Fish feel pain?????

[Keithscatch]

Good points George.

For those who think pets and animals do not have some sort of emotion or feelings apparently just don't observe them all that often or interact with them much. Apparently they do not have cats for instance. Cats certainly do have emotions and do often play and exhibit all sorts of emotions from excitement, playfullness, scared, admiration, acceptance, rejection, loneliness,  scheming, revenge, happiness, sadness, etc.

it is always amusing to hear somoene project a notion onto the behavior of an animal when it plays as it is only establishing it's dominance...HELLO, how do YOU know that? Are you one of them? Did they tell you this Dr. Dolittle?

How do you explain a dog's ability to judge the character of a person? They seem to sense when someone is a bad person and just don't like them. Yet they can observe a person who is not a threat and will go right to them. They sense fear and all sorts of things in people. Horses can do the same thing. Animals are smarter then people give them credit for.

I just hate for people to transpose their opinions onto an animal as if it is fact because some guy has been able to train dogs a certain way etc. I think God created animals and gave them all the ability to reason to some extent and the ability to have emotions to some extent or thy would be living robots and they are not.

Some men have lowered them down to just a bunch of cells so thay they don't feel bad when they kill them or abuse them or whatever.

I am a pretty good judge of men's character too by how I observe how they treat their animals. If they are rough with them and abusive then they are also this way with woman and children. Just from my experience.

If folks don't want to accept that it is ok as it is their opinion. I just don't share it nor will I.

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

Pain is pain. It's a sense that alerts a brain to something that could be life-threatening. How an animal reacts to the stimulus is simply relative to brain complexity. Some fishermen think bass are intelligent, while others believe they are incredibly stupid. Do we look at a human child who doesn't seem to connect touching a hot stove with pain of getting burned as being a moron? No. The kid needs to learn not to do it. He can't simply be warned of consequences and expect that warning to take. Eventually they make the association and stop touching the flames.

How many times do you suppose a bass has to swallow a bluegill tail first before it learns never to do that again? Does the bass learn by going hungry a week or two because nothing else can go down? I don't think so. All bass would starve to death before learning that lesson. I'll submit they have only one such experience to teach them to swallow all future bluegills some other way than tail first. So what sense was involved? If the bass can't process pain and learn from it, why do they learn to swallow head first every time? I'd say because they don't want to repeat the pain of having 13 sharp spines poking into mouth and throat tissues. If no pain was involved the bass would keep it in there because it's hungry, and would just wait for it to go down, then die from starvation.

As for morality of causing pain in animals, there is nothing more to that than personal emotions. Nobody can make a case against it for biblical reasons. Jesus was found roasting fish on the shore of the lake. He told Peter how to net a record number of fish. The Hebrews were instructed to sacrifice animals, excluding pork and scaleless fish. Noah was told to eat anything that moved. So any religious reasoning about prohibition of causing pain or eating fish or meat is centered around a modern non-biblical religion. I have no complaint against folks taking up those religions and feeling it's wrong to inflict pain on animals. That's their freedom of choice. But they need to limit themselves according to their own beliefs, not imposing their beliefs on me. For them to do that is no less insulting than demanding that a Jew eat a pork chop. No Jew should have power to stop me from eating pork or catfish, except that it would be wrong for me to flaunt my diet preference at his table.

So where does a first world society draw the line legally? We regard inflicting pain on an animal for the purpose of doing that as wrong. Causing needless pain while continuing the life of an animal is a valid cause for criticism. No child would be permitted to shoot a captive deer with a BB gun every morning just to establish his dominance over the animal. A guy kicking his dog every time his boss chews him out is abusive. No hunter is excused for shooting a bear just to wound it. He must shoot to kill. We prohibit neglect of pets and livestock. Pain associated with harvesting fish or slaughtering steers as a nesessary part of consuming meat, not considered immoral. Our legal basis? Ultimately the Bible. Not some cult guru on a mountain in Tibet.

