Fish feel pain?????

[Bankbeater]

I don't know if the bass does, but I sure do when I get skunked ;D

[fishingJ]

Fish do feel pain but not like us. It isn't the pain like we feel that hurts it's more like uncomfortable.

[gatrboy53]

replica,pets are not wild animals ,they have over a long period of time been conditioned to human interaction.but even ther joy or hurt are not what we as humans percieve.

[George Welcome]

Avid you are certainly entitled to your opinion but what little reseach has been done, contradicts your opinion. The mouth, the cavity, and the throat cannot feel what we call pain or they wouldn't eat in many instances. In addition, pain is a human sense. We do not know what an animal senses. If I learned only a little of what my degree says I should know, I learned not to give human qualities, traits, and feelings to the animal kingdom.

[CoRy]

Maybe, CoRy, but have you ever gut-hooked a fish? The ones I have seem to bleed pretty red ;)quote]

lol, a few times, yes.  then, i think it would be impossible for then not to feel something.

[RockvilleMDAngler]

all living creatures feel pain but its not the same as a human feels pain. god made only man w/ reasoning skills to assemalate what pain is.i have castrated many hogs and calfs.no anasthesia or pain reliever and they scream bloody murder.take a razor knife and slit his sack and reach in and pull out his testies.pack it w/ SALT and let him go.w/in min. hes up and moving about and eating and doing the things pigs do.you do that to a human and he could die.animals fish included do not reason that what they feel is pain.the sensation they know they feel has a reaction but they dont think hurt,or pain or anything else.thats why its alright to kill a animal,fish, deer, cow, bird,they dont REASON senses. senses are instinct to an animal .they also dont feel glad, happy,or joy either

AMEN

I had this very talk with all my kids. (All of us should before PETA dose)

my oldest seen a stray cat eating road kill. She was mad at the cat. I explaned to her and my youngest two thats how the world works. Animals are animals and thats what they do . Its not wrong and that animals have no real sence of life and death love or hate. Just eat, survive and reperduce.

     

I hate PETA like most sportsman do, but why do dogs wag their tail and go crazy when they see their owner if they can not feel joy or happiness?

I love dogs and would have agreed 100% with you except that I just finished reading "Cesar's Way" by Cesar Millan (aka the Dog Whisperer) and an enormous confusion on the part of dog owners is that their dog is "happy" to see them.  In reality the wagging tail and panting etc. is a result of EXCITEMENT, not joy, we humans reward the excitement with "Ohh how's my baby you are so cute come to daddy..." so the dog becomes trained to react that way.  I still love it when my dog is excited to see me but you have to know that the dog is "excited" and not "happy."  If a dog is to be "happy" it has to be balanced and get TONS of exercise and feel like it is in a pack.

If you have a dog I HIGHLY reccomend "Cesar's Way", in three days I turned my 60lb American Bulldog from a crazed old-lady-scarer into a calm-submissive well-behaved dog that recognises me as the leader and doesn't question my leadership.  I wasn't able to walk my dog without having it pull me and chase bikers like they were satan, but now she walks next to me and doesn't even react when a biker or rollerblader comes by.

BTW I don't think fish feel pain but if they do the pain of a hook in the mouth is no big deal, I usually have the hook in a very soft place in the mouth anyway.

[nboucher]

In reality the wagging tail and panting etc. is a result of EXCITEMENT, not joy, we humans reward the excitement with "Ohh how's my baby you are so cute come to daddy..." so the dog becomes trained to react that way.  I still love it when my dog is excited to see me but you have to know that the dog is "excited" and not "happy."  If a dog is to be "happy" it has to be balanced and get TONS of exercise and feel like it is in a pack.

