Researcher: Fish Don't Feel Pain

Researcher James Rose recently published an analysis of the brains of fish in Reviews of Fisheries Science which concluded that fish do not feel pain.

Rose is a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming who has studied animals response to pain for 15 years. Rose’s paper concludes that pain sensations require a very specific part of the cerebral cortex which fish lack.

According to Rose,

Awareness of pain in humans depends on specific regions of the cerebral cortex. Fishes lack these brain regions and thus the neural requirements necessary for pain experience.

. . .

Pain is predicated on awareness. The key issue is the distinction between nociception and pain. A person who is anaesthetised in an operating theatre will still respond physically to an external stimulus, but he or she will not feel pain. Anyone who has seen a chicken with its head cut off will know that, while its body can respond to stimuli, it cannot be feeling pain.

Which rightly undercuts PETA’s pointless argument that any response to stimuli should be taken as prima facie evidence of the ability to feel pain. As an unnamed PETA spokesperson was quoted in The Daily Telegraph,

We believe that fishing is barbaric. Of course animals can feel pain. They have sensitivity, if only to avoid predators.

But if a simple stimulus-response mechanism is all that is required to demonstrate that an organism experience pain, then many things that PETA does not consider self-aware — including some plants — must be included in the category of things that feel pain and hence (according to PETA) have rights.

Sources:

New research concludes that fish lack the capacity to feel pain. Bill Becher, ESPN Outdoors, 2003.

Fish lack the brains to feel pain, says the latest school of thought. Rajeev Syal, Daily Telegraph (London), February 10, 2003.