By Stuart Brown,
FirstScience.com
September 2003
Do Fish Feel
Pain?
"The gull
turned its head in rapid, almost robotic movements,
as if to verify it was alone, and then it hopped
down to where the clam it had dropped lay open on
the smooth, hard-packed sand. The clam cracked open
like an egg and Jack saw raw meat inside, still
twitching, or perhaps that was his imagination.
Don't want to see this. But before he could turn
away, the gull's yellow, hooked beak was pulling at
the meat, stretching it like a rubber band, and he
felt his stomach knot into a slick fist. In his mind
he could hear that stretched tissue screaming -
nothing coherent, only stupid flesh crying out in
pain."
- The Talisman - Stephen King and Peter Straub
Pain is not a
respecter of intelligence. We tend to assume that
the stupidest individual we know is capable of
feeling as much pain as we do. We don't tend to say:
"Well, Bob is
pretty dumb you know. Are we really sure that he
felt pain when that truck hit him? Ok. I know he
flew 25 feet in the air, let out a blood
curdling scream and then thrashed about for ten
minutes. But was that just a motor response? Was
he really feeling it?"
We just don't. Bob
may be dumb, but pain he most certainly did feel.
And yet change it around to say:
"Well fish are
pretty dumb you know. Are we really sure that
fish felt pain when we hauled it 25 feet in the
air with a metal hook in its mouth, juggled it,
patted ourselves on the back for a bit, took a
picture, then weighed it while all the while it
is gasping for air (I did throw it back after
all!)" And we aren't so sure.
Fish aren't cuddly.
They don't wag their fins at you when you enter the
room. They seem distant, aloof, independent, rather
like cats really, only without the mitigating fur
that is amusing to stroke. Tell me, if you stuck a
hook through your cats mouth, dunked him in water
and stood and watched while he floundered
desperately for air. Would you suspect that might be
a painful experience?
Is that same
experience painful for a fish though? That is the
first question. There is actually rather a lot of
science to back up the fact that fish do feel pain.
Recent research published in April 2003 by
The Royal Society
investigated the sensory system of trout through
their responses to injections of bee venom and
acetic acid around their mouths. In effect the
research was trying to find out whether fish
possessed the same kind of pain receptors that have
already been identified in amphibians, birds and
mammals including humans. And secondly, whether the
response to the pain producer (i.e. the bee sting
etc) was not just a reflex response which might be
akin for example to pressing the belly of a talking
barbie doll; but rather an actual adverse reaction
to the pain stimulus.
What they found was
that the fish had 58 such receptors around the mouth
and actually reacted at lower levels of pain
stimulation then humans, perhaps because their skin
is more easily damaged. After the fish were injected
with the venom they were observed to show a rocking
motion akin to that displayed by other mammals when
experiencing stress; they also rubbed their lips on
the bottom of the tank and against the walls, and
took over twice as long to resume feeding then a
control group. The study, which was led by Dr Lynne
Sneddon of Liverpool University concluded:
In
short, they felt pain and reacted to it.
One of the most
interesting results of the study is the increase in
the length of time it takes for the fish to resume
feeding after experiencing pain. This is akin to you
falling off your bike as a child and being somewhat
reluctant to get back on. Literally the pain is not
then just a physical sensation it is psychological.
Our poor trout were stressed out. And whilst they
are unlikely to win any 'Brain of the Month' awards,
it seems churlish to dismiss the feelings they are
experiencing as irrelevant simply because they are
not making all the mental distinctions we might.
Pain is pain is pain when you are the being
experiencing it.
And it's not just
trout. Another study in the late 80's by
Dutch researcher John Verheijen investigated the
reaction of carp to being caught with a hook and
then released. They found that carp that had been
caught and then released abstained from feeding for
a considerably longer period of time, and showed
stress type behaviour like making rapid darting
movements, spitting, diving and shaking their heads.
The study concluded that the fish felt pain from
being hooked, but that their behaviour was mostly a
fear response to possibly being caught again. In
effect then, in a similar way that a victim of
violent crime may get over the physical injuries
quite quickly, but be traumatised for far longer,
the fish showed a similar trauma response to being
caught.
Sense a pattern
emerging here? The RSPCA certainly seem to think so.
A report by the RSPCA in April 1994 concluded:
"There is
little to support the supposition that animals
with larger brains experience pain in a more
meaningful way than those with smaller brains;
simply that they use neural structures similar
to our own to interpret it. There is no reason
to believe that fish are not achieving the same
processing effect in other parts of the Central
Nervous System. All the fundamental structures
and modulation processes necessary to achieve a
perception of pain are present in fish."
And even today on the
RSPCA website in giving advice to potential fish
owners for their own home aquariums, they advise:
"Fish are very
delicate and sensitive. They should not be
caught and moved by hand as this is very
distressing for them and they are easily
injured."
