Los Angeles Times: That Fish You Caught Was in Pain

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That Fish You Caught Was in Pain

Research challenges the myth among anglers that

fish can't feel pain from barbed hooks.

By Victoria Braithwaite

VICTORIA BRAITHWAITE, a behavioral biologist at

Edinburgh University, is on sabbatical at the

Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.

 

October 8, 2006

 

EVERY YEAR, sportsmen around the world drag

millions of fish to shore on barbed hooks. It's

something people have always done, and with

little enough conscience. Fish are Š well, fish.

They're not dogs, who yelp when you accidentally

step on their feet. Fish don't cry out or look

sad or respond in a particularly recognizable

way. So we feel free to treat them in a way that

we would not treat mammals or even birds.

 

But is there really any biological justification

for exempting fish from the standards nowadays

accorded to so-called higher animals? Do we

really know whether fish feel pain or whether

they suffer - or whether, in fact, our gut sense

that they are dumb, unfeeling animals is accurate?

 

Determining whether any type of animal really

suffers is difficult. A good starting place might

be to consider how people feel pain. When a sharp

object pierces the human body, specialized nerve

endings called nociceptors alert us to the

damage. Incredibly, no one ever seems to have

asked before whether fish have nociceptors around

their mouths. My colleagues and I in Edinburgh,

Scotland, recently looked in trout and found that

they do. If you look at thin sections of the

trigeminal nerve, the main nerve for the face for

all vertebrates, fish have the same two types of

nociceptors that we do - A-delta and C fibers. So

they do have the necessary sensory wiring to

detect pain.

 

And the wiring works. We stimulated the

nociceptors by injecting diluted vinegar or bee

venom just under the skin of the trout. If you've

ever felt the nip of vinegar on an open cut or

the sting of a bee, you will recognize these

feelings as painful. Well, fish find these

naturally irritating chemicals unpleasant too.

Their gills beat faster, and they rub the

affected area on the walls of their tank, lose

interest in food and have problems making

decisions.

 

When I have a headache, I reach for the aspirin.

What happens if we give the fish painkillers

after injecting the noxious substances?

Remarkably, they begin to behave normally again.

So their adverse behavior is induced by the

experience of pain.

 

But just because fish are affected by pain, does

that mean they actually feel it? To answer that,

we need to probe deeper into their brains (and

our own) to understand what it means to feel pain.

 

To determine what fish go through mentally when

they experience painful stimuli, we also need to

determine whether they have a capacity to feel

emotion and to suffer.

 

This is a much harder problem. It goes to the

very heart of one of the biggest unresolved

issues in biology: Do nonhuman animals have

emotions and feelings? Are nonhuman animals

conscious?

 

Scientists and philosophers have long debated

consciousness and what it is and whether it is

exclusively human. There are multiple definitions

and, frankly, we haven't really come to grips

with what it means to be conscious ourselves. Are

we conscious because we are capable of

attributing mental states to others, or perhaps

because we have a qualitative awareness of

feelings, whether positive or negative? And if we

can't define our own consciousness, can we expect

to detect it in fish?

 

Perhaps not, but we can look for behaviors and

abilities that we believe contribute to human

consciousness - for example, complex cognitive

abilities and specialized brain regions that

process emotion and memory.

 

It turns out that the stereotype of fish as slow,

dim-witted creatures is wrong; many fish are

remarkably clever. For example, they can learn

geometrical relationships and landmarks - and

then use these to generate a mental map to plan

escape routes if a predator shows up.

 

And their brains are not as different from ours

as we once thought. Although less anatomically

complex than our own brain, the function of two

of their forebrain areas is very similar to the

mammalian amygdala and hippocampus - areas

associated with emotion, learning and memory. If

these regions are damaged in fish, their learning

and emotional capacities are impaired; they can

no longer find their way through mazes, and they

lose their sense of fear.

 

None of this tells us that fish are conscious,

but it does demonstrate them to be cognitively

competent: They are more than simple automata.

 

So do we have to change the way we treat fish?

Some still argue that fish brains are so less

well developed than those of birds and mammals

that it isn't possible for fish to suffer. In my

view, that case is not proven.

 

Moreover, we actually have as much evidence that

fish can suffer as we do that chickens can. I

think, therefore, that we should adopt a

precautionary ethical approach and assume that in

the absence of evidence to the contrary, fish

suffer.

 

Of course, this doesn't mean that we necessarily

must change our behavior. One could reasonably

adopt a utilitarian cost-benefit approach and

argue that the benefits of sportfishing, both

financial and recreational, may outweigh the

ethical costs of the likely suffering of fish.

 

But I do find it curious that it has taken us so

long even to bother to ask whether fish feel

pain. Perhaps no one really wanted to know.

Perhaps it opens a can of worms - so to speak -

and begs the question of where do we draw the

line. Crustacean welfare? Slug welfare? And if

not fish, why birds? Is there a biological basis

for drawing a line?

 

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

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Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

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