# Inverts & Pain - The Ultimate Thread



## ShaunHolder (Feb 17, 2005)

*Should T's have rights?*

I found this article about invertebrate rights. Inside it claims that a lobster isn't _likley_ to feel pain, and that it's reaction to being boiled is just a fight or flight reaction that the lobster has to keep itself alive. The article doesn't do much in the way of proving this, only saying that there is a 39 page article on why they do not. I'd love to give that a read, but unfortunatly they don't link to it. 

 What do you think? Should Inverts have rights protecting them from "cruelty?" Anythoughts on inverts in general and thier capcity to feel pain?


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## Mattyb (Feb 17, 2005)

ShaunHolder said:
			
		

> I found this article about invertebrate rights. Inside it claims that a lobster isn't _likley_ to feel pain, and that it's reaction to being boiled is just a fight or flight reaction that the lobster has to keep itself alive. The article doesn't do much in the way of proving this, only saying that there is a 39 page article on why they do not. I'd love to give that a read, but unfortunatly they don't link to it.
> 
> What do you think? Should Inverts have rights protecting them from "cruelty?" Anythoughts on inverts in general and thier capcity to feel pain?



Acually i think they do. I was once told by a few pet store owners that if a animal cruelty officer saw me pulling the legs off one of my Ts or having like a "death match" with some of them that i could get a fine, and maybe some jail time....tho i dunno if this is true or not.


-Mattyb


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## JJJoshua (Feb 17, 2005)

http://scienceweek.com/2004/sb040416-4.htm

Excerpt from article:
"Of course, invertebrate organisms do not experience pain per se, but they do have transduction mechanisms that enable them to detect and avoid potentially harmful stimuli in their environment."

So I guess they should have some rights, but how can you be cruel to an organism that doesn't feel pain?


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## Crunchie (Feb 17, 2005)

I always thought that t's and such perhaps don't feel pain as we'd know it but as mentioned above they can detect harmful conditions and will react to them. Surely this suggests that even if they didn't feel pain they would still be physiologically "stressed" if one were to be cruel to them in some way that would provoke pain in a higher organism like a mammal, I'd see that as being wrong. I always kind of thought that us hoomins have a responsibility to keep whatever animals we own in the best way possible within financial and space restrictions. Deliberate hurting of a t or any other creature kind of goes against that.

Of course wild T's are a whole new can of worms, please don't get me started on our responsibilty of wild t's and their habitats as I could go on for ages. :wall:


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## Windchaser (Feb 17, 2005)

Mattyb said:
			
		

> Acually i think they do. I was once told by a few pet store owners that if a animal cruelty officer saw me pulling the legs off one of my Ts or having like a "death match" with some of them that i could get a fine, and maybe some jail time....tho i dunno if this is true or not.
> 
> 
> -Mattyb


I believe the pet shop fed you a load of bull. They were probably saying that to scare you. If it were true, the stuff you see on "Fear Factor" would never be allowed.


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## Windchaser (Feb 17, 2005)

I care for my pets and give them the best possible care that I can. However, in general, I do not believe that they have the capacity to feel pain. The world can be a cruel place though and I don't have a problem with the eating of animals. If PETA had its way, the entire world population would be vegetarian. That is until some scientist claimed plants feel pain. In that case, if things were decided by PETA, we would all be screwed.

Do I suggest that we go out and torture animals for our entertainment such as Fear Factor, no way. Am I comfortable with the death of an animal for food, you bet.


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## Zoo Keeper (Feb 17, 2005)

I agree with you Windchaser. :clap:


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## Runaway987 (Feb 17, 2005)

> how can you be cruel to an organism that doesn't feel pain?


Its not so much about the pain, but theres nothing to say you cannot scare a spider, thats v cruel in my book.


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 17, 2005)

_"Of course, invertebrate organisms do not experience pain per se, but they do have transduction mechanisms that enable them to detect and avoid potentially harmful stimuli in their environment."_ 

Erm, thats effectively what pain is.

Pain is not the reaction, pain is the *MESSAGE*. This is why you can have pain in the absence of damaging stimuli, it is as simple as a cell which fires to send a message. We cant even BREED tarantulas particularly successfully (an approximately 15% success rate is not what I'd consider successful) and it is recognised that there are some important physiological mechinisms making tarantulas go which we simply do not understand. You can't tell me anyone knows enough about tarantulas to make this kind of destinction with 100% surity. 

Assuming because it's a "lower" creature it doesn't feel pain is backwards thinking, (and sounds a bit too much like the kind of reasoning people use to wipe out entire other peoples). Our capacity for reaction to pain comes from the most primitive part of our brains. Development of a stimulous response system is one of the most basic and most *adaptive* developments in all of creation. Tarantula's are "high" enough to have a startle mechanism, what makes it so hart to believe that they may have pain mechanisms as well? It's just a different set of sensory cells, which we know they have an abundance of.

On a personal level I prefer to act under the assumption that any creature has the capacity to feel pain. If, all truth be told, they do not have this capacity I lose nothing in being kind to my fellow creatures, and if they do feel pain, I have saved other creatures from harm at my hands (and hopefully at others). Note however, I am not a vegetarian or vegan.


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## Singapore_Blue1 (Feb 17, 2005)

*People just don't give these creatures enough credit*

My blunt opinion is they feel pain! You also hear people say dogs don't have feelings either ( which is BS). Now I am not comparing a tarantula to a dog in terms of intelligence but people don't give them enough credit. Who started this thread anyway??


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## bagheera (Feb 17, 2005)

Is not pain a subjective word?  Two people would agree that hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts. But would they both feel the same thing? We cannot know. One stimulus that makes one individual cry is enjoyed by another person. We are defining pain as the 'bell' used my an organism to get its attention and protect itself. 

Whatever. If an organism reacts strongly, it doesn't like the stimulus!


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## Tony (Feb 17, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> Erm, thats effectively what pain is.
> 
> Pain is not the reaction, pain is the *MESSAGE*. This is why you can have pain in the absence of damaging stimuli, it is as simple as a cell which fires to send a message. We cant even BREED tarantulas particularly successfully (an approximately 15% success rate is not what I'd consider successful) and it is recognised that there are some important physiological mechinisms making tarantulas go which we simply do not understand. You can't tell me anyone knows enough about tarantulas to make this kind of destinction with 100% surity.


What is assumed in that paragraph...That breedings in nature are successful in far more than 15% of pairings....I'd love to see that study.....And the brachypelma population study while were at it.....
T


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## FryLock (Feb 17, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> We cant even BREED tarantulas particularly successfully (an approximately 15% success rate is not what I'd consider successful)


Pairing in captivity leads to at best a 15% success rate :?, Maybe with some of the hardest species to breed but that figure would be a lot higher for many, Id be very interested to know who said this and what amount of breeding experience or data from others it was based on :?.


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## dOOb (Feb 17, 2005)

personally, I think everything living has a right. Fact of the matter is, humans know sooo little about soooo much...


dOOb


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 17, 2005)

monantony said:
			
		

> What is assumed in that paragraph...That breedings in nature are successful in far more than 15% of pairings....I'd love to see that study.....And the brachypelma population study while were at it.....
> T


Actually I don't know where you're assuming that from. 
I said nothing about the success difference between captive breeding and breeding in nature, my point was that we just dont know enough about tarantulas to say anything with the level of surety that "tarantulas dont feel pain" assumes.


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 17, 2005)

FryLock said:
			
		

> Pairing in captivity leads to at best a 15% success rate :?, Maybe with some of the hardest species to breed but that figure would be a lot higher for many, Id be very interested to know who said this and what amount of breeding experience or data from others it was based on :?.


http://www.e-spiderworld.com/breeding.htm

Just read it within the last week, so the number stuck in my head. 
Note I did not say "at best", I said approximate.


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## Mattyb (Feb 17, 2005)

Windchaser said:
			
		

> I believe the pet shop fed you a load of bull. They were probably saying that to scare you. If it were true, the stuff you see on "Fear Factor" would never be allowed.



hmmm....i see what you mean... :clap: 



-Mattyb


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## Tony (Feb 17, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> Actually I don't know where you're assuming that from.
> I said nothing about the success difference between captive breeding and breeding in nature, my point was that we just dont know enough about tarantulas to say anything with the level of surety that "tarantulas dont feel pain" assumes.


I'm reading it from what you typed...Your jumping to conclusions then if you consider 15% not particulary successful, thats my point. No one knows  the % in nature, so Hell 15% in captivity may well prove to be twice as good as in nature....See?  :wall: 
T


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 17, 2005)

monantony said:
			
		

> I'm reading it from what you typed...Your jumping to conclusions then if you consider 15% not particulary successful, thats my point. No one knows  the % in nature, so Hell 15% in captivity may well prove to be twice as good as in nature....See?  :wall:
> T


Despite how it compares to nature, how it compares to the rate we should be getting _if we know all that much about tarantulas_ isn't very good. Few creatures (except maybe hymenopterans) have partucularly stellar success rates in nature.

I'd be somewhat surprised if wild dogs have a 15% success rate, but domestic dogs being bred or kept as breeding pets have a comparitively astronomical success rate because we actually know enough about them to optomize their environment for producing puppies. 

My entire point was that there is not enough research. We do not know enough about tarantulas to optomize their success rate. Hence my comment. Simple as that. No further information implied.


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## Tony (Feb 18, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> Despite how it compares to nature, how it compares to the rate we should be getting _if we know all that much about tarantulas_ isn't very good.
> 
> I'd be somewhat surprised if wild dogs have a 15% success rate, but domestic dogs being bred or kept as breeding pets have a comparitively astronomical success rate because we actually know enough about them to optomize their environment for producing puppies.
> We do not know enough about tarantulas to optomize their success rate. Hence my comment. Simple as that.
> ...


True on the last point, but really how much optimization does a simple invert need? MY point was w/o knowing the wild success rate you really cannot judge CB % good OR bad. simple as that. I would imagine though that in nature the % is not huge, given the large # of offspring. Low % success coupled with predation seems to beget large clutch #'s..
T


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 18, 2005)

monantony said:
			
		

> True on the last point, but really how much optimization does a simple invert need? MY point was w/o knowing the wild success rate you really cannot judge CB % good OR bad. simple as that. I would imagine though that in nature the % is not huge, given the large # of offspring. Low % success coupled with predation seems to beget large clutch #'s..
> T


Well, yeah, thats generally the most common way to optomize and it says a lot about success rates (though it also says a lot about investment, animals which invest in young tend to have smaller clutches, except scorps apparently :? ). 

But as far as whether a success rate is "good" or "bad", ask anyone whose male P metallica has just been eaten by some pretty lady who wasn't in the mood.


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## MysticKigh (Feb 18, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> _"Of course, invertebrate organisms do not experience pain per se, but they do have transduction mechanisms that enable them to detect and avoid potentially harmful stimuli in their environment."_
> 
> Erm, thats effectively what pain is.
> 
> On a personal level I prefer to act under the assumption that any creature has the capacity to feel pain. If, all truth be told, they do not have this capacity I lose nothing in being kind to my fellow creatures, and if they do feel pain, I have saved other creatures from harm at my hands (and hopefully at others). Note however, I am not a vegetarian or vegan.


Hear hear!!  No point arguing the symatecs of "pain", but I have respect for other life forms ( except... unfairly perhaps... roaches) Anyway... it is incomprehensible to me that someone would deliberately injure another living creature for pleasure. It was believed for years that birds hadn't the ability to smell... now we know they just perceive smell differently. I will not work under the assumption that invertebrates "don't feel pain", when perhaps it may be, yet again, a matter of another creature perceiving something in a different manner.


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## CreepyCrawly (Feb 18, 2005)

I agree with whoever said it first on here - pain is the message sent throughout the body alerting it of a problem.  I am fairly certian that my Ts are capable of experiencing hunger, thirst, and I do know for certain that they know what they want.  My P. irminia has very clear body language that tells me when it is not dark enough for her comfort level.  My friend's B. smithi kicked up a cloud that left me with a rash for three days telling me that she did NOT want me to ruin her mat of webbing, and newly constructed burrow (which is going to break her heart when she has to start all over again from scratch when she gets into her permanant enclosure).  Heck, tarantulas even groom themselves, and if that isn't proof that they like to be comfrotable then what is?  Yesterday my G. rosea spent a large part of the day cleaning every possible part of herself off, from spinarettes, to legs and feet, fangs, the whole nine yards (or is it eight legs?).  She felt dirty, or felt something along those lines that prompted her to spend hours grooming herself.  If an animal can't feel uncomfortable, how would it know to do this?  Two new Ts that I recieved today that were packed in deli cups with bark spent large parts of the day grooming themselves, as there was dirt and stuff all over them.  

Our Ts drink when they're thirsty, will move around their enclosures in response to heat and light, we know they have senses for all of these things, why is it so different to think they can feel actual pain?  While I'm fairly certian it's not the exact same way I feel pain, I'm also fairly certain that I don't feel pain exactly the way another human feels pain.  Even from human to human our pain thresholds differ dramatically.  But we all feel it (except certian people who lack that very special sense).  I believe all of our arachnids feel pain.  It is when I get down to the jellyfish, and the starfish and the like that I would begin to question it, but would never really hurt them, or cause them harm or discomfort intentionally.  