Jim

[George Welcome]

Again, we have the reasoning ability of a human being compared to an animal. A child assimilates information through reasoning ability. It's what sets us apart from the animal kingdom. If the bass had the reasoning ability to associate pain with its cause, and it had the tactile sense of pain, then you would never catch a bass that has been previously caught. We all know that that scenerio just doesn't hold up to the simplest of scrutiny.

Bass swallow their swimming prey headfirst because it is the simplest method of entrapment for them. If they had to chase there prey their success ratio would be far less, than simply opening their mouth and letting the prey swim to them. Bass sense their prey coming to them, rather than running around willy nilly hoping to chase something down.  Since the bait isn't swimming backwards, then it seems to me, using my human reasoning ability that headfirst, is the winning method.

[scbassin]

After reading Alpster's reply I decided that there could be some real issues here. So I called my congressmen & told him I needed a grant to study problem. I mean divorcee's living with jackfish in lilypads, the excruciating pain inflected upon being caught, etc. He was quick to come to the aid, he wanted to take part in this venture & donated some zoom worms, hooks & weights & off to the river we went. We were going right to the source. Each fish we caught we ask a battery of questions & 100% said they had a poor family life because there parents would try to eat them after they born. As for the pain they all said with one exception that they had a pain in the butt & that was us asking all our questions & to hurry up & get them back in the water. We did not question one because I caught him on a big beaver which was bigger than him so we figured he was on drugs, so now we need anothr grant to check out this problem. So now that we have the answer from the source we can all go back to catching fish, not that anyone was going to stop.

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

While i wouldn't argue bass eat fish head on, I've watched dozens of hours worth of underwater video of fish feeding, rarely seeing a bass catch a fish head first. If a bass was concealed perfectly and a prey fish came close enough, the bass can inhale it head first. Mostly they catch them with a sideways bite if large prey, or tail first in the case of chasing down shad. They crush the victim to paralyze it, pull off to the side still crushing, spit it out, turn it head first. They do all that in a second or two up to half a minute for a large fish.

Jim

[Hamlet]

How do you explain a dog's ability to judge the character of a person? They seem to sense when someone is a bad person and just don't like them. Yet they can observe a person who is not a threat and will go right to them. They sense fear and all sorts of things in people.

Wow. You think a dog can judge a persons character? I think I know what you really meant but the way you put it was a little overboard. A dog can pick up on subtle cues from people (especially its owner) and can repsond accordingly. There is a real story of this man who seemingly taught his horse (clever hans) how to do simple addition. The horse would give the right answer by stomping his foot. Well, sane people checked it out (actually, it fooled a lot of sane people) and showed that the horse was taking cues from the owner. The owner wasnt even doing it intentionally, but nevertheless it was happenning. This is an example of "hidden persuaders" that are rampant in fuzzy thinking (including my own).

I think God created animals and gave them all the ability to reason to some extent and the ability to have emotions to some extent or they would be living robots and they are not.

Some animals are like living robots (compared to humans), but I don't think you could say that of the higher animals. I would include dogs and cat in the higher animals category but certainly not bass. The thing that kills me about people who think dogs and cats are just short of human is that they don't really like dogs and cats for what they are,..instead they turn them into "defective humans". A dog is something special all on its own, there is no need to anthropomorphize them into little friends for yourself, thats what other people are for.

[WishICouldFish]

I'm retarded on the subject, but I felt left out  

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

Wish, it's mostly philosophy anyway, so opinions can compete with facts.

Reasoning peaks in humans, but what power to reason might a gorilla have? Pinch the guy a couple of times with some pliers and I bet he'll begin holding a grudge, not against all humans, but only those he recognizes who pinch gorillas. I doubt he would appreciate being pinched. Is reasoning involved? Why would a dog only hate certain people who abuse them and contyinue co-existing with favorable human companions? Keep going down in brain size and assume a lower form of reaction to infliction of pain. But where does a grudge stop? A mouse?

