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.”
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.
Who thought they didn’t?
Probably the same peotle that burned insects with magnifying glasses
Nope, we called that killing them.
Why would any animated being run away from danger if it didn’t feel pain? It should be assumed that animals feel pain. Pain keeps them away from danger, so they survive, and evolve with those pain genes. For plants however, whether they have pain genes or not doesn’t matter for their survival so they evolve either way.
I don’t think tending to damage is enough to prove pain.
Microbes detect and move away from danger. Plants detect danger and react to defend themselves. They also redirect resources to heal. Pain isn’t necessary for this.
Pain is for learning, so you avoid what caused the pain. Beings that don’t learn shouldn’t feel pain, it would just be a waste of energy. That’d only happen in evolutionary quirks (ie loss of capacity to learn after gaining pain). Nature is cruel (grasshoppers get their heads eaten during mating) but not just for the sake of it.
And of course, there’s humans that have a condition that makes them not feel pain. They still learn self preservation, and they have some reflexes too.
The article makes the comparison with a hurt dog. Dogs remember for life what hurt them. It’s very obvious they learn from pain.
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.
Many insects don’t have a nervous system. Also, some plants respond to physical damage (albeit very differently than an animal) and they don’t have nervous systems, either.
It would also be possible to build a machine that can detect damage to itself and program it for self preservation, but that doesn’t intrinsically mean it would feel pain.
What insect doesn’t have a nervous system?
If it bites me I’m killing it, self defense. I don’t care about its pain. It doesn’t care about mine.
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.
I opened the window and a wasp came in.
Now I’m selling my house.
I wish some bugs would go extinct, bed bugs, mosquitos, ticks, maybe yellow jackets. Seems like those populations are strong than ever.
75% decline of flying insects population in germany
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/19/europe/insect-decline-germany/
For what it’s worth, my totally non scientific personal experience is that in Denmark, the number of insects that I have to clean off the car has trended upwards in the last two years
I’m not sticking my head out the window right now. It’s covered with termites.
Yes. It’s one of the most likely apocalypse scenarios.
Here’s to hope enough manage to evolve fast enough to adapt to the human poisoning of the word. Because that’s the only viable path I can see. That humans manage to change fast enough is highly unlikely
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.
I remember road trips in the summer, in the 90’s, where you’d just see a bunch of bugs splatter on your windshield, and where you’d have to periodically scrub them off with windshield scrubbers.
Now, 25+ years later, I almost never see bugs on bumpers and hoods and side mirrors. Certainly not to the same degree.
And I can believe that computer aided design helped make all cars much more aerodynamic so that fewer bugs would actually be hit and more would slip into the airflow around the car, but the sheer magnitude of the dropoff makes it totally obvious that there are just fewer insects around.
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?
Obviously advanced life forms will feel pain, why did we think otherwise?
Weirdly, it seems like “yes” for a large chunk of people. A lot of people seem to think only humans have a large gambit of emotions. Others think it’s just mammals. It leads to a weird number of people who seem to think a lot of animals don’t really feel anything
But, feeling is such an efficient and proven manner of influencing behavior of complex systems. Make it feel hungry, then it looks for food. It’s phenomenal. Why would we assume simpler beings rely on anything different?
I’m not going to say they make sense, I’m just listing the beliefs I’ve come across.
To be fair to you (and the beliefs you’ve come across), I just like pointing out common sense like it’s the exact opposite of that. I’d argue both that what you said is common sense, and that common sense is wrong about this. I’m not really sitting here confused, or shocked, or anything of that sort.
Some people don’t even believe in evolution, do there it is.
And besides that, some people want to believe their food don’t have feelings.
It makes sense all organisms feel some sort of pain because it’s related to self preservation, but not all of them have an ability to communicate about the pain. And even less number of them communicate pain in a way we could understand, and even less that we actually care to listen.
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.
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?!
Ok, now do sponges. Is it obvious sponges feel pain? How can you tell it’s obvious?
