Do insects feel pain?

[John Acorn]

Lepsters,

I would like to recommend Daniel Dennett's "Kinds of Minds" as a good 
read on the topic.

John

On May 23, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Doug Yanega wrote:

>> What we call our 'pain receptors' are heat receptors, pressure 
>> receptors etc. Insects have lots of similar receptors.
>
> Actually, vertebrates do have specific receptors for pain, and special 
> neural pathways to transmit these signals, not shared by insects; if 
> insects feel pain using "similar" receptors, it is not pain as WE 
> experience it, and probably not even very "similar," regardless. This 
> is trivially seen if you compare what happens to a vertebrate if it 
> has a limb removed traumatically versus an insect with a limb 
> similarly removed. Both react violently at the moment of trauma, but 
> they act quite differently once the direct stimulus is gone. A 
> vertebrate writhes in agony for a very long time, and is largely 
> incapacitated simply due to pain. An insect goes about its business, 
> and alters its gait to accommodate the missing limb, but shows very 
> little outward sign of distress.
> I can personally attest to the necessity of pain receptors (as opposed 
> to pressure or temperature receptors) in generating the classic 
> vertebrate reaction, having had a neurological episode which cut off 
> the pain pathways in one of my legs below the knee - I can still feel 
> physical contact, just as sensitively as ever, but I cannot 
> distinguish, say, pressure applied by a pencil tip versus pressure 
> applied by a needle; *neither* is painful to me. I can also tell when 
> something is at a temperature extreme, but not whether it's too hot or 
> too cold, nor does it feel painful (I'm still waiting for an 
> opportunity to win a bar bet by standing on burning coals, on just my 
> left foot, longer than someone else can do the same). Interestingly, I 
> still do have normal reflex responses, but without experiencing the 
> usual pain. Given this (i.e., that the whole "pain" thing in our own 
> system can so easily be thrown off), I find it impossible to believe 
> that insects could feel pain the way we do unless they had EXACTLY the 
> same nervous system, and they clearly do not. I rather expect that 
> they experience stimuli the way my left foot does - pressure and 
> temperature register, and can provoke responses and reflexes, but do 
> not induce *pain*.
>
> Peace,
> -- 
>
> Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research 
> Museum
> Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not 
> UCR's)
>              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>
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