I believe the average angler passes a lure near possibly hundreds of bass a trip, often remaining skunked trip after trip, maybe catching a few. Why not a consistent hundred a trip? Are the bass not hungry enough to eat it? Or maybe they have become conditioned to relating barbed meals with pain and trauma. Something convinces them to pass on our offerings most of the time. Would they pass on a live shad so easy to catch as our lures? Not most of the time. Why do we catch a few? Because they make mistakes. We have to outwit and fool them into biting something not part of their diet, a very unreal artifical critter. Is reasoning involved? How would anyone know reasoning isn't involved? We know bass can learn things. Those in captivity eventually learn never to eat anything artificial. Can we say learning doesn't involve some degree of logic or reasoning?

I personally believe logic is possible among animals. Maybe we're confusing reason with logic, and need to include some spiritual elements in this discussion. Reason can be simply defined as determining truth from the false. I think distinguishing a live bait from an artificial one is a form of reasoning. Logic helps an animal arrive at reason, assembling data and sorting through it, discarding useless facts from pertinent facts. That's the exercise a mouse uses to learn it's way through a maze. At some point it learns the correct route and goes through it flawlessly. Humans have a supremely greater capacity for both exercises.  In my opinion, what separates animals from humans is "soul" and "spirit". I believe I'm a spiritual being in a body of flesh. My soul is composed of mind, will, emotion, memory, etc. An animal has a "mind" which at least relates it's body to its environment thrugh the senses, but apparently lacks distinctly human soul elements, and is not a spirit in the image of God. I believe animals fall short of that because God would not logically be an animal and make man in His image. Man alone relates to God. An animal is a body with a mind and a partial soul, involving some emotions. A dog misses its master, wailing until master comes home, "happy" when in their arms. A chimp mourns loss of its mate with amazingly human like traits. They have a capacity for memory, but lack the ability to learn a new language like human English.

I have no problem with inflicting pain on a bass. I get inflicted with pain probably every time I go fishing. I don't like it, but accept the reality of occasional pain. I don't lament over the pain of a hook in my finger from yesterday unless it gets infected. I doubt a bass gets depressed over getting a hook in its mouth, most happy to get off it, quickly forgetting the pain, but remembering each time hooked to pay more attention to what it eats.  That's what lets bass get old and big, and that keeps most of us from catching many of them.  

Jim

[phatfish]

This, like most things that deals with pain and suffering, is a highly debatable topic. Do fish feel pain?  Well. Raul is right Fish are highly evolved vertebrate animal, with a highly complex and organized brain that allows a fish to responds or react, the way it does, to some kind of stimulus (ie. a hook set). What a lot of people might not realize is that pain, rather then a response or reaction to something, is something that is perceived.  Pain is an interpretation the brain makes from negative information that is sent to it. So, in humans, if a person was to hook themselves, that information is sent to the spinal cord first, where an initial reaction is generated. At the same time, this information travels up to the thalamus and then sent to primary sensory cortex (the wrinkly outer portion of the brain). This is where the current debate occurs. The reason why humans are what they are is because we have the most primary cortex then any other animal.  This is where the brain perceives things (ie sight, hearing, taste, and touch) and the complexity of the primary cortex is what is required to perceive things.  Fish, on the other hand, have no primary cortex present in their brain (if you were to look at a fish's brain, it would be smoothed and lack the wrinkles). Because of this, one might conclude that fish do not perceive pain like humans and are simply reacting to a stimulus (depending only on the spinal cord).  So the current university studies support the above conclusion, but there is a missing portion to this conclusion.  Like I said earlier, the primary cortex is the location in the brain where senses are perceived, so this includes sight, hearing (vibration) and taste. As we all know, being fisherman who take advantage of these perceptions to entice a fish to bite, fish have the ability to interpret a lure as potential food.  How can this be, if what is known (that the primary cortex is the location for perception and that fish lack this), that allows a fish to interpret a lure as a tasty treat.  

As for fish, lacking the pain receptors around the mouth, it is known that there is what we call nociceptors (pain receptors) around the mouth of a fish.  They differ greatly with forms found in humans, and are able to tolerate a greater amount of pain, due to the nature of the tissue. But if you think about it, a fish's mouth act like its hands as well, where it can feel things out. In the humans, the palms of our hands have fewer pain receptors, (that is why we squirt hot milk on the back of our hands when testing how hot it is) so that we are able to tolerate some things without it hurting us.  It wouldn't make too much sense for an animal to put lot pain receptors in an area that is uses to explore objects, such as spiny crawdad shells, or the spiny dorsal fin of a sunfish.