I don’t know anything at all about sponges. Never held one, never seen a live one in nature.
🤷♂️
Come to think about it, ive never seen one in nature either. Are sponges even real?
Prolly not, right
well fuck. What other lies have they pushed on us? Is earth even flat? I bet its not even on a turtle back drifting through space. Im so lost and confused.
The turtles are real, just not holding up the earth. Saw that shit on that newly leaked cartoon Avatar The last Airbender movie. They’re there.
oh thank fuck. For a minute there i was starting to question my entire understanding of reality and the world as we know it. Whew Praise be to turtle.
I don’t know whether they do or not but they have very primitive nervous systems and just responding to bodily trauma or negative stimuli does not inherently imply feeling pain
Hopefully an advanced race doesn’t put you in a room, break your shit, and say the same thing to each other.
But the fact that they do, just like we do, should be an indication of them feeling pain, so I don’t understand why people would assume the opposite. They have made every indication of feeling pain before we knew about nervous systems and all this modern stuff, so I really don’t get it.
They do but not like mammals do. Injury occurs, their nervous system responds, but their “brain” does not register it to the same degree it would in animals with more evolved brains. This video is a good example of the processing power of insect “brains”. The mantis is processing “eat” and the pain of being gnawed in half simply can’t over power the drive to eat. There’s not a mammal or bird that would ignore being chewed in half just because it was enjoying a succulent meal. Recognizing that different animals process pain in a way different from others is not license to disregard their pain or lessen the suffering, it’s just acknowledging that different systems process hurting in a different manner.
Very interesting video, and also super gross, yuck.
Makes me curious if all insects can be this oblivious in similar experiments.
But they are literally not like us. They don’t have blood have exo skeletons.
That’s not really relevant to the topic here.
It’s the same people who argue against plants being living things.
I really don’t get it bro 😂
People claim fish don’t feel pain to feel better about torturing and eating them. So that is not ahocking at all to me
about torturing
🤦
When I was in med school assisting in circumcisions (didn’t want to, had to) the doctor said that the baby screaming was not proof that he felt pain, and demonstrated it by poking the baby and showing that he cried as a response to that. Absolutely nonsensical for a supposedly intelligent person to say. The cry was vastly different from the circ and a poke. It was an excuse not to use local anesthesia or justify the whole process I guess.
The funny part is that that when I was on OBGYN at a different hospital, and when I was at my home hospital on peds, the pediatricians did circumcisions. So I got twice as many circumcisions as my classmates. Some of them could have theoretically attended zero if their schedule was flipped and they were on peds at the OBGYN circumcising hospital and on OBGYN at the peds circumcising hospital. I can’t understand why someone would claim someone else doesn’t feel pain. I wish we had a machine that could make someone feel for a second what you feel so that it stops being minimized or disbelieved.I mean no offense, but some Dr’s are wild. It’s not just babies who are faking pain, but also women and POC. My husband was given the same pain meds/schedule for a cut on his thumb that I was for childbirth with a second degree tear. He was given even better pain meds the time we went in for a “mystery pain” in his chest that they could find no evidence of.
I know about this as a phenomena, but even with already knowing, the specific comparison stories are always so wtffff…. So sorry you/y’all experience that, it’s hot trash.
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.
Pain would cause an animal to flee. Why wouldn’t every living thing have some sort of pain tolerance?
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.
I’ve seen videos of single cell organisms, and even they look like they feel pain when stabbed or eaten.
On the contrary I’ve seen one where one cell passes straight through another cell, making a hole. The cell that was passed through did not react at all and kept about its business afterwards, even regaining shape. Wild.
Crazy, I think I’ve seen that one too !
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 attracts carnivores, and tells them “Hey there’s some tasty herbivores over here” so they take care of the problem. The grass is snitching on the sheep.Presumably that’s why we like the smell of freshly mown grass, too (but such statements are impossible to prove in evolutionary biology).
“The Grass is Snitching on the Sheep” sounds like the ramblings of a madman but here it’s just awesome.
