[neilep]

Try telling the koreans that Donnah, with their despicable way of despatching cats and dogs !!!..they think the exact opposite..that the stress they deliver helps to tenderise the meat....I  have seen some of the ways they torment and torture our feline and canine friends in the name of cullinary technique.

Before I get a formidable force load of replies I'm not making a generalisation towards all koreans...just to the ones who eat cats and dogs.

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[Donnah]

If people want to be sadistic, they will find an excuse for their behavior, but they cannot "worm" out of their karma.

[roberth]

Well, when I was cleaning our catch on the weekend, I did a survey. None of the fish felt any pain except one, and she kept squirming even after she had been scaled and gutted.

And, if you look at our way of despatching sheep, chooks, cows, kangaroos and pigs, the Koreans aren't that much different with their diets. They just happen to eat different things to us! Who are we to decide what gets eaten. Some cultures view our diets as pretty gross but we didn't get to the top of the food chain by only eating snails.

[neilep]

I just want to warn that what I say ahead is a fair bit graphic in it's nature..it describes a method of slaughter.

You've missed my point Roberth, it's my fault for not adequately explaining it earlier...sorry....it's not the diet I'm referring to...it is specifically the method of despatch...and the agonising LONG process that leads up to the point of death. I beg to differ, I'm sure a kangaroo is not tied with it's legs pulled back over it's shoulders then stuffed in  a cage with other kangeroos, after being repeatedly hit with a hammer, and I mean literally stuffed into the cage, then lowered slowly into a tank of water,...this method is  SPECIFICALLY to cause as much stress and suffering as possible, in the strong belief that is eases the tenderisation of the meat, the sole purpose of this method is to terrify and torture. It is a  designed LONG process.

I do not know of any practice of slaughter like that here.

When you do your fishing , you do not go out of your way to cause severe extra suffering to the fish do you ?

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[roberth]

I really don't give it any thought, Neil. It's a fish. I'm gunna eat it. I don't care if it's happy or not, because it'll still look good on my plate. If it isn't smiling, I'll chop it's head off.

[neilep]

Cheers Roberth.....I respect your honesty....I actually don't have a problem with fishing at all...apart from whaling !!!...err...don't suppose you have caught a whale with your rod !! (oooh..in some respects that could be considered a double-entendre eh ?)



'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[roberth]

Well yes, it could be considered one! We've certainly seen whales while fishing. They're very relaxing to watch, as are the dolphins that ride our bow wave. Catching them is another thing altogether. We tend not to use krill for bait because if they take it, it's too hard to land them.

[neilep]

LOL.....thanks for the giggle !!!

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[MayoFlyFarmer]

Oh common be a man already!!! Its just a whale!

A submarine is NOT a cargo ship!

[neilep]

LOL..Justy....now you're jusy being provocative !! *smiley smile*

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'  

[Donnah]

What do you expect from a man with horns?

[Radrook]

I think that it is safe to assume that any animal with a nervous system is capable of feeling pain. Especially those with nervous sdystems similar to our own such as as mammals. They cannot always verbalize that pain. But those who are able to do crie out. If you step on a dog's trail it will yelp. Others will flee away from the discomfort. I recently saw a Baboon eating a fawn alive and the fawn cried out in pain. So did a bull which was being eaten alive by lions. I once caught a fish which had swallowed the hook. As I pulled to dislodge it from its throat I had no reason to assume that the struggling fish felt no pain simply because it was unable to crie out.

Humans can do cruel things to animals based on the no-pain assumption.

Crabs are boiled alive.
They try desperately to leave the pot when the water becomes too hot.
Certain restaurants serve fried live fish.
The fish is still gasping for air as people begin eating its fried body. Why? Ummmm, because it is supposed to taste better that way.

[valley]

I have no idea whether fish feel pain, but I think there is a danger of confusing "trying to escape stimulus" with "experiencing emotional pain". Of course the fish has receptors that will let its nervous system know that something is wrong and that it should try to escape, but this can all be done without any concious thought at all. It is possible to design a robot that will struggle and try to escape when it is "injured" and I would certainly argue that very simple creatures like worms, which seem to thrash about in agony, are very very unlikely to be experiencing anything that I would consider to be suffering.

In fact, I would suggest that there is no point in developing the brain-power to experience emotional pain unless you have a concious mind that sometimes needs over-ruling by basic physical stimuli.

[OmnipotentOne]

Does there brain size give them the capabilities to feel pain?  I assume it would have to be much more larger and complex to understand that the hook+biting=BAD.  Although I havnt learned nearly anything on different brain lobes, so knowing my guesses, I'm probably wrong!

To see the world through a grain of sand.

[qazibasit]

no what i think is that the fish dont feel the pain coz their brain is not enough developed and they dont have the neural network reaching their brain instead it reach to the ganglia.

[echochartruse]

If fish could only scream!

[echochartruse]

If they didn't feel pain would they have need to be scared, fight to survive, hide?

[yor_on]

Pain is general to all animals. You got to be pretty daft to assume that only humans can feel it. It's one of the basic survival mechanisms. What is not as clear is how they treat the feeling. Humans have all kind of ways, we can ignore it, project it at something else, etc, that's because our brain is wired that way. A fish probably don't have those possibilities, although there are some differences in the oceans too Octopuses are said to be pretty smart for example. But we don't test fish for their IQ, dolphins possibly, but, on the other hand they're not fish, they're mammals.

But yes, it seems as fish feel pain, just as you do. The science behind whether Fish Feel Pain.

[cheryl j]

Pain seems necessary to stop an animal when it is in the process of damaging itself, even if it isn't always able to remember the experience for future reference. (It sure took my dog a long time to learn to stay away from porcupines, even though he seemed to be in pain afterwards.) I would guess that every animal with a nervous system experiences pain. On the other hand, within an animal, not all tissues are equally sensitive to pain or the same kinds of pain. In an anatomy lecture, I heard a surgeon say he could cauterize your intestine and you wouldnt feel a thing, but if he stretched it, you'd scream, because over stretching is what evolution has made the intestine sensitive to, whereas the intestine almost never encounters extremes in temperature, so it has no pain receptors for that.

[DöubleHelix]

Someone told me that fish have a 20 second memory.

Have you ever seen the episode of Mythbusters where they train goldfish? You can't train an animal with a 20 second memory. One reason why I think keeping fish in small tanks like so many do is so inhumane. They say it's always a new experience to the fish, but it's not.

EDIT: Also, as far as the debate goes: I believe fish do feel pain. It's a warning system, just like it is for any other animal. I remember when I was younger and I had fish. We had a chinese fighter fish, Orlando, that once got caught in the clip that held the bubbler on the wall of the tank. His back fin got caught, if I remember right. My dad was the one to get him out of it, though. I can't remember whether the fish thrashed or not, or whether he was just still. I'll have to ask my dad about it.

RIP Orlando. (He later died of an infection/tumor that was a result of the accident)