A lot of the present studies that state that fish do feel pain from penetrating hooks are primarily based on behavior of the fish, (ie, what the fish does after being released from a hook).   These are based on comparing the behavior to what we as humans considered negative, such as the lack of feeding after, the attempt to dislodge an embedded hook, and the rapid darting movement to name a few. The only problem is that we are comparing behaviors of two animals with totally different makeup of the brain. It is like comparing apple and oranges because they both fall from a tree. There is no way of truly understanding what is happening in a fish's brain with out simply asking it. For me, when a fish is hooked, the stress it feels from being dragged through the water overcomes any kind of discomfort it feels from the hook. It is like asking someone who is being dragged behind a car whether the rope around their legs burns. So as fisherman, I think it is more important when fishing to reduce the total stress on the animal by following the proper Catch and Release procedures. Well that is my ten cents okay.. okay.. more like 10 bucks.  

[Guest avid]

Again, we have the reasoning ability of a human being compared to an animal. A child assimilates information through reasoning ability. It's what sets us apart from the animal kingdom. If the bass had the reasoning ability to associate pain with its cause, and it had the tactile sense of pain, then you would never catch a bass that has been previously caught. We all know that that scenerio just doesn't hold up to the simplest of scrutiny.

I think your reasoning is a bit off George.  A bass doesn't need "reasoning ability" to associate pain with its cause.  It's a conditioned response.  By applying positive or negetive stimulus we can "train" anything to do certain simple things.  It's common knowledge that bass get "wise" to popular baits.  they are hot for awhile then become just another lure.   Through the pain and shock of being hooked they associate that specific lure with danger.  This has been demonstrated by tom mann and others.  Bass will learn by conditioning to avoid most lures they have been hooked on.  Soft plastics seem to be to lifelike so they continue to be fooled.  If a bass had reasoning ability we would never catch another one.  It doesn't have the intellegence to "reason" that anything with hooks hanging off of it is dangerous, but catch it on a silver f11 rapala a few times, and it will surely avoid that lure.  Maybe not forever, but you get the picture.

[Guest avid]

Allow me if you will to pose a question.

If the fish is not feeling something resembling what we call pain then why do they fight so hard to throw the hook?  Is it something resembling what we would call fear?

Something is making that bass try his derndest to stay away from us.  If it's not the primitive sense of feeling pain then it must be the higher emotional process of fear.

IT'S GOT TO BE SOMETHING.   So lets hear from you anti-pain guys.  Just what is it then that makes a bass fight with every ounce of strength to keep from being caught?

[KU_Bassmaster.]

I look it as it's not so much the pain, but the pressure you put on the fish.  Kind of like if somebody grabbed your wrist and started to try to drag you around.  That doesn't necessarily hurt, but wouldn't you fight back the other way??

Jig fishing especially comes to mind with this.  Sometimes a bass will pick up your jig .... take a bite ... get hooked ..... and not fight until you start putting some pressure on it.

I don't feel real strongly about this subject one way or another, but that's how I look at things.

[biteme]

I look it as it's not so much the pain, but the pressure you put on the fish. Kind of like if somebody grabbed your wrist and started to try to drag you around. That doesn't necessarily hurt, but wouldn't you fight back the other way??

Jig fishing especially comes to mind with this. Sometimes a bass will pick up your jig .... take a bite ... get hooked ..... and not fight until you start putting some pressure on it.

I don't feel real strongly about this subject one way or another, but that's how I look at things.

You took the words right out of my mouth!

[George Welcome]

"I think your reasoning is a bit off George. A bass doesn't need "reasoning ability" to associate pain with its cause. It's a conditioned response. By applying positive or negetive stimulus we can "train" anything to do certain simple things. It's common knowledge that bass get "wise" to popular baits. they are hot for awhile then become just another lure. Through the pain and shock of being hooked they associate that specific lure with danger. This has been demonstrated by tom mann and others. Bass will learn by conditioning to avoid most lures they have been hooked on."