I do eat meat, animals eat other animals - it's part of the life cycle.  My Ts kill and eat other animals too.  While I do think that it is shameful the way we have our beef and chicken (among others) raised and farmed, I don't think it is wrong in killing them.  I think it is wrong to confine them and raise them inhumanely.  Not wrong to kill them, but wrong to make them suffer.  I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone but me...


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## Socrates (Feb 18, 2005)

CreepyCrawly said:
			
		

> I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone but me...


It all made perfect sense to me, and I whole-heartedly agree with you.   

---
Wendy
---


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## Cirith Ungol (Feb 18, 2005)

I think that the notion that Tarantulas don't fear pain is related to all these very old beliefs that have their origin in "ancient" and very unscientific times.

Thinking that animals in general don't have this or that kind of need or can't think and just react or that they don't feel pain or pleasure has in my oppinon only to do with preconceived ideas. "We" have always thought of animals that way, so that's why they "are" that way. I get the feeling that this also partly might have to do with that man stands above all other beings within christian belief. Since that belief is still very strong in many regions there might have been less inclination to actually study animals feelings - feelings which in a conservative way to look at animals don't even accur. (This is not a try to bring in religion into this thread btw! Since religion normally is a black hole of a topic I hereby apologize in advance if I have offended anybody in the world by looking at the topic from the before mentioned angle.)

It isn't that long ago, only a few years, that (I think) danish scientists made the tremendous discovery that pigs and cows which stay indoors quite a lot actually prefer to lay down on soft and warm surfaces rather than cold concrete!  :wall:  :wall:  :wall: Why would anybody have to do a study on that? I agree that possibly not many ppl have thought of that because it isn't such an interesting topic to wonder about when you have other things you can put your money in, but com'on!!! I'd say that common sense could have told them that! Which animal that lives in normal conditions and has a body of the heavier variety would NOT want to rest on warm soft spot rather than concrete? They also discovered that the animals would be less stressed when resting more comfy. To me it felt a bit like an intellectual smack in the face that they were so surprised at that "discovery"!

To me that which I just said is a sign of how "people" think of animals in general. That animals are nothing really and that they always will be nothing. Yes, they are nice to look at and nice to eat ... but that they too have come from the same organisms we have (even if you have to go back to the earliest beginnings of evolution to find the common anscestor) that that species or line of organism has had exactly as many miliseconds on this earth as we had and that they too have developed during that time is seldomly someone who thinks about. Everything we don't know is treated as if it doesn't exist. It isn't treated with an open mind which is ready for change at the slightest sign that something might be different than thought previously, but it is put in it's little box of ideas and then left to die.

Even if an animal like a scorpion or tarantula hasn't changed much in the last 350 000 000 years, why is it then seen as primitive? I would say that an animal that "old" is actually extremely advanced, since it suites its sourroundings so well that it has been able to flourish without any big change!

Obviously you can say that primitive animals are the ones that don't have such a developed nervous system as we do for example, but again - why not turn it arround? Just because we have continued to adapt why are we more advanced? Couldn't we be called the primitive ones because we never got arround to develop into a perfect kind of animal and had to go on or get extinct? It was actually very close for us at one time. I don't remember the facts arround it very clearly and I don't really remember what human anscestor it was but at one point the only thing that actually kept the human line within the wheel of life was that they started eating fish. If it hadn't been for that they wounldn't have found food and thus gone extinct. None of us would have been on this forum then. What I said here can be found in the BBC series called "Walking with cavemen" or what it was called. I bet some of you have seen it.

So, I think it is a question of openmindedness vs closedmindedness. Fair and simple. If an animal moves away from a heat source because it get's too warm then it does so because it knows that it will get damaged when it stays that close longer. That is what we humans do when we touch a hot object. We don't touch the object and stand there for half an hour thinking "Darn this thing is really hot!!" but we jolt away removing our fingers before we even had time to think. So feeling pain doesn't have to do with intelligence and if the "feeling" of pain wasn't really included within some of the very earliest forms of life then I seriously doubt that there would be any life at all today.

I guess this isn't 2 cents anymore.. looks more like 5 or 10 cents by now.. well... maybe its "common cents".  I've come to notice that some of my posts can get really long and that they might even kill threads... I hope that was only coincidental because if it was true It'd really puzzle me.

I invite anybody to scrutinize what I've said and comment on it I don't mind thinking my own thoughts through a second time when subjected to a different angle of thought. ...And I know I can be a bit provocative at times. No offense!


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## danread (Feb 18, 2005)

I think most of you are confusing the issue here. There is no question at all that tarantulas can _respond_ to stimuli. Of course they will respond to warmth, physical damage, light etc. What is in question is are tarantulas capable of suffering due to what we might percieve as pain. For me, the answer is absolutely not. I don't believe that tarantulas have the cognitive ability to be able to pervieve pain and allow it to cause mental suffering, they are simply responding in the way they are pre-programmed to. 

Cirith Ungol, my belief has nothing to do with me thinking that tarantulas are in some way lesser or more primitive than us, or that all animals are incapable of suffering. It also has nothing to do with closed mindedness either. I am basing my understanding of the issue on my scientific understanding of the issue, not blatant anthromorphising. In your post you have made an argument against something that no-one was questioning in the first place, of course spiders respond to stimuli, that is how they catch their food, make their burrows, mate etc. Even the most basic of organisms like amoeba will respond to stimuli, but i doubt even the most fanatical animal supporter will claim they are capable of suffering.


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## Cirith Ungol (Feb 18, 2005)

Hmmm    Yeah, I can extrapolate a bit far at times... I kinda... can't stop at times    I'll have to work on that...  :wall: 

I was mainly writing down my thoughts on this without having anybody special in mind... I just wanna be clear about that   

But I do think that there is a lot of closed mindedness found all arround. I would say that most, if not all of you/us who are on this forum would not fit in very well in that, since the fact that you own a tarantula or other very uncommon pet would classify you as more open minded than the general public I basically point at. In regard to "general public" I most gladly point at my relatives and some friends as the forefront of my view on close mindedness. That said, I don't dislike them for that, I'm just a bit sceptical or would wish for improvement.. you get the point I guess.

I believe also that the same stimuli of pain or discomfort animals react to might just as well be exactly the same stimuli we feel. That said it doesn't make me stop go fishing or eat meat for that matter. 

That tho comes closer to the topic of this post than what I've said so far, I agree fully danread!

I have not much to back my oppinion up with other than that I believe it is that way due to what I have observed and learned in my life. I would very much want ALL animals to be treated in a fair way, whatever animal it is and however "primitive" it may be. If one needs to kill it for some reason, do it right and quickly.

I must also agree that the topic of suffering due to pain with certainty does not apply to any other but the more intelligent groups of animals, eventho I've already had discussions about wheter very "primitive" animals will remember sources of "pain" and thus learn to avoid them. Which in some way could at least be interpreted as a forrunner to "remembering something bad" or "making a bad association with something". But I guess from remembering a source of bad stimuly to actual suffering might be a large step. I wouldn't know about that.

Whatever I've said tho, it's not that I say it is that way. It's more that I say "I think it is that way" and I absolutely don't KNOW the truth about it. All in all I'm more interested in the thinking process than the result because the result might only be a temporary one...


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## David Burns (Feb 18, 2005)

It is sheer human arrogance to think that we know what another organism thinks or feels. We don't know what celery thinks or feels. We just assume it does not. We have no basis for that belief but faith in our own superiority, which is delusion. To give ourselves or other organisms rights, other then the ones that nature provides, is an extension of that arrogance.


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## CreepyCrawly (Feb 18, 2005)

About repsonding to stimuli being a pre-programmed thing, something that they can not help but do.  We are pre-programmed with many of our responses to stimuli, such as touching something hot.  Even a tiny baby will jerk away without learning to, or be taught to.  The idea of suffering comes when the animal is incapable of responding to the stimuli in the way it wants to, or is pre-programmed to.  If it is hungry, and can't eat, that is where suffering comes in.  If I my hand is burning on a stove, but someone else is holding my hand there and I can't pull away (my pre-programmed response) I am suffering, is that spider not also suffering?  It is sitting in a continued state of hunger if not being fed... so to me, that is suffering.  It wants to correct the imbalance, but it can't.  To me, that is what suffering is.  It wants to make itself comfortable - clean, fed, watered, hid, whatever, and it can't.  This can be applied to any area, from pulling it's legs off to running and trying to hide.  To me, they can suffer.

This last night I was watching a poor tarantula who had moulting complications gone haywire try to survive, and I have no doubt that it was suffering.  Its legs were mangled from the position it tried to moult in, and instead of curving downwards, they were twisted up, feet pointing at the ceiling, and knees down on the floor... I have no doubt whatsoever that as it tried to walk, and started flailing that it was suffering.  I believe it may not have been in pain persay, but it was suffering.  I had hopes that somehow it could fix itself, but it died.


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## danread (Feb 18, 2005)

So what about the amoeba that is subjected to a negative stimulus, is that suffering? What about a plant that is kept in the dark, is that suffering too? If you answer yes to either of these questions, i wont enter a debate with you, as you are so far on the other end of the spectrum that there is no common ground to cross on at all.



			
				CreepyCrawly said:
			
		

> I am suffering, is that spider not also suffering?


This is whats called anthromorphising. You are making a huge leap of logic, and one that in my opinion just doesnt add up.


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## Cirith Ungol (Feb 18, 2005)

danread said:
			
		

> So what about the amoeba that is subjected to a negative stimulus, is that suffering? What about a plant that is kept in the dark, is that suffering too? If you answer yes to either of these questions, i wont enter a debate with you, as you are so far on the other end of the spectrum that there is no common ground to cross on at all.
> 
> 
> 
> This is whats called anthromorphising. You are making a huge leap of logic, and one that in my opinion just doesnt add up.



Is it really such a huge leap? Are we really that different?  :?


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## danread (Feb 18, 2005)

Cirith Ungol said:
			
		

> Is it really such a huge leap? Are we really that different?  :?


In short, yes. Our brain structure and neurological complex are far far more complex than that of an invertebrate, and our cognitive abilities are far in advance than that of any invertebrate. I'm not saying that invertebrates arent complex structurally, they in biological terms they are amazingly complex. It's just that it is quite apparent to me that they don't have brain capable of actually feeling fear, anxiety or any of the other emotions i would consider to amount to being able to actually suffer.


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 19, 2005)

danread said:
			
		

> In short, yes. Our brain structure and neurological complex are far far more complex than that of an invertebrate, and our cognitive abilities are far in advance than that of any invertebrate. I'm not saying that invertebrates arent complex structurally, they in biological terms they are amazingly complex. It's just that it is quite apparent to me that they don't have brain capable of actually feeling fear, anxiety or any of the other emotions i would consider to amount to being able to actually suffer.


That's as much of a leap as someone saying they _do_ have the capacity to suffer. And since when is the ability to cogitate existential suffering requisite to experience pain? Pain is a neurological response, a cell is stimulated, it fires, despite whether your brain is engaged or not, it causes unpleasentness sufficient to drive the stimulated creature away fromthe source of pain. It is no more "advanced" then the ability to percieve light (which we can all certainly say a tarantula has) there's no "cogitation" whatosever involved. Pain response is one of the single most primitive responses on earth.

That's like stating that it's fine to burn a person in a coma because they clearly do not have the capacity to "suffer". You still cause damage to them, their cells still fire, bringing the message of that damage to the brain, even if it's not necessarily "there" to parse the response into expressable feeling. 

Even they are less likely to "feel" it then a tarantula.


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## BakuBak (Feb 19, 2005)

Mattyb said:
			
		

> Acually i think they do. I was once told by a few pet store owners that if a animal cruelty officer saw me pulling the legs off one of my Ts or having like a "death match" with some of them that i could get a fine, and maybe some jail time....tho i dunno if this is true or not.
> 
> 
> -Mattyb



but this is sic  !!  if U kill moskito or a fly  You should  bepunished ? i dont thin so  ,, so if U kill spider   U shouldnt ,,, as well


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## CreepyCrawly (Feb 19, 2005)

Well, my point earlier may have been unclear.  I was just trying to say that if an animal is subjected to unpleasant (or painful) stimulus without being able to fix the problem that is causing it, how is that not suffering?  

According to Dictionary.com:
suf-fer
1.  To feel pain, distress, sustain loss, injury, harm, or punishment.
2.  To tolerate or endure evil, injury, pain, or death.

