with morphine only shows that morphine stops learning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Just because an animal behaves in a human like way, doesn't mean that it experiences the world like a human (or even at all for that matter)
It really annoys me all this scientific research over animals whether it is cosmetic industry testing or this latest facade. Over indulgent scientist experimenting on fish debating whether a fish can feel pain. Why dont we cut to the chase and assumed all life whether swimming in water or walking this earth; all live feels pain and act accordingly, and stop all this testing, just to keep some professor in a cushy job working in a laboratory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust my sentiments, we like minded seem to be in the minority on this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy belief is that all living things can feel pain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there is doubt then animals should be given the benefit of the doubt. We must respect all life forms.
So many people are so quick to speak without any real knowledge on this subjest. Real science put this question to bed some time ago. If you really want the answer, check out what Dr. James D. Rose of the University of Wyoming has to say. He has worked on this question for about 30 years. Warning: Real science ahead. You may need to think.
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