It's common knowledege that bass get "wise" to certain lures, is common sale propaganda only. You have bought the sales speech of lure companines, hook, line, and sinker. Baits get improved on for certain applications, but the only reason they disappear is people like new and different.

Bass do not feed through selective processing. Think about that for a moment. I've said this before but it bears repeating. When an autopsy is performed, "the only method we have of determining what bass eat", there is found sticks, stones, bottle caps, tabs for soda and beer cans, and all sorts of misc. stuff.

I did not make my studies in my pursuit of education icthyology, however I have spent countless hours with those that did. Some of this countries top fishery biologists have spent time on my boat, and I have spent thousands of hours observing and fishing for bass. This in and of itself does not make me correct, however I can find nothing in what I have seen and heard over the years that would lead me to believe that bass, (and it is important to note that I am only talking about Largemouth Bass), experience pain of the nature of what we humans do. In addition, I have never seen Largemouth Bass ignore a bait because of some perceived learning curve.

As an example: Bill Lewis developed the Rat-L-Trap in the early 60's. Since its invention millions have been sold, and countless of millions of Largemouth Bass have succumbed to its rattle and wiggle. I doubt that there is a bass alive that hasn't seen one of these baits yet millions of fishermen continue to throw this bait, and millions of fishermen continue to rake in bass with them.

Baits go by the wayside because the bait monkey says it is time to do so, not because they have stopped working.

The fight: As noted by KU and others - they fight to avoid capture not to avoid pain.

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

If a bass avoids capture, it is exercising logic and a little reasoning. If no logic & reason is involved it would just slide to the boat, totally dumb about what's happening. Compare capture on a lure to capture into a tank. There a bass is often seen to resign itself quickly to its new surrounding. Why not butt the walls trying to escape? In tournament holding tanks they just suspend calmly. I'd say the difference is there is no pain invloved in such a capture & confinement event, so logic brings them to a resignation they are simply in a different environment with no reason to escape.

So what about a bass holding a hookless bait all the way to the boat, then simply letting it go when seeing the angler? Little or no fight occurs with a hookless lure used just to locate bass pre-fishing. Add a hook, the fight begins.

I'm still using baits supposedly rejected by bass that gobbled them at first fishing them, not buying the latest fad lures very often. I buy the latest if I can't replace a favorite, then learn how to use it. Some anglers swear the bass won't bite the older over-exposed models. My opinion about that is I doubt most anglers fail to locate bass or present lures convincingly, getting only some lucky bites. A Ratl Trap remains good probably because it would be difficult to fish it wrong. A Spook remains good because even when going nothing with it bass bite it. But more and bigger bass will bite it if used properly. Some baits simply appear life like enough to get bit regardless of presentation, a bass sooner or later taking it. So rather than mastering a particular lure, figuring out the best presentations, anglers buy the newest offerings hoping that will change their luck.

Jim

[Keithscatch]

George I agree.  I was going to use the same analogy about Ratle Traps.

Jim, you also mentioned that we as fishermen throw our lures all day and they come across a hundred bass or so yet we only catch 1 or 2 or a few of them. Well, one thing you didn't mention is that not all Bass are hungry enough to eat at that moment. Just because a meal swims right in front of a Bass' mouth doesn't mean it will eat it. I used to have fish tanks for years and many of times had Bass in it. Numerous baitfish would swim happily along with the Bass right in front of his mouth and he wouldn't do a thing. But when he was hungry he would eat them.

Sometimes we assume that a Bass eats 24/7 and that we must be doing something wrong because we are not catching them. Well, even presenting a real meal in front of them doesn't always mean they will eat it let alone a lure.

The pain theory is just that a theory. Keep in mind too that no one is saying it is pleasureable to the bass to get hooked. It Just is not as painful as some of you think. That is my view anyway.

