Do fishes feel pain
Some scientists claim fish can feel pain- is this assertion true or is there something fishy going on?
Can fish feel pain or are they just fishing for sympathy? If fish can feel pain, well, that would be a whole other kettle of fish!
Some animal rights activists have concern over the ability of fish to feel, while others say that we have bigger fish to fry. Nope. Should have stopped at three.
The debate over the ability of fish to feel pain is quite intense within the scientific community and I’m going to do my best to summarize the slew of available resources on both sides. I have to be honest, going into this video I figured I’d read a couple articles and write up a script. Two days later, I was still reading. I like to keep my videos as short and simple as possible. But also don’t want to skimp on the facts. This article is the first in a series I’ll be doing on fish and other marine life. Before we look into whether or not fish can feel pain, we must first understand pain itself. Now this is a tall order- scientists are constantly learning more about the nature of pain and there are still a lot of unanswered questions. But I’ll do my best to simplify this extremely complex topic.
The International Association for the Study of Pain has defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage with the conditions that, one: pain is always subjective; two: pain is sometimes reported in the absence of tissue damage; and three: the definition of pain should avoid tying pain to an external eliciting stimulus.” These last points are of grave importance within the fish pain debate, so I’ll briefly elaborate. One of the most critical concepts about pain is the distinction between nociception and pain. When you cut your finger, that stimulus activates your nociceptors, which are receptors of sensory neurons that respond to potentially damaging stimuli by sending signals to your spinal cord and brain. Nociceptors are often incorrectly called pain receptors. While the message they convey can be interpreted in the brain as pain, nociception itself can occur without pain. While nociception is a purely neurological occurrence, pain perception is largely psychological and emotional. To illustrate the distinction, if you’re under anesthesia during surgery, your nocicpetors will still be firing and carrying signals to the dorsal horn of your spinal cord where a reflex response is triggered and then the signal moves on to the brain to be interpreted. However, as you’re unconscious when you're under anesthesia, you cannot interpret these signals as pain and thus do not experience pain.
Therein lies the rub with the fish debate. In his article entitled “The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain,” which has become the go-to resource for the “fish don’t feel pain camp,” Dr. James D. Rose argues that because fish lack a neocortex, a neuroanatomical structure that, in humans is associated with conscious awareness, they cannot feel pain. He explains that fishes’ response to and avoidance of noxious stimuli, such as electric shocks, are simply unconscious, reflexive responses. Nociception goes way back on the evolutionary timeline, existing in some of the earliest animals possessing nervous systems. Sea anemone, corals and jellyfish, for example, all possess nociception. Rose compared fishes’ avoidance of noxious stimuli to the involuntary contorted facial reactions displayed by neocortically damaged humans who possessed no consciousness yet would grimace in a way we associate with pain when stimulated. Rose argued that because fish lack the conscious awareness of their nociceptive cues due to their absence of a neocortex, they cannot feel pain.
This distinction between pain and nociception seems to take down any claim of fish pain perception predicated on their avoidance behavior and possession of nociceptors. However, Rose’s stance isn’t as foolproof as it may appear. Dr. Stephanie Yue in her report Fish and Pain Perception, points out that one of the major flaws in Rose’s argument is the fact that it hinges on the neocortex being “the sole means by which pain can be experienced,” which “suggests that it is the seat of consciousness.” She goes on to state that “A cursory review of the neurobiology of consciousness shows both the complexity of the phenomenon of consciousness and that conscious phenomena, such as pain, are not restricted to any one location in the brain. Additionally, the neocortex is unique to mammals. Where the presence of a large, considerably developed neocortex the requirement for experiencing pain, as Rose suggests, his theory would eliminate birds, amphibians, other non-mammalian animals, and even some mammals from having the capacity of feeling pain, which is unfounded.” In short, comparing a fish or any other different species to our own rather than attempting to understand their unique physiology is greatly flawed, especially when the neuroanatomical aspects of our own consciousness are still so unknown.
This kind of cross-species application is the main flaw of the animal testing model as well. Check out this video in my animal testing series to see how humans are often harmed and even killed by medications that made it through animal trials. Now in reality, the brain of fish isn’t even quite as foreign from ours as Rose would have us think. For the sake of time and to keep this as simple as possible, I’m not going to delve into the specific similarities in brain structure and function between fish and mammals. If you want to get into the scientific nitty gritty, which I highly recommend, see the blog post for this video linked in the description below and right there in the iCard sidebar for links to a veritable sea of resources on this matter. This is definitely one of my more heavily cited nuggets, so to my fellow nerds out there, enjoy. ** So, just as Rose’s paper is the flagship of the “fish don’t feel pain” camp, the “fish do feel pain camp” was more or less born from a paper published by Lynne Sneddon, Victoria Braithwaite, and Michael Gentle in 2003. Within their initial study the three scientists injected bee venom or vinegar around the mouth of fish and recorded their reactions. The fish had increased breathing rates, lost interest in food, and would rub the injection sites up against the glass of the tank. I’d like to take a moment here to talk about this kind of animal testing. While the scientific exploration of animals’ experience is fascinating and can help convince people that animals do feel and deserve protection, it’s never justifiable to harm, torture and kill animals in the name of intellectual progress. Because they do not consent to participating in such studies as human trial participants can, the practice is not ethical. I’ll circle back to this matter when I wrap up but I just wanted to make a note as I’ll be relaying results from such studies. Immediately after publishing, Braithwaite and her colleagues were grabbed up by the media who all wanted to know whether this meant that fishing, or angling, was cruel. Unfortunately, this study did not answer that question as it didn’t delve into the perception of pain, the level beyond nociception. In order to do so, Braithwaite states they needed to incorporate complex behavior. They chose a trout’s natural avoidance of new things, a behavior that requires a higher order cognitive process. Again fish were injected with vinegar, and the control group with saline, and a new object was introduced to their aquariums.
