Add description, images, menus and links to your mega menu
A column with no settings can be used as a spacer
Link to your collections, sales and even external links
Add up to five columns
Add description, images, menus and links to your mega menu
A column with no settings can be used as a spacer
Link to your collections, sales and even external links
Add up to five columns
We will ship feeding insects though expecting delays UPS and USPS don't guarantee on time delivery
We will ship feeding insects though expecting delays UPS and USPS don't guarantee on time delivery
April 08, 2024 3 min read
Recent evidence suggests that at least some insect species might plausibly feel pain. These findings should prompt researchers to think about the welfare implications of insect experiments.
Do insects feel pain? Pain is an unpleasant subjective experience that often accompanies injury. This feeling is distinct from nociception: the unconscious process of detecting and avoiding harmful stimuli. Pain is hard to identify in nonhuman animals because unpleasant feelings might not accompany simple withdrawal and other behavioral responses. While we can determine that humans feel pain when they describe their experiences, this approach is obviously impossible for animals.
To understand whether an animal feels pain, researchers search for clues in their nervous systems and behavior. These clues can shift the probability of pain, even without delivering decisive proof. For example, imagine an injured dog with neuroanatomy and behavior similar to the human case. The dog winces, limps, licks their wound, avoids the place where they were injured, and seeks out analgesic drugs. None of these lines of evidence formally prove that the dog experiences pain, but collectively, they make this highly likely. Common sense dictates that such probability-shifting evidence is sufficient for us to consider the dog’s welfare.
What, then, can we say about the probability of pain in insects—and the potential importance of insect welfare? Some scientists have expressed skepticism about insect pain, pointing to their small nervous systems and apparently reflexive nocifensive behaviors [1]. Nonetheless, recent work has undermined these assertions
In a comprehensive review, we evaluated over 300 studies to understand the current state of evidence relevant to pain in 6 major insect groups [3]. We adopted a contemporary framework for assessing evidence relevant to pain, which has previously guided welfare policy [4]. The framework includes 8 criteria, encompassing both whether the animal’s nervous system might support pain and whether their behavior likely involves centralized, integrative processing with the sensory and affective aspects of pain (Box 1). Each criterion adds to the case for pain: the more criteria fulfilled, the higher the likelihood.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
October 15, 2024 3 min read
October 07, 2024 9 min read
September 09, 2024 3 min read
This section doesn’t currently include any content. Add content to this section using the sidebar.
Sign up to get the latest on sales, new releases and more …