[fishingrulz]

I look it as it's not so much the pain, but the pressure you put on the fish. Kind of like if somebody grabbed your wrist and started to try to drag you around. That doesn't necessarily hurt, but wouldn't you fight back the other way??

Jig fishing especially comes to mind with this. Sometimes a bass will pick up your jig .... take a bite ... get hooked ..... and not fight until you start putting some pressure on it.

I don't feel real strongly about this subject one way or another, but that's how I look at things.

I agree totally. Humans have instincts. I'd imagine that fish do too. One of our instincts is survival. If someone grabbed you and started pulling you towards water would you fight back? I would! Now them pulling you doesn't really hurt but you still fight back. I think fish know enough to fight back when something is pulling on them.

[KenDammit28]

if a bass feels pain then I think they'd starve in lakes where spiny fish and crawdads are the main forage.  Bass get poked and stuck and prodded countless times a day just eating.  They can't always grab prey in the perfect position to make it go down nice and easy..its a violent attack that happens in any direction.  As for fish fighting back when hooked, its a natural INSTINCT very separate from the perception of pain and injury.  They are being moved in an unnatural way, a way they understand they aren't trying to go. Its just a behavior used automatically to protect themselves from stimulus(known as a flight response). It doesn't have anything to do with pain, its just about survival.  If you "spook" a fish and it swims away, did you cause it any "pain"?  No, it reacted to a "threat" and moved away.  If you splash the water and chase off a fish, did you cause it pain?  No, it moved away from possible threat.  When being chased by a predator fish, a prey fish will swim away and try to remove itself from danger.  The same thing is happening when hooked, the only difference is that it can't "get away".  Whats even more impressive is that fish don't have "fear", either.  They dont' have a brain capable of processing that emotion. When running away from another fish, it is not fear that drives them, rather just survival instinct.  Even the smallest of life, things without brains, move away from things they consider as "danger".  That has nothing to do with logic and reason, just instinct...theres no trick to it.  Fish have one of if not THE simplest brains of the vertebrates.  All the processes of their body are controlled by the brainsteam, vs. our neocortex and large cerebral hemispheres.  The actions of a fish are pretty much automatic, not based on awareness or sensory consciousness.  In humans, the brainstem controls things like breathing, laughing, vocalization(not complex words, just sound), balance...very simple "instinctive" things.  Fish eat, breathe, and move..they are not complex individuals.  Fish also lack frontal lobes(the thing in our brains responsible for the emotional response we call "pain").  If you take the frontal lobes away from humans, we'd feel no pain.  We'd still get hurt, maybe even killed, but it would not "hurt".

Pain itself is a psychological thing, not a physical thing.  It is perceptual and emotional.  Remember that injury and pain are not the same thing.  Fish are essentially "emotionless" animals that do not think or reason or use logic or feel pain or get "scared", they just don't have the brain power to do it.  

[KenDammit28]

Allow me if you will to pose a question.

If the fish is not feeling something resembling what we call pain then why do they fight so hard to throw the hook? Is it something resembling what we would call fear?

Something is making that bass try his derndest to stay away from us. If it's not the primitive sense of feeling pain then it must be the higher emotional process of fear.

IT'S GOT TO BE SOMETHING. So lets hear from you anti-pain guys. Just what is it then that makes a bass fight with every ounce of strength to keep from being caught?

an automatic response to a stimulus. You're giving the fish brain far too much credit in this thread. They are not complex brains, but rather involuntary controllers. Fish fight because the spinal cord and brainstem are responding to nociceptive stimulus(The pull they experience when being hooked). First, the spinal cord reacts automatically by putting the fish into locomotion(the jerking and stuff we feel). The response to the stimulus travels on to the brainstem where avoidance and more locomotion are generated...a.k.a. protective responses. From there(in a human) it would then travel to the cerebral hemisphere where we would turn the stimulus into an awareness of fear and/or pain. Fish lack that ability because they don't have cerebral hemispheres with the ability to do that. Until it reaches this point, there is no conscious awareness of whats happening, it just does, and thus..there is no "fear" or "pain"(both psychological responses, not physical responses). In humans though, we think it happens because we "feel pain" but really it just happens so quickly that we can't separate the two things, the stimulus and the feeling.

