Do insects feel pain?

[Doug Yanega]

>While I agree that there are nerve fibers (alpha and c fibers) and 
>parts of the cerebrum dedicated to pain perception, I believe the 
>actual receptors are fairly generic neurons.

I hate to drag it out, but then maybe you're not recalling correctly 
- I can even remember, back in cell biology in college, an image of a 
cell with a rolled-up end like a jelly roll, with the axon encased in 
myelin and folded over so that it was very sensitive to pressure, and 
being told this was a special pain receptor; the term that comes to 
mind is "nociceptor". It was also my understanding, from my insect 
physiology lectures, that arthropods did not have nociceptors. 
Checking on Google just now, there are 26,300 hits on the term 
"nociceptor", but not one case where the term appears in conjunction 
with the term "arthropod" or "insect". One would expect that if 
insects had 'em, at least ONE of those >26,000 citations would refer 
to insects.

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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