So, let's go with our
common sense here. The UK's leading animal charity
reckons that even handling your pet fish in a rough
way causes them distress. What do you suppose
shoving a hook through their mouth, juggling them in
the air while you get them on a set of scales and
watching them gasp for air might do for their state
of mind? Probably not very calming for them I
suspect.
Ok. So
angling is not a great experience for our friend the
fish. What about commercial fishing. Is that any
better from a 'pain' perspective? In short, no. It
is much worse. What typically happens in commercial
fishing is that the boats now use enormous drift
nets that are sometimes miles long to scoop tons of
fish.
- First off these
also have the immediate effect of
killing dolphins,
porpoises and turtles in their masses.
- Secondly, as
these nets are dragged along the
fish are squeezed and
bounced against each other, often for hours at a
time, and as "fish are very delicate and
sensitive" we can only imagine what that must
feel like as their scales are rubbed either
against each other, or even in the mesh of the
nets themselves.
- Thirdly, as
these nets can be dragged up from great depths
the fish might also have to contend with the
pressure changes that brings, which can cause
internal rupturing,
eyes to pop out of their
sockets and stomachs to pop out of their mouths.
This is really no different from a diver that
gets 'the bends' because they have come to the
surface too quickly. We have hyperbaric chambers
to help us out when we do this, but the fish
obviously does not get the same courtesy.
- Fourthly, even
when the fish makes it to the surface its
suffering isn't over, because they are then
dumped unceremoniously onto the decks of the
trawlers where they not
only cannot breathe, but also stand a good
chance of being crushed to death as the
weight of the rest of the catch piles down on
top of them.
- Fifthly, as if
they haven't put up with enough in terms of
'nightmare ways to die' they are then
either manhandled, often
by pitchfork, some being stabbed in the process,
into holds ready to be taken back to shore or if
they are non-target fish (“bycatch”), then they
may be thrown overboard having just effectively
been tortured, suffocated and stabbed. Nice.
Now,
that's not great. But this is all a positive
procession of luuurve in comparison with what our
pink friend the lobster has to contend with.
None of that gentle preamble torture stuff. Oh no.
Screw him. "Let's boil him alive! He tastes better
that way!"
It is a widely
held belief that lobsters do not feel pain. Think
again. Oxford University zoologist Dr. John
Baker, found that lobsters dropped into boiling
water, showed "powerful struggling movements"
for up to two minutes and he concluded that these
were not reflex actions but indications of pain. He
also experimented with other methods of cooking
them, such as starting off with the water cold and
then gradually heating it, but concluded that this
just led to more prolonged suffering.
Lobsters can live for
over 100 years and carry their young for 9 months.
Like us. And according to invertebrate zoologist Dr
Jaren G. Horsley, "The
lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system
that puts it into a state of shock when it is
harmed. It probably feels itself being cut... I
think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from
being cut open... and feels all the pain until its
nervous system is destroyed" during
cooking.
Now, think of when you last spilled hot tea or
coffee on yourself. Did it hurt? Now imagine being
boiled alive in a bath of boiling water. If you
thought a lobster had even 10% or 1% of your
capacity to feel that pain do you think it might be
just a little cruel to do what we do now?
"Ok. Ok. Lobster's
out. But what next? Worms? Wasps? Plants? Should I
stop eating asparagus now because it might be having
a bad day. If my tomatoes scream out in pain where
is there to go? I GOTTA EAT SOMETHING!!!"
Calm down. I feel
your pain! Just use your head and try to limit it to
inflicting it on yourself and the people around you,
and not the rest of the planet! Personally I have a
simple philosophy when it comes to food and life in
general. If it once breathed I don't eat it, and I
try not to harm it. Have I ever squashed a worm or
splatted a wasp? Absolutely. I try not to make a
habit of it, and if I do it is generally an
accident. I don't much like wasps and frankly I am
not going to start up a 'Wasp Protection League'
anytime soon. The less of them in my house the
better. But unless they are attacking you or you are
allergic to them (in which case splat away - self
preservation baby!) then what's the harm in putting
a glass around them and letting them fly away into
the garden? Who knows, they might even do you a
favour and sting the neighbour you don't like!
There is actually
some research that indicates that plants do have
some kind of response when we cut them, as they
release a chemical called ethylene which seems to
control factors such as cell growth. However, plants
are devoid of nervous systems, nerve endings, and
brains and so although it is feasible to reason that
anything that is living can exhibit a response to
physical stimulus, it seems far-fetched to attribute
pain to plants because they cannot have a perception
of pain. In any case, on the plant front I do think
a line has to be drawn in the sand. When that
lobster gets lowered into the boiling waters he will
feel pain, and you can bet your house that it is
more then even the most caring, sharing tomatoe!
Pain minimisation has got to be the order of the
day, not sainthood. Screw aubergines and tomatoes I
say! Kill the vegetables! Save the animals! They
really ARE feeling pain and KNOWING IT is someway
along the path to helping to STOP IT.