Those injected with saline showed the expected avoidance behavior while those injected with vinegar did not. Braithwaite states, "To us these results showed that the vinegar injection was impairing the fishes’ attention, as expected if the fish experienced discomfort and pain associated with the vinegar treatment.” To be sure, they repeated the experiment, only giving all of the fish a dose of morphine along with their injections. As predicted, when given pain relief, the fish injected with vinegar resumed their normal avoidance behavior Braithwaite summarizes that, “the fish must be cognitively aware and experiencing the negative experiences associated with pain. Being cognitively aware of tissue damage is what we mean when we talk about feeling pain.” A lesser-known Russian study published before Braithwaite and her colleagues found similar results and since the 2003's publication, a large number of subsequent studies have been conducted, finding more and more evidence of fishes’ pain perception While the question of nociception is separate from the question of pain, it can be further said that the question of pain may be separate from the question of suffering. So, do fish suffer? Well this is again where Rose would say absolutely not as they lack the neocortext and higher consciousness. However, these kind of statements assume that fish have to suffer as we suffer and feel as we feel or not suffer or feel at all. It’s undeniable that fish have different physiology from us so it would be naïve to assume their cognitive and emotional abilities would be identical to ours. However, just because fish may not express themselves in a way we readily comprehend, does not mean they don’t feel pain and suffer. Regarding this further layer, Braithwaite points to a number of studies that delved into the cooperative interaction of fish with other aquatic animals and evidence of monitoring and self-consciousness. She states that, “pulling the different threads together, fish really do appear to possess key traits associated with consciousness.
Their ability to form and use mental representations indicates fish have some degree of access consciousness,” suggesting that, “if we already accept that mammals and birds are sentient creatures that have the capacity to experience positive and negative emotions—pleasure or suffering, we should conclude that there is now sufficient evidence to put fish alongside birds and mammals. Given all of this, I see no logical reason why we should not extend to fish the same welfare considerations that we currently extend to birds and mammals.” She even goes so far as to compare the evidence for fish’s ability to perceive pain to that of neonate and preterm babies, concluding that there is far more evidence of fish experiencing pain than for human fetuses. Still, sadly, Braithwaite does not take this to the full logical conclusion and still eats fish. Something to make note of as well- aside from the pain inflicted upon fish who are hooked and even gutted and descaled while still alive is the incredibly painful and slow process of dying from lack of water. Think about the process of drowning- how terrifying and painful it would be. Just as we cannot live without air, fish cannot live without water. And many fish that are caught are left to gasp on a bed of ice while they die a terrifying and painfully slow death. The Humane Slaughter Act of the United States, which in and of itself is, kind of a joke, does not include any provisions for fish, poultry, rabbits or other animals outside of cattle, pigs and sheep. There is no regulation on the treatment of fish. And because it’s so easy to relegate them to a sub-animal status given how different they are from us in appearance and behavior, their deaths are absolutely brutal. Now, as promised, to circle back to the issue of animal testing. We may be tempted to say, “but if they didn’t conduct these studies, then there wouldn’t be proof that fish suffer so more fish would be suffering.” Sadly, the proof that fish suffer hasn’t put a dent in the slaughtering of fish. And the mentality of “the ends justify the means” is a dangerous road to go down. On a global scale, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that we catch between 0.97-2.7 trillion wild fish every year. I think it’s prudent to bring forth the words of Jeremy Bentham in his text The Principles of Morals and Legislation published in 1789 in which he said “The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer?’ Thanks for sticking with me through this research-intensive nugget. The time it took to produce this video clocks in at about [53 hours]. If you’d like to help support Bite Size Vegan so I can keep putting in the long hours to bring you this educational resource, please check out the support links in the video description below where you can give a one-time donation or receive perks and rewards for your support by joining the Nugget Army- the link for that is also in the iCard sidebar. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and share it around to show that fish deserve respect, protection, and freedom. If you’re new here, be sure to hit that big red subscribe button down there for more awesome vegan content every Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays, and to not miss out on the rest of the fish and marine life series.
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