Tell it to my wife, who shamelessly anthropomorphizes all our animals, and I love her for it.  :

I've heard of Millan's book, Rockville, though I seem to remember something controversial about it (thanks to creeping senility, I can't remember quite what ) We're probably getting far off-topic now, but my impression is that over the past fifteen years or so ethologists have been taking a closer look at this business of "emotion" and animals and that the old bugaboo about animals not experiencing anything like human emotions is looking a little shakier. It's become pretty well established, I think, that animals, from otters to polar bears, exhibit behaviors that seem to be "play," though you could never know whether or not this brings them "joy." There's also all that stuff about elephants returning again and again to the site where one of the herd died, stroking the dead one's bones. We also like to think of ourselves as selfless for adopting kids who aren't ours, but when a pack of wolves does the same thing we figure there's nothing selfless about it. What's going on? Are the elephants experiencing "grief"? The point is that we have to be careful about our certainties concerning other species. We assume everything they do is to ensure the survival of the species, when the very concept of species is a human construct. It really is impossible for us to experience reality the way they do. I'm not saying that other species feel emotions as we do, or are "equal" to humans, just that we shouldn't be too arrogant in our assumptions about how they experience reality, since we can only view them in our own limited human terms.

So far most of these studies have focused on mammals and birds. My experience as an angler makes me agree that getting hooked in the mouth and getting dragged out of the water probably creates only temporary discomfort for bass, though, wuss that I am, I'm still bummed when I gut hook a bass or hook a panfish through the eye.

[Guest the_muddy_man]

Pain is an evolutionary response in most animals that lets them know when something is wrong, fish feel. On the other side Evolution put us higher on the food chain so we get to fish for them. I just try to handle them as litttle as possible and get em back in the water

[RockvilleMDAngler]

There was a bit of controversy since Millan's entire focus is on de-humanizing the actions of dogs and simply looking at them as dogs, there are a lot of people who don't want to do that.  With Millan the proof is in the pudding: he routinely fixes severe problems with dogs in a matter of hours, he keeps over 35 Rottweilers/Pitt bulls/Dobermans in a pack that often runs without leashes through the mountains and every single dog obeys him without question.  

Many of the emotions that we see in animals like Elephants and dogs are very much pack-related.  Things are done for the interests of the pack, for example "play" is often dominance struggles that serve to let off energy and determine leadership, the stroking of bones can serve to ensure that the pack member is gone or to determine if the remains are those of a fellow pack-member.  I definitely think that animals have emotions; however, they also move on very very quickly if left to their own ways.  

My wife's uncle passed away two years ago and his dog seemed to go into "mourning" for a full year because the dog's initial sadness was greeted with "ohhhhh the poor baby misses his dady..." and praise from us to try to comfort the dog.  All this did was make the dog confused about it's role in the house, it's initial sadness had been reinforced to the point where it was unable to feel anything else.  Eventually the family stopped visiting on a daily basis to check on everyone (less affection for the dog) and my wife's aunt decided to get back into shape and started taking it for longer walks, this snapped the dog out of the depression and he was his old self again.  While animals do reveal some human emotions they also exhibit the exact opposite, they rarely have compassion for their own kind (dogs will kill the weaker members of the pack to ensure survival without showing any remorse) and they live in a complete pack structure.  While that structure may dictate that the adoption of an orphan pup will strengthen their pack, it is often the opposite when the structure dictates that the pup is weak and needs to become dinner.  Humans in our society have enormous amounts of compassion and we look at the behaviors and activities of our pets as though they think the same way we do when in reality it is more often wishful thinking on our part... "ooh roscoe just loves this ball, he will play for it for hours and hours" when in reality Roscoe is so bored and restless he has developed an obsession over a ball since he can dominate the ball.  While dogs and other animals do have emotions they are on a much simpler scale than our own and they are far less important in their society.

