This is probably a question that has been asked in some way or another, and raises a bunch of other questions like “what is pain?” and “how can we even tell?”, but I’m just a little guilty… I was taking the trash out, and I didn’t see the moth I was about to step on as I walked out the door. It was…

[image] environ: It’s never a waste of time to feel compassion. Definitely.

[image] DianaStuder: We have had to learn, recently, that human babies feel pain. Some people still haven’t learned that human children feel pain.

The evidence is accumulating to suggest that yes, insects can feel pain and suffer

Might be just my autistic neurotype and some typical features of it, but I’ve been, as long as I can remember, sure that insects can feel pain. And also that they have more going on than being simple automatons. Still, some things that were strongly hinted by the tests described in the article were …

I knew it! Would be pointless for them to have a nervous system if they couldn’t…

Thanks for being compassionate. The kindest path is to assume yes. “An Immense World” by Ed Yong is a wonderful book on how other beings perceive their environment. It will have you thinking of many other ways to minimize the impact we have on others of all species. https://edyong.me/an-immense-worl…

Was it the one where bees learned to unscrew a bottle cap and taught others?

It’s an interesting question, and one that we probably won’t be able to definitively answer. Most of the studies that purport to show that “X species feels pain” deal with behavioral responses to injury or chemical pathways analogous to human pain responses. Which is fascinating, but really doesn’t …

I remember of hearing about that one too. Now I’m referring to one, where the bumblebees had to figure out where on a colour field they need to put coloured wooden balls to get a treat, and after they mixed things a bit, they showed they understood the concept by working with colours that hadn’t bee…

[image] environ: I think it’s a mistake to assume any other creature, regardless of species, will think or feel like you do in any given situation, especially if they weren’t raised and educated in the same bubble that you were - but that’s a different mistake to the one of thinking that means t…

Can moths feel pain?

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Can moths feel pain?

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