So to me, the T that is being kept without food or water, or decent place to hide (or otherwise being mistreated) is suffering.  Yes, I do believe that even plants can suffer, in a sense, as it pertains to the above definition.  I did not say that they felt it the same way us humans do, as I am sure it is a very different way that they go through it.  They may not even have any heightened stress levels the way we do, although I think they do.  As someone mentioned on a different thread somewhere pertaining to H. lividums - if you keep them in a bare cage with no place to hide, they will stress out and die much sooner than a correctly kept speciman will.  That says to me that the animal was undergoing physical problems due to the distress that it was caused by not having a good burrow/hiding spot (or otherwise called - suffering).  Am I wrong to put things together like that?  I may be the only one who thinks like this, I guess.


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## danread (Feb 19, 2005)

Sterlingspider said:
			
		

> That's as much of a leap as someone saying they _do_ have the capacity to suffer. And since when is the ability to cogitate existential suffering requisite to experience pain? Pain is a neurological response, a cell is stimulated, it fires, despite whether your brain is engaged or not, it causes unpleasentness sufficient to drive the stimulated creature away fromthe source of pain. It is no more "advanced" then the ability to percieve light (which we can all certainly say a tarantula has) there's no "cogitation" whatosever involved. Pain response is one of the single most primitive responses on earth.


At no point in any of my posts did i deny the fact that tarantulas can respond to a stimulus that we might percieve to be painful. Please re-read what i wrote. What i am questioning is the ability of a tarantula to actually suffer as a result of this pain. 

I have used this picture in a previous debate on the subject, but it is always useful to prove my point. The photo shows what is left of a male mantis that i left mating with a female. I left them together for about 12 hours, and when i came back i fully expected to find the male had been eaten. This was indeed the case, but when i came to pick up what was left of the male, i noticed it was still alive. So much so that it could still track my finger as i moved it in front of its head. Just out of curiosity, i tried to feed it a cricket, which it promptly caught and started to eat. It ate about a third of the cricket before i put it down. Now, for me, this is definite evidence that insects cannot feel pain in the sense that we can, as eating would surely have been the last thing on its mind. I see no evidence as to why tarantulas may be any different.


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## Mattyb (Feb 19, 2005)

Windchaser said:
			
		

> I care for my pets and give them the best possible care that I can. However, in general, I do not believe that they have the capacity to feel pain. The world can be a cruel place though and I don't have a problem with the eating of animals. If PETA had its way, the entire world population would be vegetarian. That is until some scientist claimed plants feel pain. In that case, if things were decided by PETA, we would all be screwed.
> 
> Do I suggest that we go out and torture animals for our entertainment such as Fear Factor, no way. Am I comfortable with the death of an animal for food, you bet.



I totally disagree with you. if they can't feel pain then how can they feel stress? I believe that all living things besides plants can feel pain.


-Mattyb


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## BakuBak (Feb 19, 2005)

4 me stress is   chemical reaction and pain is a feeling ,,,


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## Windchaser (Feb 20, 2005)

Mattyb said:
			
		

> I totally disagree with you. if they can't feel pain then how can they feel stress? I believe that all living things besides plants can feel pain.
> 
> 
> -Mattyb


Stress is the physical response to negative stimuli. If a tarantula is placed in an environment that greatly increases its exposure to negative stimuli, the tarantula, or animal, will exhibit physical signs of this. In the case of tarantulas, this will be restlessness (in an attempt to find a safe place), bald spots (even observed in OW T's under high stress), lack of eating (though this can be normal for a T.), overly defensive as well as other signs.

Again, I don't believe that T's have the capabilty to process the stress in the form of an emotional response. Their response is purely a physiological response.

Even though I fell this way, that does not mean that I condone mistreating them.


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## Mattyb (Feb 20, 2005)

Windchaser said:
			
		

> Stress is the physical response to negative stimuli. If a tarantula is placed in an environment that greatly increases its exposure to negative stimuli, the tarantula, or animal, will exhibit physical signs of this. In the case of tarantulas, this will be restlessness (in an attempt to find a safe place), bald spots (even observed in OW T's under high stress), lack of eating (though this can be normal for a T.), overly defensive as well as other signs.
> 
> Again, I don't believe that T's have the capabilty to process the stress in the form of an emotional response. Their response is purely a physiological response.
> 
> Even though I fell this way, that does not mean that I condone mistreating them.



Ok, I understand. But I still think that they can feel pain.


-Mattyb


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 20, 2005)

danread said:
			
		

> Now, for me, this is definite evidence that insects cannot feel pain in the sense that we can, as eating would surely have been the last thing on its mind. I see no evidence as to why tarantulas may be any different.


You cant use human reasoning or experience as a comparison for anything. We are a unique and complex creature that clearly interacts with this world in a different way from every other creature. Comparing humans and tarantulas is like comparing apples and hovercraft.

No, I do not argue that insects and tarantulas feel pain in the same sense that we can, nor do I argue that they suffer in the same way that we do. They do not have our manner of memory or cognition. They cannot appreciate or cogitate on their pain. They cannot write flowery poetry and cough consumptively into a handkerchief.

By the same token however, you can't assume that because it doesnt have to capacity to react the same way as you do that it is not continually negatively affected by damaging stimuli.


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## Sterlingspider (Feb 20, 2005)

BakuBak said:
			
		

> 4 me stress is   chemical reaction and pain is a feeling ,,,


Pain is a chemical reaction too. 

A patch of tissue is damaged. One nerve in a damaged area fires, it starts a chain of nerves firing to send the message to the brain. Eventually (well, in a matter of nanoseconds) this chain tells the brain that there is damage. 

That is all that pain is.

It is the idiot light on your own dashboard telling you that somthing is wrong. Nothing more.


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## MizM (Feb 20, 2005)

I don't think we will EVER know exactly WHAT a certain organism feels until that organism can form thoughts and words and speech. Only a T knows what a T feels. I prefer to operate on the assumption that all creatures know comfort and discomfort, and act accordingly.


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## BakuBak (Feb 20, 2005)

I agree in 100%


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## Mister Internet (Feb 22, 2005)

How many times are we going to do this topic?  If you search previous discussions on this exact thing (inverts and pain), you will find more of the same... lots of emotional, fact-less posts from people who think that tarantulas do feel "hurt", and factual, rather emotionless posts from people who are far better informed, but whose opinions don't flal in line with the majority's preoccupation with maintaining some type of anthropomorphism about their "cute widdle cuddwy wuddwy fuzzy friends".

It all depends on what you want out of your relationship to these critters... if thinking of them as your family dog makes you feel good, fine, but don't pretend that just because "you think" they feel pain it is a valid viewpoint.

As I said, it has been done here many times before... agree to disagree and keep it civil.


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## Nerri1029 (Feb 22, 2005)

Windchaser said:
			
		

> If PETA had its way, the entire world population would be vegetarian. That is until some scientist claimed plants feel pain. In that case, if things were decided by PETA, we would all be screwed.
> 
> Do I suggest that we go out and torture animals for our entertainment such as Fear Factor, no way. Am I comfortable with the death of an animal for food, you bet.



I'm gonna start MY OWN .. P.E.T.A.

People for the Eating of Tastey Animals...

blood pudding anyone???

who's with me?????


OH yeah.. While I wouldn't tolerate someone abusing an animal.. I DO NOT think they have rights under the law..
THEY DO deserve respect as a living creature..


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## Malkavian (Feb 22, 2005)

Nerri1029 said:
			
		

> I'm gonna start MY OWN .. P.E.T.A.
> 
> People for the Eating of Tastey Animals...
> 
> ...


It's been done before. However I was with them and I'll be with you!


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## Windchaser (Feb 22, 2005)

Nerrie,

I'm with you, but you can have my share of blood pudding. I'll take an extra helping of steak though.


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## Malkavian (Feb 22, 2005)

I've actually never had blood pudding. Would love to try it though


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## pitbulllady (Feb 22, 2005)

Most people have no idea just what "rights" mean.  To have rights, in any legal sense, you must have understanding of what acting within those rights means, AND also have understanding that YOU are accountable for your actions.  The rights of American citizens, for example, are clearly spelled out in the Constitution.  People who fought for those rights did so with the understanding of how important they were, but also with the understanding that rights can be lost when an individual fails to act responsibly within their parameters.  For example, I have to right to keep and bear arms(meaning weapons, including firearms), as guaranteed by the Second Ammendment.  HOWEVER, if I choose to use a gun in the committing of a crime, I know I can lose that right.  There is a big difference between a "right" and "priviledge", by the way.  
The issue with so-called "animal rights" is that animals, and especially inverts, simply cannot comprehend what having such "rights" entails.  They also cannot be expected to behave within certain parameters within those rights.  If I use a handgun to commit a crime, I can lose the right to keep firearms.  I am capable of understanding this.  The law holds me responsible, as does my own conscience, based upon my moral and ethical background.  Having rights is not a guarantee so much as to how *I* will be treated, but a guarantee of what I AM ALLOWED TO DO, within, again, set parameters.  What "rights" would a tarantula have?  What is it guaranteed, by law, to be able to do?  I am not asking what a PERSON would have to do in regards to said tarantula.  If the tarantula does not stay within its legal parameters, who holds it accountable for its actions, and in what way?  Does anyone actually believe it can understand what its rights are, and make a choice to behave responsibly?  If not, then it cannot be said that the animal in any way, shape or form has "rights", not by the definition of such.  Does the tarantula have a "right", for example, to bite crickets, but not to bite humans.  What if it DOES bite a human-what is to be its punishment, and how will this punishment be decided, and by whom?  Will its "right" to bite a cricket be taken away?  Will it understand WHY it is being punished?

Now, this does not mean that we, as humans, should be able to abuse other living things, though again, the definition of what constitutes "abuse" will bring many varies responses.  We have an ethical and moral obligation to other living things, but this does not mean that the non-human animals have "rights".  Again, your rights are a guarantee of what YOU are allowed to do, NOT a guarantee necessarily of how you must be treated, despite the popular lexicon.

pitbulllady


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## darkeye (Jul 11, 2005)

*Invert Pain... Did I miss something?*

Did I miss some late-breaking news story about Tarantulas and pain (or their supposed inability to feel it)?????

It seems that several posts have had the old standby "T's don't feel pain, so go ahead and blah blah blah".  Did CNN run some news story I missed?  If you don't believe that a tarantula feels pain, then grab it's leg with forceps and watch it.  I had to force autonomy from my E. pachypus after a bad molt, and I'll be damned if it didn't give me the old "Let go of my leg right now" twitch and pull!  It sure looked a lot like pain to me.

I have heard the nonsensical argument that states: Invert brains are not complex enough to feel pain.

Ok.  

Poke any animal with a stick.  Watch the reaction.  Poke any invert with a stick.  See anything familiar????

C'mon people.  

One can argue that the animal is just responding to stimuli and not really feeing pain.  Isn't pain just a response to a stimuli?  Didn't pain keep our ancestors safe from things like fire and another predator's bite?  What more do you need?????

Respect for all living things should be something we all strive for, not marching around assuming that we are superior and therefore have cornered the market on senses.  Can YOU smell with your bristles?  Can you imagine what it must be like to wave your legs in the air and use the information your brain gets back to determine if food is nearby?  A creature with less of a brain than any mammal can.  So how can we say it can't feel pain.  

We can barely smell our dinner cooking.


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## NickS1004 (Jul 12, 2005)

i think youre right.. somehow the animal knows that pulling off a leg is "bad" how would it know to avoid situations like that unless it feels something unpleasent.. 
i just watched the 1993 documentary "tarantula!" where some natives stabbed a blondi in the heart with a stick to kill it before eating.. and the spider (legs were bundled up with a rope) was trying to reach the stick with its fangs, and was shooting silk and poop all over, the spider didnt look like it was feeling "nothing"


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## Puppet Master (Jul 12, 2005)

well people are ignorant to believe that. Inverts dont feel pain is crap. Like you guys said pull off a leg and see what happens yeah sure they dont scream and cry but they still feel pain. 
I think the biggest problem is people watch things like Martha Stewart cooking and watch her take a big butcher knife and cut a live lobster in half and while it is lying their in 2 pieces squirming she says well since a lobster is a invertabret it feels no pain.
I think it is just said people think a living breathing thing does not feel pain.


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## Rabid Flea (Jul 12, 2005)

I totally agree, any animal/invert can feel pain, its totally ignorant to think they can't feel pain.  Think about it for a sec... if a T (or any animal for that fact) cant feel pain, then why do Ts throw us a threat display so readily or kick hairs at us... well IMO its because there is this huge creature arount them that has the potential to cause them pain and thus they are trying to avoid it.


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## David_F (Jul 12, 2005)

NickS1004 said:
			
		

> i just watched the 1993 documentary "tarantula!" where some natives stabbed a blondi in the heart with a stick to kill it before eating..


Well, actually, they didn't stab it in the heart, iirc.  Since the heart is in the abdomen and they stabbed it through the sternum I imagine they were going for the "brain" (ganglion) of the spider.  But knowledge of tarantula anatomy, more specifically, their nervous system probably isn't important when we're talking about whether or not they can feel pain, right?  

There's plenty of info to read, both for and against the idea of invert pain, if you want to base your opinion on something more than gut reactions.  Try a google search with the key words invertebrate pain.  I'm pretty sure the topic has been brought up here multiple times as well so, yes, you did in fact "miss something".