[stratoscaster]

all living creatures feel pain but its not the same as a human feels pain. god made only man w/ reasoning skills to assemalate what pain is.i have castrated many hogs and calfs.no anasthesia or pain reliever and they scream bloody murder.take a razor knife and slit his sack and reach in and pull out his testies.pack it w/ SALT and let him go.w/in min. hes up and moving about and eating and doing the things pigs do.you do that to a human and he could die.animals fish included do not reason that what they feel is pain.the sensation they know they feel has a reaction but they dont think hurt,or pain or anything else.thats why its alright to kill a animal,fish, deer, cow, bird,they dont REASON senses. senses are instinct to an animal .they also dont feel glad, happy,or joy either

AMEN

I had this very talk with all my kids. (All of us should before PETA dose)

my oldest seen a stray cat eating road kill. She was mad at the cat. I explaned to her and my youngest two thats how the world works. Animals are animals and thats what they do . Its not wrong and that animals have no real sence of life and death love or hate. Just eat, survive and reperduce.

     

I hate PETA like most sportsman do, but why do dogs wag their tail and go crazy when they see their owner if they can not feel joy or happiness?

Dogs are people too! 8-)

[Troutfisher]

Fish can't feel pain in their mouth.  It's a proven fact.

[Alpster]

More than the pain, I wonder if I keep a fish and take it home and eat it, will his mommy miss him? What if his mom is divorced and remarried to hybrid striper, or worse, living in sin with a pickerel. I bet he was hanging out in the lilly pads selling Megastrike to the school fish. LOL.

I grew up in the south and most folks never confused animals with people. I'm talking about farmers who spent their whole lives raising, caring for and yes, eating all sorts of animals. Peta's members are mostly city dwellers who need a purpose for living. They have spent very little time around animals except their domestic pets, and have eroniously projected to them human characteristics. JMHO

Ronnie

[Tom Bass]

I guess it all depends on where they are hooked.

One thing is for sure, once hooked they do have a survival instinct...pain or not!

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

Fish do have pain receptors in mouth tissue, so yes, they do experience pain, even a lower levels than humans notice.

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?year=&id=1697

Jim

[nboucher]

Fascinating. Thanks for the reference, Jim.

[Fish Chris]

of course I'm not a scientist, or an ichthiologist, but I read as much stuff from those guys as I can get ahold of.

In-Fisherman has done mulitiple stories on the very subject of fish feeling pain. The conclusion is, of course they feel pain, but they do not have the brain, or central nervous systems required to process it at the same level as higher life forms.

Here's what I'm saying; A few hours ago, I grabbed ahold of a hot pan (no, not just to make this point.... I REALLY did ! And my hand is still sore !) but anyway, before I could really stop to think > Hey, wait a minute ! This pan is very hot ! I better remove my hand from it before it cooks the meat off of my fingers < I was already yanking the heck away from that pan.... and yelling expletives !

The difference between a higher life form, and a fish (relating to pain) is that a fish "never does stop to think" ...... It's all to do with that initial "thoughtless impulse" to get away. Again, we have the same initial impulses, but the difference is, how we deal with the situation afterwards.

Peace,

Fish

[Guest avid]

"I learned not to give human qualities, traits, and feelings to the animal kingdom."

I agree with your statment 100% george.  except that Pain is not a "Human" quality.  Now I have no intention of getting into some philosophical discussion of what pain feels like to a fish.

Or a dog for that matter.  but I kicked a mutt that was nipping at my son and it wailed and cried and ran like hell.  My intention was to hurt it real bad, and I surmise by the response that I succeded quite well.

And where is it said that only vertibrates feel pain?  Ever see how a worm reacts when you stick the hook in it?  

Let's get over it ok?  fish feel.  this is not emotional "Let's share feelings" type of feeling.  It's more like if I stick a sharpened piece of metal through your jaw that exits from your eyeball it's gonna hurt like hell" kind of pain.

I can't believe so many of us can't deal with this.  

[George Welcome]

Ever use one of the above? Imagine if you will, someone sticking the hook of the this scale through your lip, and then attempting to pick you up with it.

Or something like the one below? Do you think that you could be picked up with this device?

Do you think bass eat theses guys? Perhaps you have never handled one of these critters, but if you have you have learned to watch out for those dorsal fins. Try putting one in your mouth.

