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You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. If your environment is stable enough that you can operate entirely by innate reflex, there's no reason to waste
by goodside 16y ago
You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. If your environment is stable enough that you can operate entirely by innate reflex, there's no reason to waste genetic selection pressure on crafting sensations for the benefit of some passive, ineffectual observer inside the lobster. Or the observer itself, for that matter. Its almost certainly true that lobsters feel pain (response to analgesics is damn convincing), but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this study.
- pyre 16y ago> It may well be true that lobsters feel pain, but it isn't obviously true without evidence like this. Then at best the evidence is inconclusive. This is usually an issue that is trotted out as 'fact' a lot when it comes to debates about boiling lobsters/crabs alive for food. So really the 'general knowledge' of this should be: We don't know whether or not lobsters and crabs feel pain. and not: We know for sure that crabs and lobsters don't feel pain, because if they did, then I would feel bad about going to Red Lobster for dinner.
- ars 16y ago> response to analgesics is damn convincing It's not. It just means you blocked the negative stimulus, so that innate reflex you mentioned does not trigger. It doesn't necessarily mean they feel pain. Personally I don't think this question is possible to answer, so I behave as if all animals feel pain and I avoid inflicting it, except when I have no alternative. And when I have no alternative I try to minimize the duration and/or severity (giving priority to minimizing duration over severity).
- cousin_it 16y agoYou don't need pain if you can't learn from it. Whaaaat? You need pain to run away from the source of it, and to warn your relatives by screaming.