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## danread (Jul 12, 2005)

I've said everything i'm going to say on this topic in this thread. In particular, read this  post.

Cheers,


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 12, 2005)

danread said:
			
		

> I've said everyting i'm going to say on this topic in this thread. In particular, read this  post.
> 
> Cheers,



Dito. That was a good post, i remember that one. Nice pic and quick thinking on your part to make that experiment!


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## nightbreed (Jul 12, 2005)

I think they can sense damage and will do there utmost to avoid being "hurt" but I dont think they process this information in the same way we do.


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## Nick_schembri (Jul 12, 2005)

I also believe that T's dont feel pain. They dont even have a brain, its just a very small ganglion (a bundle of cell bodies of nerve cells). It is the sensitive hairs on the body of the T, that can sense a stimulus. A stimulus is not necessarily pain. Its just a sensation that triggers the T to react according to the strength of the stimulus. A strong stimulus implies a large animal that cannot be eaten, causing the T to act defensive or run away. So if you poke your T, it is simply reacting to the stimulus. 
I cannot prove this as I dont think anyone can, but it makes sense since the nervous system is not advanced enough.
As Cirith Ungol showed in the experiment, it is a logical conclusion that we can make.


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 12, 2005)

Nick_schembri said:
			
		

> As Cirith Ungol showed in the experiment, it is a logical conclusion that we can make.


Thanks, but it was danread


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## Nick_schembri (Jul 12, 2005)

Oh yeah, you just quoted him


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## aaronrefalo (Jul 12, 2005)

i read the attached thread...Should T`s have rights?....i think the same way as CreepyCrawly........I think that T`s do feel pain, not in the same way we do as we are the most highly developed  species...so surly they dont feel pain as we do but they can feel pain in their own manners...if we came to this extent and talk about phylum Gastropoda...which are less developed then Aracnids.....for example the snail he would feel pain if he cuts its foot...or put on it a crystals of salt...he surly does i think...so....as phylums get larger it get more developed..which this is pretty understood ....and so his sences..thus if a snail feel pain so more feels a tarantula in my opinion...

Aaron


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## Code Monkey (Jul 12, 2005)

Who here believes Ts can also appreciate the difference between HDTV and regular analog television? An old AM radio verus 5.1 surround sound from Sirius satellite radio? How about the smoothness of silk versus burlap?

Come on, raise your hands?

I'm guessing no one, yet they can certainly sense all of these things but how their brain processes the stimuli (it is wrong to insist inverts don't have a brain, Ts do in fact have one of the larger invert brains) is limited both by the sense organs and the complexity of their nervous system.

Yet you emo heads will sit here and insist they can *feel* pain. Bollocks.

A single celled amoeba will avoid negative stimuli, these gross behavioral responses related to avoiding danger have as much to do with demonstrating *feeling* pain as lack of gross behavioral responses have to do with demonstrating joy and ecstasy in a tarantula, or do you believe they can do that too?


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## Psoulocybe (Jul 12, 2005)

Code Monkey, you just saved me some typing.


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## EDED (Jul 12, 2005)

darkeye, sorry you had to experience that, but if you really wanna respect all living creatures, free your spider into the wild, maybe it would have not gone through the bad molt if it wasnt in your captivity, can you argue that?

what do you feed your spiders? vegetables?

some people here like myself feed mice, i think i will stop doing that, it felt like i was feeding a tiny puppy dog to a monster spider, it didnt feel good, but i dont mind it feeding crickets and others, if you think all those things feel pain think about your crickets, and roaches and etc in the mouth of your special spider slowly getting digested, oh the acid must burrrrrrn and hurt, you are biased thats all.


people these are spiders,,,,, S P I D E R S

whats the difference between me stepping on a spider thats in my house, and me stepping on my tarantula, whos gonna care other than people like us, exterminators dont give a damn, others dont give a damn, now im losing my focus i dont know what im talking about, i will stop for now.


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## Lopez (Jul 12, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Yet you emo heads will sit here and insist they can *feel* pain. Bollocks.


I'm sat here trying to imagine someone saying "bollocks" in an American accent.

Nope, not possible 

Doesn't stop me agreeing with your post though. I've missed your posts while you were away, they are refreshingly free of "bollocks". Usually


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## Code Monkey (Jul 12, 2005)

Lopez said:
			
		

> I'm sat here trying to imagine someone saying "bollocks" in an American accent.
> 
> Nope, not possible


Blame Garth Ennis for that one. John Constantine in the old Hellblazer comics used to say it all the time.


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## cacoseraph (Jul 12, 2005)

i think some ppl are missing a distinction between pain and negative stimuli

pain: 
http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=pain

quote:
2 a : usually localized physical suffering associated with bodily disorder (as a disease or an injury); also : a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leading to evasive action b : acute mental or emotional distress or suffering : GRIEF

this definition highlights two important things. a certain order of efferent nerves are required for pain and there is an emotional like, context to pain that requires a certain degree of sophistication. 

granted m-w ain't exactly the end all and be all of knowledge, but it helps to draw a distinction between what the like, lower and higher animals experience

EDIT:

BUT!!!!
(_)_)  (that's a big butt)
if you ever visit my house you will find my spiders set up in as stressless an environment as i can manage... and you won't catch me poking 'em with sticks... just cuz they can't feel pain, per se, doesn't mean stuff isn't deletorious for them


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## Code Monkey (Jul 12, 2005)

cacoseraph said:
			
		

> if you ever visit my house you will find my spiders set up in as stressless an environment as i can manage... and you won't catch me poking 'em with sticks... just cuz they can't feel pain, per se, doesn't mean stuff isn't deletorious for them


Exactly. Negative taxis, abnormal behavioral responses, etc. are 100% signs that something is happening to the creature that is not beneficial, but it does not mean they are suffering, despairing, or slipping into depression.

Folks: anthropomorphism wasn't true with your fuzzy stuffed animals when you were wee children, it isn't true with your fuzzy spiders now that you're older


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 12, 2005)

Here is another example for you: T's are known to pull their own legs off if those are damaged. This occurs even when there is no emediate bleeding. Try taking your own leg of just because it doesn't really function as you'd like it to. Or just imagine you'd be ripping on a finger 'til it comes of or imagine cutting it off with a knife.

Even if you had the luxury of doing that just for the sensation of it I bet nothing in the world would convince you to do this because it's just too painful. Now imagine, the spider has 7 more legs it can use even if one is limp, but still it choses to take its leg off eventho it would function well with that limp attached.

That too should show you that Ts "look" on the sensation of pain differently than mammals...


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## Code Monkey (Jul 12, 2005)

darkeye said:
			
		

> I have heard the nonsensical argument that states: Invert brains are not complex enough to feel pain.


At the risk of carrying out this exercise in futility at breaking through emotions masquerading as analysis any further, there is nothing nonsensical about the argument at all.

There is nothing in a tarantula or a lobster or a cricket or slug or any similar creature that physiologically demonstrates a capacity for anything beyond a creature that is largely a skinner-box with a wee bit of associative and habituative learning on top for some behavioral flexibility.

Now, go ahead and reject the best information that the scientific method can give us regarding the abilities of the nervous system of such creatures under the blanket guise of "science doesn't know everything" if you want, but keep in mind that once you leave what rational analysis tells us, you're in purely made up land. 

To reject what science tells us about invert nervous systems is to put you in a sitution where I can claim that not only don't Ts feel pain, but they actually feel exquisite, exploding ecstasy from having their leg pulled off and the reaction you see is because they're afraid the pleasure will be too intense and they'll pass out and be unable to escape from a predator while in their state of bliss. Furthermore, the subsequent lack of reaction after you've pulled the leg off is because they are all blissed out.

I have every bit as much proof of that bit of anthropomorphism as you do for them suffering.


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## NickS1004 (Jul 12, 2005)

David_F said:
			
		

> Well, actually, they didn't stab it in the heart, iirc.  Since the heart is in the abdomen and they stabbed it through the sternum I imagine they were going for the "brain" (ganglion) of the spider.
> 
> stupid me.. i know better than that, just a brain fart.. anyways i didnt specifically mention that the spider feels "pain" beacuse its probably not the same that we feel.. but im pretty sure that being stabbed in the brain is percieved by the spider as something negative, and how exactly does it determine a negative stimuli?
> 
> ...


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 12, 2005)

NickS1004 said:
			
		

> but im pretty sure that being stabbed in the brain is percieved by the spider as something negative


If I'm not mistaken not even humans feel pain in the brain, so you can cut and slice like Hannibal without the need of anesthesia. However, what's the point anyway of wondering wether it feels pain when stabbed in the brain? I can't think of anything else than a dead animal when it's brain is gone, so why care if it feels pain?  :?


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## aaronrefalo (Jul 12, 2005)

Cirith Ungol said:
			
		

> Here is another example for you: T's are known to pull their own legs off if those are damaged. This occurs even when there is no emediate bleeding. Try taking your own leg of just because it doesn't really function as you'd like it to. Or just imagine you'd be ripping on a finger 'til it comes of or imagine cutting it off with a knife.
> 
> Even if you had the luxury of doing that just for the sensation of it I bet nothing in the world would convince you to do this because it's just too painful. Now imagine, the spider has 7 more legs it can use even if one is limp, but still it choses to take its leg off eventho it would function well with that limp attached.
> 
> That too should show you that Ts "look" on the sensation of pain differently than mammals...


...
but thats obviously....we are more developed....we surly can feel more then tarantulas do...WE SURLY CANT COMPARE TARANTULI TO USE.....

Aaron


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## NickS1004 (Jul 12, 2005)

its not that i care that they feel pain (or even think they do) im curious as to exactly how they know they difference between something harmful and not harmful.. this goes for any inverts, not just tarantulas.. the way i see them, is that they are like tiny robots preprogrammed to to certain things, and are pretty incapable of any kinds of real "thought"


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## Code Monkey (Jul 12, 2005)

NickS1004 said:
			
		

> its not that i care that they feel pain (or even think they do) im curious as to exactly how they know they difference between something harmful and not harmful.


Mostly hardwiring selected by millions of years of evolution modified by habituation.

Example: The cockroach has two cerci (think prongs) on the end of their abdomen. Any sudden air current as minor as what happens when you swing your foot at one is enough to stimulate these cerci. Now, although the signal does reach the brain, the first place it reaches are the abdominal ganglion for locomotion, zip, the cockroach runs away from this threat. Now, lets say the roach is an area where those cerci are bumping up against something or its breezy - wouldn't do it any good to be running about madly in this situation, so the brain actually does have some mechanism for realising the "car alarm" keeps going off and inhibits the signals from the ganglion to the legs and stops the running.

Another example showing the situational nature of their hardwiring: we all know how crafty flies are at sensing our approach and flying off avoiding us. However, try this in a very dim room and they'll not react to your approach. When it's dark, flies stop flying, simple as that. Their sensory hairs are still signalling, but the inhibition of their flight response is stronger.


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## TmanPhil (Jul 12, 2005)

*hmmm*

seems to me that this can even go up to a further level. lets say, simple vertabrates. human perception of pain is off the charts compared to other animals. IE a snake will survive for a fairly long time with just a head. still try to eat and function. The body on the other hand may squirm for quite awhile after being parted with its dear friend. so from what the origniator of this post is saying..... the brainless body of the snake is feeling immense amounts of pain, while the head (which is pretty much a very basic brain wrapped in flesh in bone) is fairly happy with life and not feeling a thing.....hmmm


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## Nlneff (Jul 12, 2005)

*Of course*

There are cases of humans cutting off their limbs when the alternative is death, say when pinned by a rock or something.  Just saying :}


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## Mister Internet (Jul 12, 2005)

Ok boys and girls, this thread has now been merged with the most recent lengthy thread on the EXACT SAME SUBJECT because I'm sick and friggin' tired of seeing them pop up like a mushroom after a bad rain as soon as someone gets bored.  I reserve the right to continue to merge threads on this topic until such time as (hopefully) they are all in one place.

Please keep it civil, please keep it on topic, and please stay out of it if all you're going to do is inflame the discussion.


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## TRowe (Jul 12, 2005)

TmanPhil said:
			
		

> ...so from what the origniator of this post is saying..... the brainless body of the snake is feeling immense amounts of pain, while the head (which is pretty much a very basic brain wrapped in flesh in bone) is fairly happy with life and not feeling a thing.....hmmm


See, I would interpret that situation in the opposite manner.  The body, now lacking a brain, is feeling nothing because although the nerves are firing, the signals are coming to a dead end.  Due to the severed connection to the brain, the signals are no longer being received, processed and interpreted as pain.  The nerves are simply firing, causing various muscles to contract... etc.  I would also think that the "head" portion would feel pain at the point that it was severed.  Those nerve endings may still have a connection to the brain, depending on the point at which they were severed.


