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Fish suffer too? Duh, of course!
While visiting a relative, this summer I picked up an old issue of the Smithsonian magazine from 2003. On page 24, an article by Michael Parfit titled "Ouch," which explained that a team of Scottish animal biologists led byy 29 y/o Lynne Sheldon, has reported that fish feel pain. They injected bee venom and acid into the lips of captive trout. The article says they observed the fish rocked back and forth, rubbing their lips on the gravel beds of their fish tanks. Well, this caused consternation among the fisherman of the scientific community and others. Some retorted fish don't experience pain the same way humans do. James Rose, a fisherman and a professor in the University of Wyoming's Department of Zoology and Physiology claimed the researchers used poor methodology misinterpreted the data. He opined fish simply don't have the capability to experience suffering. Rose compares a fish's reaction to stimulation to the way some quadriplegics respond when their extremities are irritated. "If you pinch the hand of a quadriplegic," Rose said, "the hand would pull back, but the person, unless he was watching, wouldn't have any awareness of that stimulation." Parfit says "Sneddon isn't buying(that line of reasoning). It's not right to suggest that only humans and primates experience pain," she says. "[Rose's] definiton means that many other animals, including dogs, cats, or birds, can't experience pain." Even bloody PETA chimed in.
Others said basically I feel for the critters but I'm still gonna fish. I love to fish too. Never really been successful at it, though it is a great excuse to get out of the house into the wild. I used to be a vegan vegetarian, but have backslid into eating meat, cheese and fish again. I'm sure I'm not the only mindless carnivore on this sight. I could envision myself being a vegan again.
Feel free to sound off about if you think fish feel pain just like humans and other primates do or not.
I
Others said basically I feel for the critters but I'm still gonna fish. I love to fish too. Never really been successful at it, though it is a great excuse to get out of the house into the wild. I used to be a vegan vegetarian, but have backslid into eating meat, cheese and fish again. I'm sure I'm not the only mindless carnivore on this sight. I could envision myself being a vegan again.
Feel free to sound off about if you think fish feel pain just like humans and other primates do or not.
I
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Comments
But every being DOES have a different system of nerves. Its entirely possible that the quadriplegic metaphor is accurate.
But it could also be an incorrect and biased statement.
I really don't know enough about a fish's nervous system to comment any further, haha.
Mtns
It struck me as Duh ... yeah! I never went fishing again.
I wouldn't go fishing myself since I don't eat it, and I agree that it's cruel if it's just for sport. But if you do eat fish and you're fishing for food (or at least attempting to
You won't find such a study, because fish have a central nervous system, a peripheral nervous system, and a brain. All animals thus equipped (and those even less well equipped) feel pain and react to it (they run away). Try pinching your gold fish between your fingers and see if he swims away. If he does, it's not because he thinks you're ugly. It's because you're hurting him.
Mtns
How.....odd that the researchers would inject bee venom and acid into the lips of fish to find out if they feel pain. Makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. Bee venom and acid? Wasn't the bee venom enough? Or the acid? Why both? And why did they choose those particular things? It doesn't lend much confidence to the study when the methodology is so extreme. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway, I know you weren't asking about our opinions regarding the study. I just had to get those things off my chest. The rest of my response is kind of off topic too. I understand what you're saying. When I read that sentence though I couldn't help thinking that no one needs an excuse to go out into the wild, do they? The reason this struck me is because I've been thinking a lot lately about how much we're all expected to produce, work, be active, do things, stay busy. Idle hands being the something something of the devil and all that. I bought into that particular lie at a very young age and raced through my life in a daze of 'doing', never stopping to take a look inside.
Anyway, about fish feeling pain. I always thought that was a given. It's almost an irrelevance for me though because I think of non-harming in broader terms. The way I see it, if something is alive I try not to harm it. So if fish had no capacity for feeling pain that would be irrelevant to me. Causing it to bite a sharp hook which harms its mouth, pulling it out of the water which causes it to begin the process of suffocation and so on is harmful in my mind whether the fish actually feels the pain or not. Its lip is ripped, its body is put into crisis and the only difference between throwing it back and eating it is that the former seems ridiculous and cruel to me and the latter might be necessary to the life if the fisher but that would be the fisher's call.
For the sake of full disclosure, I don't fish but I still eat tuna and sometimes other fish if I can be assured it's not chock full of mercury, organochlorines, or other particularly harmful pollutants. Needless to say I don't eat a lot of other fish.
There are some things I find easy to decide, like wearing fur for fashion and status and killing/harming live things with my own hands. I know. It's not all that cool to let others do the killing for me but that's a whole other thread which we've had over and over again. Just saying....I would never wear fur for fashion and I'd never fish unless I had to.
Exactly my point.
It is my opinion that this is a commonly held misconception about the meaning of the claim that 'fish feel no pain'. I think the emphasis in that statement should be placed on feel and not on pain. I doubt that any self-respecting scientist would have ever implied that fish would have somehow survived millions of years of evolution without having the capacity to respond to negative physical stimuli.
So sure, fish can sense these sensations and react to them accordingly, but does that mean they feel them in the same way we do? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Could I just be reading way too much into this and blowing smoke? Perhaps, but not necessarily.
BB
I'm not sure the OP even picked a side...
Sorry for the mix up!
The same way that people take as a given that people with a certain color of skin are less intelligent. The same way that people take as a given that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice". The same way that people take as a given that (insert religion of your choice) is the only "true" religion.
People believe what they're taught, and they believe what they see on TV.
Sad, but true.
Mtns
Fish can be quite intelligent, too. Is there a reason to believe they don't feel pain?