Do Fish Feel Pain?

[Rhiannon]

I was just wondering if fish feel pain when they are suffering from say a fungal infection or whatever?

I just had my Angel die tonight, I am really upset about it. I treated the water for her fungal disease but I was to late.

She looked so helpless, I felt so bad.

So I am a little upset. I am about to go to bed to have a sook.

Thanks

 

[richchappy]

basically noone knows, there have been many papers on it realeted to fishing etc but no real answer

 

[paul-discus]

sorry to hear that. I'm sure they feel discomfort but as for pain?

 

[kniesh]

Anything with a brain will feel pain unfortunately. Always makes me feel bad to see sick animals who are helpless.

 

[MHunt]

Pain is a natural reaction to anything that affects the body. It's really a defense mechanism, when we feel something hot we move our hand away because it begins to hurt. When you cut yourself, the nerve endings go crazy, causing pain. It's really a defense mechanism telling you there's something wrong and to try and do something about it. I would guess fish feel pain in a similar way that we do.

 

[The-Wolf]

Do Fish Feel Pain?

yes they do

yes and no

maybe

well I for one am going to give all animal life the benifit of the doubt and say yes they do feel pain.

 

[richchappy]

think about this then, when fishing the fish gets a hook through there lip and then they run away and cause themself more pain and when reeling in they continue to swim away. If they felt pain surely they would swim towards you

 

[Fella]

Why wouldn't they? Evolutionary if they couldn't feel pain they would be at an incredible disadvantage.

 

[Opcn]

Scientists never performed experiments ortook data before they announced that fish don't feel pain. It was a thought experiment, The scientists who did it just sat down and thought to themselves that Fish are stupid and mainly act on reflexes and there for feeling pain doesn't benefit them, because they respond straight to the sensation of being scratched or cut or bitten and thats the end of it. But thats just being stupid, Have you ever burnt your hand? If you have you may remember jerking your hand away from the pan or iron about half a second before any pain set in; If you went into mild shock after an injury you would notice that you responded to the injury several seconds before there was any pain at all. The reason for this is that humans have reflexes too, and early in the process pain only interferes. So "If pain doesn't tell us to stop doing something or to escape what is it good for?" you ask. The answer to that is simple, Pain teaches. Pain is a mechanism that imprints a strong negative on any memory, its how we remember that eating food fresh out of the deep fat fryer is a bad idea, or that biting your tounge isn't nearly as pleasant as biting into a good steak.

Edit: Richchappy Have you ever seen a dog thats gotten its leg caught up in wire? It pulls and pulls to get away despite the fact that its very painful and infact going more slowly and going towards the wire would probably set the dog free. I suppose it goes back to them getting caught in jaws, sure it hurts to pull away from a jaw, but it is infinitely worse evolutionarily to get eaten. Which leads towards my postulate, that pain isn't to tell us what to do, but to tell us what not to do again in the future.

 

[The-Wolf]

The scientists who did it just sat down and thought to themselves that Fish are stupid and mainly act on reflexes and there for feeling pain doesn't benefit them

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?"
taken from one of my earlier links
http/www.firstscience.com/home/perspecti...e-1-1_1818.html

 

[tttnjfttt]

I think they do. Consider when they have ich or other parasite infections (and sometimes bacterial columnaris/fungus), fish will be seen scratching on things in the tank, trying to get rid of parasites/infection. What would cause this response except for feeling pain?

 

[richchappy]

i know they feel somthing odviously but is it just they know somthing is wrong and all they know too do is swim away etc, to be honest its impossible to know how they feel pain

 

[Bignose]

The question at the heart of the matter is really instinct versus actual pain. Consider the age old experiment, you accidentally place your hand on a hot stove. Your body will pull that hand back very quickly... then it starts to hurt. The pulling back was a response from information that only went to your spinal cord and back, when the information made the full trip from the brain and back, that is when pain was involved. The pulling back, instinct, only needs a spinal cord, but the actual feeling of pain requires a highly developed brain. Today we know what parts of the brain are the pain receptors, since they light up like a christmas tree on MRIs when slight pain is administered to test subjects.

So then the argument comes down to, physiologically, do fish's brains have the higher development needed to feel actual pain or are they primarily responding to instinct? The question is tossed around the scientific literature, there is a Professor James Rose from Wyoming whose opinion is that fish's brains are not highly developed enough to feel pain. While others, like Professor Moccia from Guelph Canada whose opinion is that the brain is developed enough, argue that newer studies show that the brain is more similar to humans' brains than may have been first thought.

There is evidence to support both sides of the debate, the real problem of course is that the fish cannot tell us, and it would be extremely costly to perform an MRI on a fish's brain while performing these pain experiments. Further clouding the issue is that Prof Rose is a supporter for the fish farming industry, who, of course, would really like to think that fish don't feel pain so that they can continue to cram them into fish farms. I cannot speak for Prof. Moccia, so I will not just guess about his motives. So while there is evidence for both sides, it is very difficult to evaluate fairly with the biases that are evident.

At this point, I think that you have to personally decide on your own, though I also think that eventually a more definite answer will be forthcoming some day when the necessary experiments become far cheaper and easier to perform.

 

[sharkbaitwoohaha]

think about this then, when fishing the fish gets a hook through there lip and then they run away and cause themself more pain and when reeling in they continue to swim away. If they felt pain surely they would swim towards you

question was wether they felt pain not wether they had an amazing problem solving ability. when something is a shock and hurts you do pull away.
my theory. fish are vertebrates. point of spine is really to protect the nerves. point of having nerves if you cant feel wth them
think about how sensitive the lateral line is.
also fish are wild animals. the gettin caught on a hook thing is prob a matter of fight or flight

 

[Spacecloud]

Some fish sit on heaters until they get burnt which says to me that they can't feel pain, otherwise they would move away from the heater. However, it was proved then fishing would probably be banned!!