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 12, 2005)

Nlneff said:
			
		

> There are cases of humans cutting off their limbs when the alternative is death, say when pinned by a rock or something.  Just saying :}


Yes there are. But the case you are mentioning is not the same as a tarantula losing a leg. When pinned by a rock you have the choice between dying of starvation or bleeding to death or other. Or you can (if you can manage to actually cut the leg off) chose to live with a false leg... if you make it. 

The T still has 7 legs left and does manage just as well with one leg temporarily missing.


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## SpiderDork (Jul 13, 2005)

Pain - "An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder." (quoted from dictionary.com)

Unpleasant - "not pleasing" (quoted from dictionary.com)

Pleasant (pleasing) - "Giving or affording pleasure or enjoyment; agreeable" (quoted from dictionary.com)

Based upon current scientific studies and evidence, the brain of a tarantula is not capable of producing emotions of pleasure or enjoyment or their opposites. Thus, in the strictest definition of pain, they do not experience pain.

When a human being experiences pain it begins with the stimulation of nerve receptors (unlike our other senses there are no specific nerve receptors for pain) a signal is then sent along a nerve pathway to the spinal cord. Upon reaching the spinal cord two things happen, one: the spinal cord sends a message back to the motor neurons near the site of original stimulation causing a reflex in which the muscles are activated and the site is pulled away from whatever stimuli caused the original stimulation. The reason for this is that signals travel slowly along the nerves (anywhere from two to 200 mph) and a reflex response helps prevent further injury that could possibly occur in the delay that it takes for the impulse to travel to the brain, be interpreted and then a message travel back with the appropriate response. Now, before that message reaches the brain our body has already taken steps to prevent further potential injury all before we have experienced the sensation of pain. And two the spinal cord continues the message along to the brain where it is interpreted as pain.
The gate-control theory is a theory that there are "gates" in the spinal cord that can either block the flow of signals to the brain or allow them to pass and that these gates may also be controlled by the brain. This theory helps explain why some people can suffer traumatic injuries and experience little to no pain. It also explains why rubbing the site of injury or applying ice helps control the pain, by sending competing signals to the brain the gates for pain are closed to allow the passage of the competing signals. 
Pain is also very subjective, in a study by Craig and Preaching (1978) a group a volunteers were exposed to a series of electrical shocks and then asked to rate the discomfort experienced, half of the volunteers experienced their shocks in the presence of another person who supposedly received the same shocks and announced a rating of 25% lower than the rating stated by the subject, the other half received their shocks in the presence of another person who did not announce their ratings out loud. The first group, when exposed to information indicating that their partners experienced a lower level of pain, reported significantly less discomfort and actually showed a lower physiological arousal in response to the pain, indicating that pain is strongly affected by social or cognitive factors.
Then there is the interesting phenomenon of phantom pain, pain or discomfort suffered by an amputee in an area of the body that is no longer present. This also provides overwhelming evidence that pain is in the brain, provided with no stimuli the brain is still able to "produce" pain.
The bottom line is that spiders along with countless other species do not appear to have a brain advanced enough to perceive pain. The logical answer would be that spiders have a system in place similar to our reflex response, thus they respond in a manner that is self-preserving but do not experience the unpleasantness of pain that we experience.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 13, 2005)

SpiderDork said:
			
		

> The gate-control theory is a theory that there are "gates" in the spinal cord that can either block the flow of signals to the brain or allow them to pass and that these gates may also be controlled by the brain.


This relates to invertebrates which have a limited number of possible responses. The flight reflex in the fly I gave above is one such example. In light, any motion stimuli occuring near the fly and the legs extend causing the fly to leap off the surface and flight is initiated long before any signal reaches the fly's brain. However, if the optic centers of the brain say it's dark, a signal from the brain shuts off this reflex by blocking the ganglion connected to the locomotion nerves. By and large, there is a rather limited number of possible outcomes to any particular stimuli based upon the interaction of inhibitory and stimulatory signals coming into the various ganglion in charge of the invert's response.

You can even create very detailed flow charts for even seemingly complex behavior that demonstrates where these branch points are demonstrating no actual complexity of processing. As an example, it might seem to be pretty complex behavior for a wasp that digs a hole in the ground, lays an egg and then stocks the hole with paralysed prey items for the grub, finally filling in the hole and tamping off the dirt. However, all of this is triggered behavior that stems from the original oviposition. 

For instance, fill in a bit of the hole after the wasp digs it and leaves to get the first prey item before laying the egg and the wasp will come back, notice your alterations and re-dig to the proper dimensions. Now, artificially shorten the hole after the wasp lays the egg and it never notices. It fills it up with an insufficient amount of food, seals it, and goes on its way even though the larva is doomed to starvation. At the opposite end, you can continually remove the prey from the hole (this works with some dung beetles as well) and the wasp just keeps chucking prey in there never stopping to think about why it's taking so many trips to fill the hole.

Invertebrate behavior and physiology is fascinating, or I wouldn't be in graduate school studying entomology, but it is an error in judgment to attribute sophistication to them that isn't there, and wouldn't do them any good even if it was.


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## MizM (Jul 13, 2005)

SpiderDork said:
			
		

> ...Pain - "An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder." (quoted from dictionary.com)
> 
> Unpleasant - "not pleasing" (quoted from dictionary.com)...


They experience SOMETHING that triggers them to take evasive action from the negative stimuli. It might not be pain in the literal sense, but they feel SOMETHING. We can argue the theoretics all day long, but I prefer to operate on the assumption that their "trigger" is unpleasant to them. Pain is only a term in this case, shortening the phrase "SOMETHING that triggers them to take evasive action from the negative stimuli".

There is no way that we will ever know WHAT it feels like to them, or even if they "feel". All the science in to world won't make it possible for us to attribute anything to Ts that we can't experience ourselves.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> There is no way that we will ever know WHAT it feels like to them, or even if they "feel". All the science in to world won't make it possible for us to attribute anything to Ts that we can't experience ourselves.


That's simply not true, but if someone is bound and determined to attribute the impossible to tarantulas there's only so much banging our heads against the wall we can do. You can't have things both ways, believing in all the amazing brain mapping we've managed to do in invertebrates and vertebrates, including humans which lets us absolutely confirm hypotheses with your "experience requirement", and turn around and claim we can't know they lack awareness when it suits your emotional needs.


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## Tony (Jul 13, 2005)

_just add_   :wall:


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## SpiderDork (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> Pain is only a term in this case, shortening the phrase "SOMETHING that triggers them to take evasive action from the negative stimuli".


"This forum is for scientific discussions and questions pertaining to Tarantulas"
The previous quote is the explanation provided for the purpose of this forum.  

The vocabulary of science (whatever discipline you practice) is filled with words that have very specific meanings. The reason for this is that scientist can communicate with one another with little to no confusion.

If this forum is to live up to its claim then we cannot arbitrarily assign definitions to words as we see fit, it will only lead to confusion and a breakdown in the communication of ideas. This is why I provided the definitions at the beginning of my post, so that there would be no misunderstanding.

The "SOMETHING that triggers them to take evasive action from the negative stimuli" is very similar to the reflex response that I described and Code Monkey elaborated upon. If the "gates" in our spinal cord are closed and prevent the impulse from reaching the brain then we will react defensively without any perception of pain. All evidence reveals that negative stimuli in inverterbrates stops at the reflex point and goes no further.


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## MizM (Jul 13, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> That's simply not true, but if someone is bound and determined to attribute the impossible to tarantulas there's only so much banging our heads against the wall we can do. You can't have things both ways, believing in all the amazing brain mapping we've managed to do in invertebrates and vertebrates, including humans which lets us absolutely confirm hypotheses with your "experience requirement", and turn around and claim we can't know they lack awareness when it suits your emotional needs.


Repsectfully disagree. Even humans feel pain to different degrees, so how can we KNOW what others feel? I had both children without a drop of painkillers, I've got friends who couldn't stand stage 1 labor.

How do we know what a T FEELS when burned by the sun? How can we say the stimuli it receives doesn't "hurt" as such?

I really, truly believe that we simply cannot know EXACTLY what they "feel" and EXACTLY what they "think" (putting on nad protection  ). We can only hypothesize until we're blue in the face.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> I really, truly believe that we simply cannot know EXACTLY what they "feel" and EXACTLY what they "think" (putting on nad protection  ). We can only hypothesize until we're blue in the face.


Because we know they don't have anything to feel with - you needn't figure out someway to obliterate your mind by placing it inside a nervous system that lacks any awareness to know what *no awareness* "feels" like: no awareness = no suffering.

I honestly do not understand why this topic comes up, I honestly do not understand why there is debate. If someone insisted that Ts could learn language I hope that no one here would agree. Yet how do we *know* they can't learn language, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it. How do we know they can't fly, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it. How do we know they can't shoot lasers out of their spinnerets, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it.

Yet when it comes to this emotionally laden subject, suddenly there is all this room for debate with people. Suddenly the whole of neurophysiology and behavioral science is inadequate even though its how you accept such basic facts as the limited colour spectrum seen by dogs or cats - it's not like we asked them, we jammed probes in their brains and nerves and measured when they fired and in response to what. And when it comes to inverts, their nerves have been poked and prodded millions of times over - there's nothing there that indicates anything required to suffer, but yet you'll still fall back on your "we can't know" even though we do know for all intents and purposes.

If you think there is even a slight chance your tarantulas have awareness enough to suffer from negative stimuli, then the same goes for the crickets and roaches you feed them, the same goes for the mosquito on your arm you just smashed, and the same goes for the fleas on your dog. And if its the fact that they respond and avoid negative stimuli that opens this doubt for you, then please throw out your bleach and soap, because you can get flagellated bacteria to move towards positive things and away from negative things for them, clearly they might be aware and suffering from our actions as well


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## danread (Jul 13, 2005)

Thats probably the best post i've seen on the topic so far. Well put CM!


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## MizM (Jul 13, 2005)

So you are essentially saying that if you hold a T over a flame and let it burn to death slowly, it wouldn't feel anything that we could tranlate to be discomfort? I really find it hard to believe. I just can't imagine it. There has to be SOMETHING.


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## cacoseraph (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> So you are essentially saying that if you hold a T over a flame and let it burn to death slowly, it wouldn't feel anything that we could tranlate to be discomfort? I really find it hard to believe. I just can't imagine it. There has to be SOMETHING.


you would overload its various sensors and likely trip a strongest escape response... the sucker would squirm until you boil-popped it... but i honestly don't think it's brain would be registering pain.

but the reactions the spider would exhibit would be indistinguishable (more or less) flame cooking a person or monkey or maybe even one of those super basic slime worms

bear in mind, i love animals... i keep bugs cuz it was too like, traumatic for my mammals & other furries to die on me... but i don't think the spiders are sophisticated enough for emotions... just sensor conditions that must be met with macros of response behavior to alter environment or self to satisfy those conditions


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## Code Monkey (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> So you are essentially saying that if you hold a T over a flame and let it burn to death slowly, it wouldn't feel anything that we could tranlate to be discomfort?


This conversation with you is boiling down to arguing semantics about what we mean by discomfort and pain, but what I believe is relevant is what would invoke an ethical response from us, that is something that is emotional discomfort within the tarantula's nervous system, and as for that, there is nothing.

Assuming you had a reason to kill a tarantula, I would no more consider it unethical to burn a tarantula to death slowly than I would to use CO2 to knock it unconscious and administer an overdose of whatever passes for euthanasia fluid for a spider. There simply isn't any "mind" there to mind what's being done.

On the older boards in another of these nigh pointless back and forths I said something akin to:





> The question isn't whether or not a tarantula can sense pain, the question is what do they think about it?


And that is the whole point of all this bantering: does a tarantula have a mind to speak of that can suffer, can have real emotional discomfort? Science tells us that although we haven't ferretted out what every single ganglion in invertebrate brains is responsible for that there isn't any sort of interconnected mind present, i.e., it doesn't think in any way that is ethically relevant. Your tarantula isn't suffering when it's chock full of nematodes or bleeding out from an abdominal rupture any more than your computer is when it's got a virus and Norton is going mad with the screen popups telling you of its distress.


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## defour (Jul 13, 2005)

Interesting post. The rest of the thread probably has some good stuff in it, too, but my attention span isn't long enough for all that.



			
				Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Because we know they don't have anything to feel with - you needn't figure out someway to obliterate your mind by placing it inside a nervous system that lacks any awareness to know what *no awareness* "feels" like: no awareness = no suffering.


I'm not sure if I'm reading this as you intended it, but the idea of knowing what "no awareness" feels like is incoherent. It presupposes conciousness.



> how do we *know* they can't learn language, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it. How do we know they can't fly, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it. How do we know they can't shoot lasers out of their spinnerets, oh yeah, no anatomical structures for it.


On paper, this is good. When it comes down to nuts and bolts, or tacks and screws, or corks and paddywhacks or whatever the proper hardware is, we know all these things because we have gloriously strong inductive arguments to support them: tarantulas can't learn languages because we've never seen one do it, and things get bootstrapped up a bit at a time until we seem to have nice physiological underpinnings to point to. We've never seen chimps speak, so we assume they can't. With that in mind, we investigate all the details of their anatomy and not surprisingly, come up with evidence to back it up. It works, more or less. I suspect, however, that if crows had not been observed to mimic mechanical noises and human speech, someone would have looked in their mouths and declared 'this apparatus is incapable of producing the Queen's English', in the unlikely event that they would even have considered such a thing.



