The behavioural cue of ‘flexible self-protection’ is a way to establish whether an animal feels pain, scientists say

Crickets that received the hot probe “overwhelmingly” directed their attention to the affected antenna – they groomed it more frequently, and tended to it over a longer period of time, he says. “They weren’t just agitated and flustered. They were directing their attention to the actual antennae that was hit with this hot probe.”

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[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 29 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Obviously advanced life forms will feel pain, why did we think otherwise?

[–] eronth@lemmy.world 12 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Weirdly, it seems like "yes" for a large chunk of people. A lot of people seem to think only humans have a large gambit of emotions. Others think it's just mammals. It leads to a weird number of people who seem to think a lot of animals don't really feel anything

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

But, feeling is such an efficient and proven manner of influencing behavior of complex systems. Make it feel hungry, then it looks for food. It’s phenomenal. Why would we assume simpler beings rely on anything different?

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Some people don't even believe in evolution, do there it is.

And besides that, some people want to believe their food don't have feelings.

It makes sense all organisms feel some sort of pain because it's related to self preservation, but not all of them have an ability to communicate about the pain. And even less number of them communicate pain in a way we could understand, and even less that we actually care to listen.