Or perhaps one of these? Does the word spiked, mean much to you?

Imagine if the guy below had our sense of taste or smell!

Human senses are exactly as stated: Human.

Animal senses can be perceptualized to be akin to human sense, but to do so is not correct. As for the mouth and throat areas of the bass: If they felt what we know as pain, much of what they eat would be eliminated, because in the process of eating they are poked, stabbed, and bitten by what they eat.

There is not too many that would use either of the above weighing devices to weigh the family dog. We all know why. There isn't much of a correlation between bass and dogs.

Have you ever caught a bass that has been mis-handled, and half their jaw bone is exposed and broken. Do you think if they felt pain akin to human pain that they would be right in the middle of the hunt? If you had a broken jaw would you be out there catching and munching on things using your mouth?

Whether or not they feel pain is something that can only be guessed at. Again, as with so much in the animal kingdom, we aren't going to know for certain until we can communicate with them. However, from all indicators, bass feel no "pain" in the mouth or throat areas.

[George Welcome]

Dr. Lynne Sneddon,

She's a great one to cite - A leader in the anti-fishing community in GB. One of her most famous posed question: is your angling desire greater than your sympathy for the pain that you cause?

Her "quotes and findings" have been used by PETA as staunch proof of their philosophies. The trout study is quite interesting - applying bee venom to the mouth of a trout. Bee venom is both neurotoxic as well as cytotoxic. Irregardless of the level of pain receptors in the surface area of any organism, there will be a reaction at a deeper level. If and when I start fishing for bass with bee sting venom I might worry about whether I am applying damaging levels of pain.

[Dane]

the two reasons that keep me fishing irregardless of fish feeling pain or not.

1. Its an animal

2. If I don't hook it, somebody else will.  And I'll be damned if I let you catch my fish.

[Wildbillb]

If it hurts then why do they fight?  Wouldnt they just follow the bait in taking the pressure off of themselves?  When your mother pulled on your ear did you go with her or go the other way?  When someone pulls your hair do you follow quickly or surge in the other direction?

[K_Mac]

Dr. Lynne Sneddon,

She's a great one to cite - A leader in the anti-fishing community in GB. One of her most famous posed question: is your angling desire greater than your sympathy for the pain that you cause?

Her "quotes and findings" have been used by PETA as staunch proof of their philosophies. The trout study is quite interesting - applying bee venom to the mouth of a trout. Bee venom is both neurotoxic as well as cytotoxic. Irregardless of the level of pain receptors in the surface area of any organism, there will be a reaction at a deeper level. If and when I start fishing for bass with bee sting venom I might worry about whether I am applying damaging levels of pain.

George, out of curiosity I Googled Dr. Sneddon and as I read some of the links I realized I had stepped through the portal into a land where meat-eaters were not welcome. Her findings may be accurate, but she does seem to have a personal agenda that brings her science into question.

[Matt Fly]

Biologist say "fish are missing the part of the brain", the neocortex, that allows them to feel pain as we do.

I try to keep all my hooks sharp to get good penatration.    No torture on my part with dull hooks.

Rip some lips, go fishing and let PETA find their own data.   No need for us to help their cause.

HOOKEM, no pun intended!

Matt

[Troutfisher]

the two reasons that keep me fishing irregardless of fish feeling pain or not.

1. Its an animal

2. If I don't hook it, somebody else will.  And I'll be damned if I let you catch my fish.

Amen to that!

[George Welcome]

Wildbill - is it a fight for freedom or a fight against pain - if it was to relieve pain, they would simply follow docily just as you would if I hooked you and the lip and started pulling.

Another thing to remember: we are talking about bass, not trout, not northerns, or any other species of fish. What the trout's senses are in no way compare to the senses of a shark, etc.

This is really a very complex subject that can be looked at from many an approach, but the simplest approach is to realize that if their mouth were like ours, with all it tactile discernment, they would be unable to eat most of what they do.