> Yet when it comes to this emotionally laden subject, suddenly there is all this room for debate with people. Suddenly the whole of neurophysiology and behavioral science is inadequate...


I agree completely. This kind of opinion is almost always emotionally driven, except perhaps in epistomological circles (which may not matter to a scientist, since they're often openly hostile to philosophers).



> If you think there is even a slight chance your tarantulas have awareness enough to suffer from negative stimuli, then the same goes for the crickets and roaches you feed them, the same goes for the mosquito on your arm you just smashed, and the same goes for the fleas on your dog.


I agree again. The interesting thing about all this is not the question of where you draw the line, but whether or not you can. As a scientist, you have to pick a spot and make your line or you'll get bogged down and never get any work done. Some scientists, if you look over their shoulders while they're engaged in line-drawing and ask them about it, will say that they really don't know what the exact deal with the lines is, but they do it because they have to. Others will growl and hiss and get red in the face and then stomp off to their offices. There are fewer of the latter today than there were a century ago, I think. Ultimately though, it's just a fun game.  Science is about results, and as long as they're coming in, questions like this really don't matter. Philosophy may be fun, but you'll never build a decent rocket with it.

Steve


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## edesign (Jul 13, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> So you are essentially saying that if you hold a T over a flame and let it burn to death slowly, it wouldn't feel anything that we could tranlate to be discomfort? I really find it hard to believe. I just can't imagine it. There has to be SOMETHING.


well...just because you can't imagine it does not mean it isn't so. A lot of people can not fathom the idea that after death there is nothing...nonexistence. Try it some time if you haven't, try to imagine yourself not existing...no memories, no thought, no senses...nothing. Can't do it can ya? Doesn't mean it's not a possibility and doesn't stop people in believing there has to be an afterlife because the idea of nonexistence is unfathomable.

There IS something...and that's what some of you who are taking the stance that inverts (t's in this thread) can feel pain are incorrectly processing. Think about your reflexes...when the doctor taps below your kneecap your leg kicks, when someone/thing frightens you unexpectedly you react LONG before your conscious brain has any idea of what is going on, these are examples of what happens with T's and their nervous system. It's merely a signal that tells the T how to react...there is no positive/negative feeling associated with it...it is simply THAT, a signal. Think of them like little computers (i forget who said this first in this thread, i know CM alluded to it), they are basically a software program that has been programmed through eons of evolution.

10 IF hairs sense strong vibration
20 THEN run
30 OR if run is not possible
40 THEN display threat pose
50 WHILE in threat pose
60 IF threat gets close
70 THEN lunge at threat
80 IF threat leaves
90 THEN GO 110
100 ELSE GO TO 50
110 RETURN 0 (return zero meaning end program)

something like that...it could be coded even closer to computer code but i wanted it to be understandable. There is no positive/negative associated with the stimulus...it's simply reacting.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 13, 2005)

defour said:
			
		

> I'm not sure if I'm reading this as you intended it, but the idea of knowing what "no awareness" feels like is incoherent. It presupposes conciousness.


That was sort of the point. If you've ever been totally knocked out for surgery you know how much suffering your tarantula is capable of 




> On paper, this is good. When it comes down to nuts and bolts, or tacks and screws, or corks and paddywhacks or whatever the proper hardware is, we know all these things because we have gloriously strong inductive arguments to support them: tarantulas can't learn languages because we've never seen one do it, and things get bootstrapped up a bit at a time until we seem to have nice physiological underpinnings to point to. We've never seen chimps speak, so we assume they can't. With that in mind, we investigate all the details of their anatomy and not surprisingly, come up with evidence to back it up. It works, more or less. I suspect, however, that if crows had not been observed to mimic mechanical noises and human speech, someone would have looked in their mouths and declared 'this apparatus is incapable of producing the Queen's English', in the unlikely event that they would even have considered such a thing.


The weakness to this semi-counterpoint is that neurophysiology started with inverts and built up from there. We didn't start "taking apart" chimps and prison volunteers and work backwards, we figured out how the nerves work by poking and prodding the inverts. We aren't claiming that the tarantula doesn't feel pain just because we don't find the same thing in them as a human, we claim it because everything in the tarantula, in a sense, is in the human and it's the extra bits that have been empirically demonstrated to be used for the sort of higher mind functions necessary for emotional awareness.


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## Nia (Jul 16, 2005)

It seems fairly obvious to me whether or not any creature, especially Ts since this is the topic, feel pain.  You have observed that Ts do have a fight or flight response... Why?  If they dont feel pain, then why would they want to fight or run away?  Pain, and the fear of pain, is the factor that motivates, not only humans but other creatures as well. Just because we can not see or hear them react in a way that humans or other mammals do does not mean they are not communicating their fear of pain, or when they are in pain.  Yes, all creatures have an understanding of pain, though they may experience it in ways that we are unaware of.  They have even scientifically proven that plants respond to pain <http://www.department13designs.com/vegan.html>.

At one time (and even now in many third world countries) it was believed that women did not have souls and did not really feel pain...  whether or not other creatures feel pain? Isn't that just as silly?  IMO


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## C_Strike (Jul 16, 2005)

AS far as i'm concerned, a tarantula as with all forms of life have an iinbuilt self-preservation technique, be that a true neurosystem or what ever. whether it is in comparison to a mammals advanced neuro-network or not, they will feel pain as with a sense of hunger/thirst..etc,etc... i think it is a basic innate responce to pressures of the environment. they obviously have a different resonse to a cricket than a stick (in all my experience), a tarantula might become defensive/aggressive towards the stick btu will generally either munch onthe crik or pretty much ignore it. This difference of response surely dentes that a tarantula can distinguish between certain things which in turn shows this self-awareness/self-preservation. i have a video documentary about Theraphosa b's. It contains footage of a south-American tribe killing and eating 1.
 they used a sharp stick to pierce the underbelly of the spide     
The spider had a very blatant response to this... its legs wildly twitched and it rapidly, and futily,  tried to tag the tribesman. This is a sure response which surely shows that tarantulas are aware of themselves and have,even if very basic, .
ANYthing which will twitch if ya decide to ram a stick through it is showing distress...
We can feel objects with our fingers, on some level this is pain...we are aware of pressure on our fingers, though it isnt considered 'pain' unless it hurts... but it is still the very same kinda of sense
...longwinded i know, but i struggled to explain myself,lol 

PS: probably doesnt make a whole lotta sense, i have confused my self several times through writing this


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## Code Monkey (Jul 16, 2005)

Thought experiment time for those that just can't wrap their heads around a simple idea:

Let's say that Bob is a recent paraplegic, paralysed somewhere midchest by a traumatic spinal cord severing. If I jam a nail in Bob's foot does he feel pain?

Anyone say yes? Anyone?

Right, he doesn't feel pain because the parts of his aware nervous system that are responsible for *feeling* pain never get the signal to interpret as pain even though it is being sent. More importantly, even though it doesn't do any good, the ganglion at the base of the spine are sending back "get the hell out of dodge" signals to the legs and if Bob were a tarantula or a cockroach he'd be thrashing all over the place severed spine or not.

Now here's the intellectual leap for people to make: the tarantula has no part of a brain for feeling pain for these signals to get to in the first place. It's that simple.

You can argue emotionally crippled pseudoscience all day long, it won't make a case.

:wall: :wall: :wall:


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## SpiderDork (Jul 16, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> At one time (and even now in many third world countries) it was believed that women did not have souls and did not really feel pain...  whether or not other creatures feel pain? Isn't that just as silly?  IMO


These beliefs were culturally founded not based upon years of scientific study, thousands of experiments and scientific fact. 

Making a comparison between flawed cultural beliefs and scientific theories is meaningless.

We can believe whatever we want, that is one of the wonderful things about the human mind, the only one who can change it is you. But that doesn't mean we are always right. I can believe 100% that I can fly without mechanical assistance, but the moment I make the attempt the laws of physics (gravity in this instance) assert themselves and despite my "beliefs" my flight will come to a sudden and most likely tragic end. Beliefs are great but in the world of science beliefs without facts and evidence are next to meaningless and are unlikely to be taken seriously. This is allegedly a "scientific" forum so don't be too disappointed if your beliefs are not taken seriously or challenged because they lack merit. Remember, it's not personal it's just good science.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 16, 2005)

*The problem of semantics...*

Here is a post from me from three years ago, I sound like some of the same people I've been guilty of slamming in this and other threads:



> Some people seem to make the mistake of assuming that pain must be perceived exactly like our pain to be *pain*. I doubt very much an insect or tarantula feels pain in the same we do - their brains obviously conceive of the world and process the sensory information very differently. That still doesn't mean they don't feel pain and respond accordingly. One of the problems about being as "intelligent" as we naked apes are is that our brains have had to become more complex about basic things we'd be too stupid to manage otherwise. Avoiding negative stimulus is one of those things - the tarantula or cricket may not feel the searing discomfort we do, but they certainly regard the stimulus as inherently negative and attempt to avoid it every bit as much as we do; if that's not pain, I don't know what is.


Now, beyond the fact that this means you can find all sorts of crap on this forum from me if you search, what does this post illuminate? For one thing, it illuminates the problem of using language fine tuned around the context of humans to describe the existence of something like a tarantula. In the thread I took that quote from, whoami? and I got into a verbal tussle where I argued that they feel pain and he made arguments against me very much like my own posts in this thread. The punchline is that, in hindsight, we actually agreed 100% but were unable to realise what the other was saying due to the inherently vague and loaded words "feel pain". 

I was blinded by a profound difference in the way we defined the word "feel"; he defined it the way I have in this thread: _inherently conveying some sense of emotional awareness_ and I was defining it in the way that I would now use the word "sense".

To further complicate matters, I used the word "pain" then to denote any nerve signal implying danger or damage, and, as you might have noticed in this thread, I have also come to the dark side of assuming that anyone talking about pain is talking about it in conjunction with emotional distress and discomfort.

So, in conclusion, if I've insulted, belittled, or otherwise been a jackass to someone who merely wanted to assert that a tarantula's nervous system transmits messages of danger and damage and they react accordingly, I apologise most sincerely for not paying enough attention to people taking seemingly contrary positions.

On the other hand, three years and multiple graduate courses in invertebrate physiology and behavior later, I am way past "doubting very much" that insects or tarantulas interpret "pain" in the same or even similar way as a human or a lab mouse.


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## defour (Jul 17, 2005)

I was blinded by a profound difference in the way we defined the word "feel"; he defined it the way I have in this thread: [i said:
			
		

> inherently conveying some sense of emotional awareness[/i] and I was defining it in the way that I would now use the word "sense".



Man, I wish more people could get this kind of thing. I'm confident that way more than half of all personal disagreements boil down to a definitional difference. This happens to me on a daily basis, yet I rarely run into anyone who seems compelled by my pointing it out. To most people, a word is a static, unchangeable thing, no more open to interpretation than a whole number. I had a boss that thought anyone who used big, uncommon words was just trying to sound smart. He didn't believe in nuance. I always told him that he was exactly the kind of guy Orwell was talking about.

Steve


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## Nia (Jul 18, 2005)

SpiderDork said:
			
		

> These beliefs were culturally founded not based upon years of scientific study, thousands of experiments and scientific fact.
> 
> Making a comparison between flawed cultural beliefs and scientific theories is meaningless.
> 
> <snip> This is allegedly a "scientific" forum so don't be too disappointed if your beliefs are not taken seriously or challenged because they lack merit. Remember, it's not personal it's just good science.


Actually, I wasn't that far off.  Science does influence our culture to quite an extent.  It wasn't that long ago that learned men of science said the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth.  They have since been proven wrong.  Science changes every day, creating new theories and throwing out old ones that no longer fit our model of the universe.  Unfortunately the scientific world can also be political and therefore cultural... new findings can sometimes be lost in the politics and old findings can become so stuck in our culture that we can barely break away from them when they are proven wrong.   

Because we are currently unable to measure 'scientifically' the pain responses in tarantulas does not necessarily mean that tarantulas do not experience pain... it only means we are unable to detect scientifically whether or not they experience pain, _at this time_.  And you said this forum tended to be scientific... did you forget that science is basically various models and theories we create as we try to understand and measure our universe?  We are still trying to come up with an all encompassing theory that explains the relationships between quarks, waves, fields, superstrings, etc... never mind the vast lack of knowledge that we have regarding tarantulas.  I don't think science is quite as cut and dried as you seem to be indicating.

You also seem to be forgetting that there is more to science then test tubes and measurements. Psychological and behavioral studies are also considered science.  Simple observation, and even laboratory experiments set up to recognize behavior (remember Pavlov's dog?), can indicate whether or not tarantulas feel pain from a scientific standpoint.  

