this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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I find this somewhere interesting.
Kind of dovetails with that apparently "open question" in people's minds regarding if animals feel pain.
That has always troubled me... to see articles over the decades with titles like "scientists find out pigs and dogs can be happy".... Like no shitttttt.
I would have liked to know how the pain exactly was measured. Perhaps I'm not wearing my glasses but I didn't see that anywhere in the article.
But it was curious to see that suffering of animals is measurable in a quantifiable way,. Ig?
I have no question as to whether animals feel pain, but I do question whether fish experience pain on any level comparable to mammals. Fish lack the very nerves that carry pain in mammals and completely lack the part of the brain that registers mammalian pain. (Yes, they have nociceptors, I get that.)
Read a great article on the subject where scientists gathered from around the globe, like a Michael Crichton novel, to try and answer the question, as it was relevant to a new law in Germany.
They did not conclude, one way or the other, but one item caught my attention.
Ever kept fish? They will swim around, fight, fuck and eat, even with the most grievous of injuries. Mammals OTOH display every symptom of depression. They don't move around, eat, pursue sex, etc.
Was hoping to see how they measured that. Amoeba react to negative stimuli, all life does so, or it won't be alive for long.
And I learned nothing.