I see, that’s why sometimes we have to touch grass, so we can high five it for being a bro.
That’s cool AF, thanks.
It depends on how you define “creature” and “pain”. There’s surely some single cell life that doesn’t. Are those creatures? Also, for plants, there’s growing evidence that many do release chemicals when hurt, which other plants and animals react to. Is that pain? I’d answer yes to both of those, but both are not hard definitions. They can be argued either way.
For plants it wouldn’t make much sense since they can’t really run away or otherwise stop the pain
There are heat sensitive ones that curl up.
It might reduce surface area or help survive overheating.
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… 🫠
because you look away for one second and they just grow half a meter tall.
Were they bolting? Bolting occurs when the plant is getting ready to flower, usually in response to high temperatures.
If you see your basil plant beginning to bolt, give it a trim. Otherwise it’ll turn bitter. The link provided has more information about when and how to trim it to keep bolting under wraps.
Burrarum.
Pops and cracks from a stressed plant doesn’t mean a physical sensation of pain is occurring.
It depends on the definition:
It does fit this definition. The only part that arguably doesn’t fit is the “characterized by physical discomfort” part, but that’s characterized by, not defined by. It isn’t necessarily required, and I can see an argument to say it’s true for many plants too.
To say it’s definitely not pain I think is far too strong a belief. I can go either way on it. I would lean towards calling it pain, but it’s far from clear.
As you said, this is a scientific community. One of the most important things to science is being skeptical of our biases and pre-existing ideas. Claiming they don’t feel pain for certain is not that.
Plants don’t have nerves at all, so no
OK, yeah. They don’t, but they do have chemical receptors. They don’t technically have a nervous system, but they can react to stimuli.
A bear trap can react to stimuli
A stressed human screaming doesn’t mean a physical sensation of pain is occurring
Humans have nervous systems. Plants do not.
This is a science community. Do you have evidence that plants have a way to transmit or process pain signals? Or are you anthropomorphizing a plant’s reaction to stimuli?
So, Mr science, where’s your proof that only fleshy nerves can transmit pain?
Because it wasn’t long ago, and there’s still plenty people, who think that animals can’t feel pain. Because they’re not human. Of course that’s mostly selfserving reasoning to justify them eating meat and/or treating animals like shit.
Now you’re claiming effectively the same, but now because there’s no nerves similar to animals. Coincidentally, insects appear to feel pain too: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/13/insects-feel-pain-research
They don’t have animal nerves either. Is this bullshit too?
So, you don’t have evidence of plants feeling pain. You have a link to the same article that’s on the top of the page we’re on, and a claim that insects don’t have “animal nerves,” whatever that means.
Insects absolutely have a nervous system comparable in design to those of other animals, albeit with ganglia as their brains. They don’t have the processing power of animals like mammals, but that isn’t vital for interpreting pain.
So again, do you have evidence that plants can transmit or process pain signals? It would be a revolutionary discovery if so.
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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’
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.
Back in the day they didn’t even think human babies felt pain. Also heaven forbid if you are black and/or a woman.
It and things like it go back forever. I had grad school teachers that say animals don’t think. Obviously they do and its not just monkeys and birds and dolphins. Now the thought processes get more basic as you go down but its all there. dreams and such.
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.
Source: was a cat 🐱
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.
Please elaborate: You can point out cases where the assumption that something can feel pain causes 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?
Wait, sorry, you’re arguing in favour of the research, not in favour of harming other beings because you think they don’t feel pain. Bit confusing.
Why would you assume another organism can feel pain without any proof? Rationalism requires skepticism.
Why should anyone assume you can feel pain without evidence? You’re not gonna like how the evidence is collected
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.
Neurotoxins make them squirm but also woozy. I think this is a ok way to go.
Though only for vampire flies and gnats, in a closed room.
Wasps you can shoo away with a spray bottle and lavendel oil or another oil they hate, there are lists of plants online.