I much prefer the scientificly based statement "we are unable to detect whether or not tarantulas feel pain at this time" to the statement "tarantulas do not feel pain because we can not detect it scientifically".  Who knows, maybe five years from now you will be proven wrong, scientifically.


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## Nia (Jul 18, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Thought experiment time for those that just can't wrap their heads around a simple idea:
> 
> Let's say that Bob is a recent paraplegic, paralysed somewhere midchest by a traumatic spinal cord severing. If I jam a nail in Bob's foot does he feel pain?
> 
> ...



<Let's say that Bob is a recent paraplegic, paralysed somewhere midchest by a traumatic spinal cord severing. If I jam a nail in Bob's foot does he feel pain?>

Okay Code Monkey, ANYONE is going to bite... You are talking about a paraplegic, right?  From what I know, and I admit I am not a scientist mind you, Bob being paraplegic means that his nerves and/or ganglion are _damaged_. So that really doesn't work for me as a good basis for your experiment.... Unless the tarantula was also paraplegic.  After all, experiments should have similarities with both test subjects, right?  Bob doesn't feel pain because he is damaged... duh!  If the tarantula was paraplegic then one could safely assume that it may not feel pain as well.

<Now here's the intellectual leap for people to make: the tarantula has no part of a brain for feeling pain for these signals to get to in the first place. It's that simple.>

You compared Bob the paraplegic with a tarantula... are you saying that a tarantula's brain is like ours?  Actually I would think, since tarantulas are so dissimiliar, that tarantulas would have brains for their physiology, not ours.  Therefore their way of interpreting signals such as a nail jammed in their paraplegic foot would be different than ours, not the same.  We run the risk here of not recognizing the signal interpretation as something that we understand (as humans) and can measure scientifically as pain as we know it, but as something the tarantula can possibly interpret as pain. Nuerologically we are still studying the human brain and falling short of definitive answers for how we think and what makes us tick... I would think we are even further behind studying tarantulas nuerological systems.

 :? Hmmm, an actual thought comes to me...
If a tarantula doesn't feel pain or react to physical deformity and potential damage, why would he amputate his own damaged or deformed leg? (I am sure you've heard that one before).  I would have to take a guess and say; knowing that he could molt another one, he assessed the situation and took the most appriopriate course for his future benefit.  We are aware that damaged appendages can cause problems with future molts.  Egads... a thinking and reasoning tarantula!


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## Code Monkey (Jul 18, 2005)

@Nia

1) You have a very poor understanding of even the history of science, let alone the process. For example:





> It wasn't that long ago that learned men of science said the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth.


Well, it's been about 3000 years since anyone of "science" thought the world was flat - the ancient Greeks calculated the diameter of the Earth very accurately considering what they had to work with. Plus, in spite of the nonsense you learned in children's books, it's been almost that long since anyone of any level of education thought the world was flat. As for the resistance to the heliocentric model, that wasn't science, that was religion. As soon as there were tools to measure what was going on, men of science figured out the accurate model and defeated religion.

Further, even if we were for the moment to assume these "counterpoints" held weight, as Eurypterid would point out, science _per se_ didn't formally exist until the notion of the scientific method was formed, and that's only been the past few hundred years. However, it's worked out so well for us that it is estimated that the sum total of human knowledge is doubling about every 18 months.

2) You don't even know what a paraplegic is, so how can you even begin to nitpick at my model? A paraplegic is one whose *spinal cord* has been severed or crushed somewhere below the nerves that control the arms branch off. Now, without stimulus the nerves below the block in humans will atrophy over time, that's why I was explicit that this was a recent injury, so everything below the injury works just like it always did. But, hey, let's not try to understand the objective world, emotional arguments always trump reason and logic in your world.

3) No, you're not a science type, or you would have not wasted your time writing that out as if it meant anything. What you and the others that cling to these fairy tales are not grasping is that pain and suffering require very specific parts of the brain. If this were, say, 1930, your arguments would be somewhat valid. But it's not 1930, we have dissected tarantulas, other spiders, other inverts, we have worked out what nerves and what ganglions by and large do what, and so on. They aren't some dark mysterious box that can hold out secrets on the scale you want to believe in. If you take out all the parts of the invertebrate nervous system that haven't been elucidated you most certainly do not have anything that would allow the sort of limited awareness necessary for experiencing pain. This isn't it a limitation on science's part, it's a limitation of parts. You might was well be arguing that tarantulas might be able to fly as experience pain as anything more than a stimulus-response.

I hereby will publically announce my new theory of a human cognitive disorder that I have dubbed ITFIGTBTF, or *"It's the fuzz, it's got to be fuzz"*. A tarantula has a few hundred thousand neurons distributed throughout its entire body. You have over 100 billion just in your brain and you lose more neurons than the tarantula has in total every single day of your life. A mouse, approaching the bottom limits for where most thinking people will assign any level of ethically valid awareness, has 100 million neurons in its brain. Yet, for some reason, in spite of everything that objective science and reason has to offer, we routinely encounter people on this and other boards that insist with great passion that their tarantula is, or at least could be, capable of emotional awareness and consciousness. The only thing I can think of to explain this defect in basic cognitive skills is that tarantulas are fuzzy.


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## stewartb (Jul 18, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> <
> :? Hmmm, an actual thought comes to me...
> If a tarantula doesn't feel pain or react to physical deformity and potential damage, why would he amputate his own damaged or deformed leg? (I am sure you've heard that one before).  I would have to take a guess and say; knowing that he could molt another one, he assessed the situation and took the most appriopriate course for his future benefit.  We are aware that damaged appendages can cause problems with future molts.  Egads... a thinking and reasoning tarantula!



 


Regards,

Stew.


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## Nia (Jul 19, 2005)

Code Monkey]@Nia

_1) <snip>

Further, even if we were for the moment to assume these "counterpoints" held weight, as Eurypterid would point out, science per se didn't formally exist until the notion of the scientific method was formed, and that's only been the past few hundred years. However, it's worked out so well for us that it is estimated that the sum total of human knowledge is doubling about every 18 months._

EXACTLY!  You speak as if science, at this moment in time, had nothing else to prove, that science is an absolutism... it is not.  Science continues to evolve, creating new ways to measure and understand the world around us... And that is where I come in... I hate absolutism.  Reminds me so much of closed-mindedness and fanaticism.  Because we currently are unable to detect pain in tarantulas and other inverts does not mean that they dont feel, just that we can not detect it at this time with the scientific knowledge and equipment that is currently available.  Sure they may have a very rudimentary brain, but we still dont understand even _that_ completely, otherwise why are we still studying the brain and how it ticks?  That we are unable to detect it does tend to lead one to conclude (from a scientific vewipoint) that they (tarantulas) do not feel pain.  However with new information and new techniques we may find out that we are making assumptions.  I'm at least willing to leave it open to speculation, as many a scientist would.


_2) You don't even know what a paraplegic is, so how can you even begin to nitpick at my model? A paraplegic is one whose *spinal cord* has been severed or crushed somewhere below the nerves that control the arms branch off. _ 

Ah... I'll pass that on to my mother-in-law... who had ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) for 6 years and became paralyzed because of it.  Code Monkey, you may actually find this interesting... considering her nerves were _damaged_ because of the disease and she was unable to move of her own accord from the neck down.  Unfortunately for her she could still feel.  Portions of her nerves and spinal cord were disentigrating causing her to be unable to move from the neck down... i.e. paraplegic in most peoples understanding... eventually she drowned in her own bodily fluids when the nerves in her lungs became affected as well.  Note that I said she could still feel. That portion of her nerves was not damaged.  She could feel a fly walking across her face, as well as her muscles cramping, she could feel pain.  Is there some other word for that type of condition... to be paralyzed and unable to move both of your arms and legs?  How about being unable to move but still feel?  It may be that my vocabulary and understanding are in need of a little education.

And since I know of at least one case where someone was unable to move because of nerve damage but could still feel, how would you translate that into your experiment?  It could prove to be an interesting scenario...


_3) No, you're not a science type, or you would have not wasted your time writing that out as if it meant anything. _ 

Hon, do you have a scientific degree?  I do, albeit a small one, but yes, I do have a degree in science.  One of the reasons why I know science continues to evolve and is not an absolute truth.  I think you missed my point, but thats okay, I'll let it slide.


_What you and the others that cling to these fairy tales are not grasping is that pain and suffering require very specific parts of the brain. _ 

That I understand, in mammals.  However I am having trouble understanding it where inverts come into play considering their brains and physiology are so different...  forgive me, must be a 'blonde' moment.

I have a question for you, actually two, and of course you are going to think I am an idiot but that doesn't stop me... I've been called worse.  And I don't mind playing stupid every once in a while, I get to learn so much when I do.

1) Is a tarantula's brain and phsyiology the same as a human's?  Have we studied it to the point that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEFT TO LEARN from a tarantula?  Do we know exactly how every cell and every part of a tarantula, including the brain and nervous system, works?  If WE KNOW EVERYTHING there is to know about a tarantula and how it works and can learn no more, then I will apologize for causing you such strife.  However, I get the distinct impression that there is a lot more waiting in the wings.


2) Actually #2 is an observation that you may or may not care to comment on.
Science and the average hobbyist are observing tarantulas for a number of years.  However the conclusions they both come to are different to the point that it causes serious discussion between science and the average lay person.  Are the observations influenced by the hobbyist's emotions, or are the scientists missing a vital clue in their observations?  To me it would indicate that we need to look at both conclusions and determine what we are missing.  Science is not infallible, and neither is the hobbyist.  However, when a number of people disagree so much and it has become such a yes/no situation, then I think we should go back to the drawing board and figure out why.


_I hereby will publically announce my new theory of a human cognitive disorder that I have dubbed ITFIGTBTF, or *"It's the fuzz, it's got to be fuzz"*. A tarantula has a few hundred thousand neurons distributed throughout its entire body. You have over 100 billion just in your brain and you lose more neurons than the tarantula has in total every single day of your life. A mouse, approaching the bottom limits for where most thinking people will assign any level of ethically valid awareness, has 100 million neurons in its brain. Yet, for some reason, in spite of everything that objective science and reason has to offer, we routinely encounter people on this and other boards that insist with great passion that their tarantula is, or at least could be, capable of emotional awareness and consciousness. The only thing I can think of to explain this defect in basic cognitive skills is that tarantulas are fuzzy._

Cool!  I got fuzz!  Oh wait... my tarantula has fuzz   I already knew I've lost way too many nuerons.

Its been great debating with ya Code Monkey.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 19, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> EXACTLY!  You speak as if science, at this moment in time, had nothing else to prove, that science is an absolutism... it is not.  Science continues to evolve, creating new ways to measure and understand the world around us...


Why do you think this applies? Seriously, this isn't one of the big mysteries in life. Invertebrate brains and nervous systems are one of the most well understood systems in the living world. In case you missed it, the reason we can do things like brain surgery in us, try to treat your MIL's ALS, etc. is because of how well we understand their nervous systems. Neurophysiology started with the inverts and we built on that when we moved to invertebrates.

So, since you now wish to wax all rational, this implies in about the strongest way possible that hypotheses formed about invertebrate nerve function are on the money or we wouldn't have been able to transfer them upward. Furthermore, your continued "open mindedness" ignores the general equality and conservation that occurs throughout the animal kingdom. If you take the gene that is responsible for eye developement in a mouse and insert that gene into a fly, it orders up a fly's eye in normal shape. In other words, this constant falling back on "science doesn't know everything", "science learns new things all the time" blah blah blah ignores the solidity of the model we have for the way nervous systems function. There are new things that science will learn about invertebrate nervous systems, but that they are as emotionally aware as at least a white mouse is not one of them and I laugh at anyone who would suggest that science should be open that all the spiders, cockroaches, centipedes, and mosquitos slaughtered by the billions every year might possess mind's equal to those that possess magnitues more the complexity.




> I'm at least willing to leave it open to speculation, as many a scientist would.


No, what a scientist says, as he dismembers yet another living lobster without anesthesia to study how they walk, is that while he must admit that science might possibly find out that these creatures might be aware and capable of suffering, he personally is convinced they aren't and figures the chances they are feeling pain is somewhere around winning the powerball repeatedly, for the rest of your life.




> Ah... I'll pass that on to my mother-in-law... who had ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) for 6 years and became paralyzed because of it...


:wall: :wall: :wall: :wall:

You didn't even try to understand my very specific example even after I clarified it and instead introduced utterly irrelevant "counter scenarios". Since you're dense, the point is that in a recent traumatic injury paraplegism there are the raw pain signals, there are the reactive nerve signals that if evolution hadn't left us so dependent on the brain (unlike a distributed nervous system like a tarantula has) would have Bob thrashing around, but Bob wouldn't feel pain. Since the tarantula lacks any parts of the mind to allow emotional awareness, it is functionally the equivalent to my Bob thought experiment. See, the idea was to come up with something that would demonstrate why nerve impulses do not equal pain, nor does any behavioral response. The only part that matters is the psychological component for which there is absolutely zero evidence for in invertebrates.




