Breakthrough study?! Who are they kidding?!
- Thread starter Unarce
- Start date
Yeah, this should be pretty evident to anyone who's kept fish. At least it gives more legitimacy to the claim that fish can indeed feel pain, and makes the hobbyist (especially newer hobbyist) more aware. Fish have a far greater pain threshold then higher ordered animals like humans or dogs, but they still feel pain nonetheless.
I'm no rocket sceintist. But I do believe that fish feel pain. Why do fish try to aviod being bitten by a smaller fish that has no teeth? They certainly are going to get gummed to death. So fearing for their lives is not the answer. Pain is the answer.
That concludes my scientific study.
Louey
That concludes my scientific study.
Louey
Do fish feel pain?
How do you define "pain"?--There-in lies the rub.
I think about a case I heard about when I was a physician in the Army about a dependant Korean mother-in-law who had been treated in Korea a few years earlier for chronic headaches. At the US Army hospital she had a head Cat scan done which showed a large brain tumor(benign, so it was not growing fast). The scan also showed that she had had a frontal lobotomy--the "treatment" done in Korea for her headaches. She was asked if she was still bothered by headaches. Her answer was "no, she was not bothered by headaches. She still got them, but they didn't bother her".
The point is that she could certainly still "feel the pain", but since her higher cortical brain function had been surgically ablated, the pain didn't cause her distress. Fish lack the higher cortical function of "higher mammals", so they may not experience "pain" in the sense that we understand it. The lesson to be learned here of course is don't get medical treatment in Korea
How do you define "pain"?--There-in lies the rub.
I think about a case I heard about when I was a physician in the Army about a dependant Korean mother-in-law who had been treated in Korea a few years earlier for chronic headaches. At the US Army hospital she had a head Cat scan done which showed a large brain tumor(benign, so it was not growing fast). The scan also showed that she had had a frontal lobotomy--the "treatment" done in Korea for her headaches. She was asked if she was still bothered by headaches. Her answer was "no, she was not bothered by headaches. She still got them, but they didn't bother her".
The point is that she could certainly still "feel the pain", but since her higher cortical brain function had been surgically ablated, the pain didn't cause her distress. Fish lack the higher cortical function of "higher mammals", so they may not experience "pain" in the sense that we understand it. The lesson to be learned here of course is don't get medical treatment in Korea
Its a fairly tenuous assumption to make that by squishing a bee's ass into a fishes face causes dicomfort, and therefore the fish must be in pain. I would have thought that was abvious by the way clownfish aclimatise themselfs to a new anemonie. Still, in terms of wether fishing is PC or not because of the fishes ability to feel pain, all i have to say is WHAT ABOUT THE POOR LITTLE WORM 8O
my knowledge of neuropsychology is limited, but i expect the basic thoughts that occur in a pained fish's brain are something like "gee something is wrong, better do something", versus a human who would be thinking something like "OMG @&!&@&$&*@ IT HURTS MUST GET OUT OFHERHEREHRIGHTNOWAIUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!*#*#$*@**(@" <blacks out at this point due to stress>
the fish may feel the pain, but their reaction to it is basic and instinctual.
the fish may feel the pain, but their reaction to it is basic and instinctual.
Well, I would say that they probably -do- feel pain. Pain is nature's way of saying something is wrong. If we were talking about a virus or a bacteria, I'd be inclined to say they don't feel it anywhere near how humsn feel it.
However, fish have all 5 senses, taste, touch, smell(?), hearing and sight. While the Korea story is incredible, I doubt nature would take a proven mechanism (pain) and make it a lower order of magnitude of 'something being wrong'. Part of the decision making in the 'fight or flight' process is determining how much pain one might take from a confrontation, no?
Kind of hard to do that without some sort of feedback mechanism, which pain solves just fine.
However, fish have all 5 senses, taste, touch, smell(?), hearing and sight. While the Korea story is incredible, I doubt nature would take a proven mechanism (pain) and make it a lower order of magnitude of 'something being wrong'. Part of the decision making in the 'fight or flight' process is determining how much pain one might take from a confrontation, no?
Kind of hard to do that without some sort of feedback mechanism, which pain solves just fine.
There is no doubt that fish do feel pain. Many doubt this because they do not have the facial and vocal tools to express pain in terms we understand. They simply move away from the pain or if it cannot be avoided they endure it. In its simpliest form pain is the result of over stimulation of a sense organ. You hear a sound too loud you feel pain, You press too hard on a touch sense and you feel pain. Pain has an evolutionary advantage by allowing animals to avoid damage and know when there is damage to the body and to allow them the ability to quiclky avoid damage before it becomes leathal. Any thing with such survival value would not be overlooked by evolution in the development of any complex nervous sytem.
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