Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: michel_mr on 04/04/2007 16:05:20

Title: do insects feel the pain?
Post by: michel_mr on 04/04/2007 16:05:20

Hello,i am very interested about pain sensation.Do all living things feel the pain?i mean insects for example they dont have encephalon,but ganglia,so do they have any nociceptors for pain in insects ? [???]

Title: do insects feel the pain?
Post by: tony6789 on 04/04/2007 16:50:47

i wud think so like say if u put raid on ants..they squirm and prolly make noises we cant hear....but yet they squirm so my quess is that yes they do

Title: do insects feel the pain?
Post by: another_someone on 04/04/2007 17:15:01

If you boil water in an old fashioned kettle that has a whistle in the spout, you hear it whistle when the water boils.  Would you infer from this that the kettle feels pain as it is getting hot?

I am not saying this means that an ant does not feel pain - I am merely saying that the fact that an entity has a physical reaction to its environment need not be considered proof of pain or pleasure.

How do you judge that something does feel pain or pleasure?

Even if they have the nerves that we have for pain - nature has a tendency to reuse the same biological process for different ends in different species - so is this proof of pain?

We might argue that any entity that acts to deliberately avoid a given situation must have some internal process that programs it with some negative response to that situation, just as any situation that the entity (animal?) actively seeks out must be inference imply a preprogrammed positive response.  Should we equate all such negative responses as pain, and all such positive responses as pleasure?  Within a living entity (including bacteria), maybe we can make such an equivalence, but there are natural processes outside of living entities that can be regarded as similar in some superficial ways (liquid water likes the bottom of a hill, but does not like the top of a hill; but it would be a brave man who ascribed notions of pain and pleasure to liquid water).

Title: do insects feel the pain?
Post by: BillJx on 06/04/2007 22:32:20

Quote from: michel_mr on 04/04/2007 16:05:20

Hello,i am very interested about pain sensation.Do all living things feel the pain?i mean insects for example they dont have encephalon,but ganglia,so do they have any nociceptors for pain in insects ? [???]

Isn't it a matter of definition?  If "feel" implies awareness, then you have to consider the complexity of the insect's brain.