Animal pain

 QUIZ REVIEW

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MODULE 2 -- Minds of animals--because of significance for ethics

1. pain
2. pleasure
3. morality
4. self-awareness
5. awareness of past and future
6. death

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PAIN 

1. What do we mean by pain?
• the ouch sensation
• not pain: fear, depression, anxiety
2. From what ethical perspectives does pain matter?
• Peter Singer, Jeremy Bentham
• But others as well

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ANIMAL PAIN QUESTIONS

Ed Yong, Am Immense World

• He's a science journalist
• A book about animal senses
• "Pain: The Unwanted Sense"

1. Which animals experience pain? 
2. Does their pain experience feel like ours?

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 NOCICEPTION VS. PAIN EXPERIENCE

(Yong, p. 120-124)

1. nociceptors--peripheral neurons that repond to damage; in skin, many areas of body--almost all animals have them
2. pain experience--in the brain

Nociception without pain experience

1. you reflexively withdraw hand from heat before it starts hurting
2. capsaicin in hot peppers stimulating nociceptors in mouth, but no feeling of pain
3. body damaged while you're focused on playing a sport

Pain experience without nociception

1. amputee still feels pain in foot

Ethically, what matters? Nociception or pain experience?

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HUMAN PAIN

(not in Yong)

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MAMMALS & BIRDS

1. He only discusses the naked mole rat
2. Livestock important for us, so we will come back to this

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DO FISH FEEL PAIN?

Lynne Sneddon, Victoria Braithwaite (Can Fish Feel Pain?)

1. nociceptors (22 in face alone) -- trout dissected
2. pathways to brain -- dissection, study under microscope, electrical stimulation
3. after vinegar/bee venom injection 
• they rub snout on gravel on sides of tank
• elevated heart rate and respiration and reduced hunger 
• altered behaviors -- examples in Yong
• they seek painkillers
• morphine changes these behaviors
4. But a very different brain--does that matter? (some say yes)

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INVERTEBRATES

CRUSTACEANS

• hermit crabs, lobsters
• experiment
• lobster nervous system

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PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

Yong, p. 129--Why would animals evolve to have BOTH nociception AND pain experience? What's the value of the pain experience? It takes extra brain components to have pain experience. Isn't it wasteful? "What's the adaptive value of suffering?"

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CEPHALOPODS

• squid--more sensitive all over after injury
• octopus--will break off part of limb that's injury and then tend the wound