To continue on that, other animals, like mammals and other vertebrates have different sizes of frontal lobes(responsible for pain) and all feel pain in different ways. Not everything feels like a human, and I think thats something that YOU must accept.

[Guest ouachitabassangler]

Keith, fortunately bass don't just bite out of hunger, or we'd all come away fishless most of the time. They bite for many other reasons, like gluttony (eating more than needed, throat already packed with shad); greed (taking food away from another bass or asserting its "pecking order" rights); pure instinctual reaction to something swimming too close; spawning territorial/egg/fry protection (as in gingerly moving a bait off the nest withuot biting, or butting a lure to chase it away; "anger" or "hatred" (as against a salamander during the spawn, biting to kill instead of eat) in the sense they won't tolerate an intruder in their livingroom; maybe out of pure curiosity; and possibly just for the heck of it, to name a few reasons off the top of my head. The trick is to appeal to one or several reasons bass bite. Not hungry? Make the bass bite anyway. A solid tail swat is better than no attention to my bait at all.

Jim

[Dane]

Here's a thought:

this might be an insight or an anomoly (haha, like i can spell that).

Catch a bluegill and reel it in, no big deal, touch it on its side, and wham! the dorsal spikes go flying up, so why, if a fish is hurt/feeling threatened does it not have its spikes up continually? (not a rhetorical question)

i have limited knowledge on the anatomy of fish, but i thought it was a point worth adding.

[senile1]

I'll let all of you debate this, but, just to add a little fuel to the fire, a brain is not needed for fight or flight response.  Evidence shows that epithelial, endothelial, and many other cells in the body respond to a variety of attacks in a reasonably standardized fashion, which allows them to combat the offending stimulus or escape it.  Some of our own cells use cell motility to escape danger.  Most choose the fight response (i.e. production of natural antiobiotics,  production of antioxidant enzymes, the recruitment of leukocytes to destroy invaders, etc.).

[Guest avid]

This thread is making me  

[craigaria]

Bass do feel pain! I caught one the other day and when I pulled out the hook it started to cry :'( I felt so bad that I have quit fishing and I purchased a robofish from PETA

[Lane]

I will try and explain this the best that I can. Both humans and fish have adrenal glands,

that release hormones. These hormones have very different classifications and functions.

Anabolic steroids (hormones) are released into the bloodstream to convert food into living

tissue. Most of us are aware that anabolic steroids are used by athletes to build muscle

and enhance performance. The hormones responsible for the, "flight or fight" response

are catabolic steroids. Catabolic steroids are called cortisols, and are responsible for

breaking down tissue (protein) and converting the protein or tissue into glucose. Glucose

is quickly utilized during the, "flight or fight response". Cortisols are also responsible

for suppressing the auto immune response. If you have ever been treated for a severe

allergic reaction or inflammation then you were probably given a corisol shot or

a staggered oral dosage of cortisol.

Steroids by nature must be removed by the liver, and that takes time. In fish this can

and DOES become a deadly waiting game. If cortisol levels continue to elevate, or remain

elevated, their immune system shuts down. This process is one of the key factors in

delayed mortality. If the immune system of the fish shuts down, they become vunerable

to opportunistic infections that result in mortality. This is not just in fish. In humans that

are being treated for an inflammatory infection, they are ALWAYS given antibiotics while

on cortisol therapy.

We can prevent delayed mortality due to stress, elevated cortisol levels, etc, by learning

and practicing GOOD Catch and Release methods. It has now been proven that elevated

cortisol levels in humans contribute to disease and death. Drug companies are now introducing

new cortisol lowering medications.

Fish do feel pain, but it is not the same pain that is percieved by humans. In fact physical

pain is NOT ALWAYS a BAD thing. That is another subject! Fishing, including tournament fishing

can be a ethical and a necessary use of the resource in the terms of management. There is

nothing wrong with fishing for dinner on occasion. Just be sure and check with your state for

any consumption advisories or water quality issues, and only keep the smaller ones for

the dinner table.