>> “People don’t really think of insects as feeling any kind of pain,” said Associate Professor Neely. “But it’s already been shown in lots of different invertebrate animals that they can sense and avoid dangerous stimuli that we perceive as painful. In non-humans, we call this sense ‘nociception’, the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli like heat, cold, or physical injury, but for simplicity we can refer to what insects experience as ‘pain’.”<p>I don't understand the insistence of the article to place quotes around the word pain when referring to what insects feel. These are animals that can sense their surroundings and react to stimuli. How else would they be convinced to avoid dangerous situations, than by an unpleasant sensation?<p>In any case, the simplest hypothesis is that all animals can feel pain. The null hypothesis should be the opposite. And it has to be a complex hypothesis that explains why some animals can feel pain while others don't (which is tricky).
Infant surgery without anesthesia was common still in the mid 80's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surgery-without-anesthesia-went-unchallenged-832387.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surg...</a><p>> surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals.<p>It's unknown where the consciousness starts (the hard problem sense) is but it's not unreasonable to assume that sentience (ability to feel pain and pleasure and experience subjectively) and ability to suffer that comes with it happens long before the ability to form long term memories, object permanence, or other any other cognitive abilities.
Rethink Priorities (which focuses on foundational research on neglected causes) has carried out a massive amount of research recently on invertebrate welfare and sentience.<p>Their findings are well worth a read:<p>> Rethink Priorities reviewed the scientific literature relevant to invertebrate sentience. We selected 53 features potentially indicative of the capacity for valenced experience and examined the degree to which these features are found throughout 18 representative biological taxa. These data have been compiled into an easily sortable database that will enable animal welfare organizations to better gauge the probability that (various species of) invertebrates have the capacity for valenced experience. This essay details what we’ve done, why, and the strengths and weaknesses of our approach.<p><a href="https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2019/6/7/invertebrate-sentience-a-useful-empirical-resource" rel="nofollow">https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2019/6/7/invertebrate...</a>
I wonder if one could make a case for having to be more humane in insect farming? Current practices include steaming and crushing insects to death.<p>(The Economist | Grub’s up <a href="https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/06/beetles-and-flies-are-becoming-part-of-the-agricultural-food-chain?frsc=dg%7Ce" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/06/...</a>)
Somewhat related essay from a negative utilitarian about consequences of insects feeling pain: <a href="https://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suffering/" rel="nofollow">https://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suff...</a>
As a kid I would rip limbs off insects one by one and watch them suffer. As an adult I carefully capture them inside and release outside. With all the insect die offs and all, little critters who stroll into my place get a 2nd chance. Unless they are mosquitoes. Those suckers get a quick death.
I once read something on Reddit that imagined how the world would be like if ants could make audible noise in response to being touched or killed. I feel like that definitely add a new perspective to how we see insects
Seems like there could be a mythical story or similar here.<p>Hero asks the gods for gift of healing. Gods grant the gift along with pain so that we know when we are injured (and of course, in need of the gift.) No gift from the gods comes free.<p>I'll be sure to be more careful with my insect friends. And I'll be more vigilant in compassionate killing.
TLDR: They damaged a nerve in one leg of the drosophila fly. The injury was then allowed to fully heal. After the injury healed, they found the fly’s other legs had become hypersensitive through loss of the pain inhibitors (GABA).
Why wouldn't they feel pain?<p>It's such a superior attitude to even consider that only humans could feel pain.<p>It's also obvious that any complex organism feels pain... It the most basic evolutionary protection mechanism. Anything that didn't feel pain would soon be evolved out.
It looks like if this is extrapolated into our understanding of pain then using diatomaceous earth (DE) as non toxic pest control would imply quite some discomfort by insects as it acts mechanically as well as a desiccant. But on the other hand insects are unlikely to evolve around a mechanical opponent.
Duh. This feels like a topic that the scientific community has a bizarre and self serving view of. There’s no reason to think insects don’t feel pain, which is a basic evolutionary mechanism. So why the need to scrutinize the topic? Because of the need to defend a long line of justifications made throughout the decades as to why humans should be able to treat other beings poorly and still consider ourselves “moral”.
All the comments discussing the moral implications of harming insects are focusing on the wrong part of how useful this information is.<p>As the link says, this research indicates that we can use insects to do basic research on Neuropathic pain. Insects, being easy and fast to breed, and easy to manage in large quantities, makes this especially useful for research.<p>Now they can try all sorts of methods of tackling the problem, from drugs to gene therapy.<p>It's not, of course, proof that successes will translate to mammal or human models, but it's an excellent way to do some initial concept filtering.
Is this a surprise? Dogs and cats, being injured, show that they feel it and are sensitive to others touching where they hurt. Is it really that 'weird' to think that beings other than mammals would have this?