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Friday, April 18, 2008
Do fish feel pain?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I love this question.
It’s one of the most visible dividing lines between outdoors people and animal-rights activists because the only ones to know the true answer are the fish themselves. And they ain’t talking.
I figured that with the warm spring weather prompting anglers to flock to area lakes and rivers to go fishing, opening up this conversation would at least be provocative. We’ll see, I suppose.
Both sides say they have science on their side.
Dr. James Rose of the University of Wyoming, who has studied animals’ reactions to painful stimuli for three decades, has concluded that fish do not have the brain system necessary to feel pain. They react to being hooked but don’t have the ability in its brain to define it as pain. In “Do Fish Feel Pain?” Rose wrote, “The facts about the neurological processes that generate pain make it highly unlikely that fish experience the emotional distress and suffering of pain. Thus, the struggles of a fish don’t signify suffering when the fish is seized in the talons of an osprey, when it is devoured while still alive by a Kodiak bear, or when it is caught by an angler.”
In 2003, a study at Edinburgh University and the Roslin Institute in the United Kingdom — one that is used by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in its Fishing Hurts campaign — concluded that fish feel “emotional stress” in response to pain stimuli. The study was based on subjecting anethesized trout to damaging stimuli. The research team, according to PETA, concluded that fish clearly experience pain in the same way as mammals, both physically and psychologically.
That’s enough with the science.
My take on this has always been from a simple observation. If fish feel pain, why would they eat things that would cause them pain? Bass eat crawfish, which I’m sure probably uses its pinchers to defend itself. I’ve been pinched, and man it hurts. With so many things a bass can eat, why do they keep coming back for a meal of crawfish? Saltwater species eat urchins, spiney fish like pinfish and sting rays. They keep coming back for a meal, too.
So what’s your take? Do fish feel pain? Do you care?