> Hon, do you have a scientific degree?  I do, albeit a small one, but yes, I do have a degree in science.


I am, knock on wood, about 5 months from my masters in entomology, this might just give me a bit more footing on this subject matter. Of course, if you bothered to read my profile or read any of my posts in this thread instead of looking for something else to misunderstand, misconstrue, or otherwise nitpick, you might have figured it out already.




> That I understand, in mammals.  However I am having trouble understanding it where inverts come into play considering their brains and physiology are so different...  forgive me, must be a 'blonde' moment.


It's not a "blonde moment", it's the specific desire to close your own mind that maybe science is onto something here. You have some childish need to see in inverts the same sort of awareness you find in the family dog such that you will use just a little bit of science to try and invalidate the remaining whole. The major differences between invert systems and vertebrate systems is that somewhere in the course of becoming vertebrates the nerves became sheathed in myelin. This change is one of the main reasons why we can be as certain as you can be of anything that inverts cannot possibly be aware enough to suffer from nocireceptive nerve impulses. You can use your fingers and toes to count just about every neuron that is in the "spinal cord" of a typical invert. Now, unless you have millions and millions and millions of fingers and toes, you can't do this  even for something as neurologically primitive as a fish. The amount of "data" flowing to and from the invertebrate brain is like using a drinking straw next to the Mississippi river in vertebrates. Now, conversely, these giant axons are faster than our broadband at moving this drinking straw's worth of data, but that's why inverts react so fast: efficient, limited data processing, of which any sort of emotional awareness would be wasted as it would still have to be using the drinking straw in terms of bandwidth.




> 1) Is a tarantula's brain and phsyiology the same as a human's?  Have we studied it to the point that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEFT TO LEARN from a tarantula?  Do we know exactly how every cell and every part of a tarantula, including the brain and nervous system, works?  If WE KNOW EVERYTHING there is to know about a tarantula and how it works and can learn no more, then I will apologize for causing you such strife.  However, I get the distinct impression that there is a lot more waiting in the wings.


There is plenty, but it's questions like "exactly what role does the corpus callosum play in triggering an early moult in an injured tarantula?" It is not: "is this animal hiding an aware brain in this cluster of barely interoperating ganglia?"

Now, if you are going to fall back on the "we don't know everything so we shouldn't be drawing conclusions" type excuse I suggest you not take any medication, not eat anything but organic food you grow yourself, and that you stop going to your doctor, because it is the rare, rare system that science understands *everything*. However, there is a point that solid knowledge is "good enough", where every sign is that such & such is true and it would be stupid to act otherwise, and the more that real world, practial applications work based upon this provisional conclusion, the more reason we have to believe that the conclusion is essentially right even if it requires later modification. Well, science is provisionally certain that inverts (minus the possible exception of the cephalopods) are not hiding minds capable of any emotions or awareness whatsoever, and the more we experiment upon them under this assumption, the more and more weight there is that they are correct in this assumption.




> 2) Actually #2 is an observation that you may or may not care to comment on.
> Science and the average hobbyist are observing tarantulas for a number of years.  However the conclusions they both come to are different to the point that it causes serious discussion between science and the average lay person.


True, and this is where a lot of fuel for deciding what might be worth looking into under controlled circumstances comes from. However, this doesn't have a lot to do with the subject of this thread.




> Are the observations influenced by the hobbyist's emotions, or are the scientists missing a vital clue in their observations?


They are absolutely influenced by their emotions, not to mention the frequent lack of training in how to take objective observations absent of interpretation. Furthermore, no matter how interesting the observations and semi-conclusions we draw as hobbyists until they can be objectively measured in a controlled setting, they're not much good to science.



> To me it would indicate that we need to look at both conclusions and determine what we are missing.  Science is not infallible, and neither is the hobbyist.  However, when a number of people disagree so much and it has become such a yes/no situation, then I think we should go back to the drawing board and figure out why.


Why? What disagreements? I assume we're on the pain subject again, because I don't see a lot of disagreement. What I see is a majority of longer term hobbyists that don't believe these animals capable of feeling pain and a large number of people who believe that just because a creature avoids noxious stimuli that it is actually bothered by it in a psychological way. Science isn't interested in these observations because they have been observed and measured ad nauseam and it no longer considers the issue.

Again, if a tarantula or any invertebrate feels pain, it *must* have some sort of mind, not just a nervous system. There must be something there that allows them to have some awareness of their existence in a more abstract sense, not sentience, but at least something like a mouse manages. Without that, you can't have the psychological component, which is how pain is defined legally and ethically. So, rather than engage in the scientifically invalid method of trying to pick holes in established theory, you need to demonstrate something that indicates the presence of this emotional awareness.

In other words, even if you and all the other emo heads were dead on, that us rational types are inflicting hideous suffering in the lab and in the field, you need to attack science with science, not a bunch of emotional platitudes and "but you can't be absolutely sure"s because that isn't how the process works. Design a controlled experiment that can find some sign that creatures that have no phenotypically measurable signs of emotional awareness and no neurophysically measurable signs either are still emotionally aware. Then and only then will the "they can feel pain" or even "they might be able to feel pain" stances have a leg to stand on.


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## MizM (Jul 19, 2005)

God Chip, if only you had gone to college!!!


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## Nia (Jul 20, 2005)

Code Monkey, I didn't go in to this trying to convert you, nor to prove how smart I am... I already know I've got a long ways to go to be considered genius.  That you are close to getting your entemology degree, certainly explains a lot.  My hope was to at least open up the possibility in this discussion that we may learn more about tarantulas than we currently know now.  Obviously you are taking this much more seriously than I am and it is causing you great grief... I apologize for that.

As such, I'll keep it simple.  Something to consider in the great pain/no pain debate... that most of the papers I have encountered do not say that invertebrates do not feel pain _beyond the shadow of a doubt_, but that the _balance of evidence _ points in that direction.  In othersords there are still some gaps in our conclussions.  A big one is that we can not apply the same techniques on invertebrates that we use on mammals, therefore it is usually assumed that one would take into account:
1) The evolutionary function of pain 
2) The neural capacity of invertebrates 
3) The behaviour of invertebrates 
And then one would usually conclude, based on what we know, that it is most likely that they can not feel pain.  As far as I can tell, we still have a ton to learn so can not make "absolute beyond a shadow of a doubt" statements when we are conjecturing an hypothesis. 

_ Brusca R and Brusca G. 2002. The Invertebrates. 2nd edition. Sinauer.
Animal Behaviour Society, 2003. Anim. Behav. 65: 649-655
International Association for the Study of Pain.  www.iasp-pain.org/terms-p.html
Berg, H 1975. Nature. 254: 389-392
Sherwin, C 2001. Anim. Welfare. 10: S103-S118
Eisemann C et al. 1984. Experientia 40: 164-167
Drickamer L et al. 2001.  Animal Behavior: Mechanisms, Ecology and Evolution. 5th edition. McGraw-Hill.
Hanlon R and Messenger J 1996. Cephalopod Behaviour, Cambridge Univ. Press.
Boal J et al. 2000. Behav. Processes. 52: 141-153          _  


Something to ponder, while you throw darts at my image, is that there has been work on the reactions of plants to various stimuli such as music, words, and pain.  The results have been astounding, showing that plants can and will respond to such. Interesting since plants do not even have brains or nervous systems.  In fact it has also been discovered that water crystals will also respond to such stimuli and you certainly know that water does not have brains either. Perhaps we can put this to work with our invert friends... maybe even throw in a bit on behavioral science as we observe and measure the reactions, taking into account that tarantulas tend to be just as individualistic as humans are.  

_http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/biodiversity/publications_files/Whitton2004.pdf
New functions for electrical signals in plants.

http://www.mediaarthistory.org/Programmatic key texts/pdfs/Nadarajan.pdf
Phytodynamics and Plant Difference   Gunalan Nadarajan

Galston, A. W. and C. L. Slayman. (1979). The not-so-secret life of plants. American Scientist, 67 337-344.

Horowitz, K. A., D.C. Lewis, and E. L. Gasteiger. 1975. Plant primary perception. Science 189: 478-480.

Kmetz, J. M. 1977. A study of primary perception in plants and animal life. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 71(2): 157-170.

Kmetz, John M. 1978. Plant perception. The Skeptical Inquirer. Spring/Summer, 57-61.

From "The Skeptics Dictionary" http://skepdic.com/plants.html_


As for myself, I will still treat my fuzzy tarantulas with respect and compassion, always assuming they can feel pain.  I would certainly hope that my keeper would do the same for me.

Regards,
Nia


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## skinheaddave (Jul 20, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> _
> Animal Behaviour Society, 2003. Anim. Behav. 65: 649-655
> _


_
I started here (you messed up the reference, BTW) and would really like to know what this has to do with the ability of inverts to feel pain?  Inverts have also been shown to adapt their behaviour to others of their species -- a perfect hobbyist example is that kingworms will not moult if crowded.  Are you suggesting that they sit there, reason out their best course of action and then take it?  




			International Association for the Study of Pain.  www.iasp-pain.org/terms-p.html

Click to expand...

This clearly distinguishes between emotion and taxis.  Why can't you?

Now, given the quality of your references to this point in the list, I don't really feel compelled to meander down to the library and read the articles I can't access from the comfort of my home.  If you feel that there are some exceedingly salient points, please provide your argument along with the reference and I will look into it.




			plants to various stimuli such as music, words, and pain.
		
Click to expand...

Pain is not a stimuli -- check out your own reference to IASP definitions.




			As for myself, I will still treat my fuzzy tarantulas with respect and compassion, always assuming they can feel pain.  I would certainly hope that my keeper would do the same for me.
		
Click to expand...

Do you treat mosquitos with the same care?  I'm not suggesting we should all go out and mangle bugs for fun -- certainly we have taken on the responsibility for the wellbeing of our animals and should treat them with respect.  Why does something need to be anthropomorphised before it has value, though?  If you want an animal that can really feel for you what you feel for it, then you'd best stick to significant others.

Cheers,
Dave_


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## cacoseraph (Jul 20, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> You have over 100 billion just in your brain and you lose more neurons than the tarantula has in total every single day of your life.


and that's on a bad day!

i bet i can kill on the order of millions, on a good day =P


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## Code Monkey (Jul 20, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> Code Monkey, I didn't go in to this trying to convert you, nor to prove how smart I am... I already know I've got a long ways to go to be considered genius.  That you are close to getting your entemology degree, certainly explains a lot.  My hope was to at least open up the possibility in this discussion that we may learn more about tarantulas than we currently know now.  Obviously you are taking this much more seriously than I am and it is causing you great grief... I apologize for that.


It's not a question of grief, it's that pseudoscience does not have a place in animal husbandry. It's one thing to bandy about colloquialisms such as "like" and "happy" when we talk about invertebrate pets so long as the keeper realises that they are just colloquialisms. The problem is that many keepers do not realise this, they actually worry that their fuzzy wuzzy T is unhappy with the color of the new plastic plant they put in the cage, they argue that a sensibly dimensioned tank is too small because Rosie clearly *enjoys exploring*, and so on. Heck, we've had keepers argue that their T likes being petted because of the way they raise their abdomen, likening it to the way a dog or cat might show enjoyment, even though it is a defensive warning posture for new worlders waiting for their mathematically additive decision making to push them over to "hair the bejesus out of them idiots" mode.

So, while the issue of feeling pain is purely an intellectual exercise by and large, it is emblematic of sort of misunderstanding that keepers make of their invertebrates. Tarantulas do not want your love, your fine aesthetic taste in decorations, or your consideration for their psychological state should it be necessary to go in and yank off a few limbs to free them from a stuck moult. They don't really want anything, but if they could be said to want anything, it's to exist and to see that what needs allows them their continued existence are met, that's about it. Any other attributions to these amazing creatures are more likely to see a keeper inadvertently harm them rather than for any good to come from them it in my experience.


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## Sheri (Jul 20, 2005)

Certainly, assigning an animal traits it does not posess rewards only the owner and detracts from enjoying the true nature of the animal itself.

For instance, I can appreciate my animals without the need to attribute emotions to them that only serve to (falsely) inflate my own self-worth. 

However, I do take pleasure in creating terrariums that I believe allow me to observe them as closely as I could in a natural environment.
But this does not mean that I believe they are happier this way, or that they have the capacity to note the difference.

They will adjust to the conditions that they are provided with in order to survive. That's really all it is. And I can take just as much pleasure from that as others apparently do from believing that they enjoy being stroked, or that there is a mutual emotional bond.

Except my enjoyment is of a higher value since it is based in reality.


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## Nia (Jul 20, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> . Any other attributions to these amazing creatures are more likely to see a keeper inadvertently harm them rather than for any good to come from them it in my experience.


My goodness... we actually agree on something!  A whole email in fact!

Now wait you say, isn't this the same woman who said...
"As for myself, I will still treat my fuzzy tarantulas with respect and compassion, always assuming they can feel pain."

Yes I am... as an empathic and emotional being I would tend to be more careful of a creature whom I thought could feel pain.  I might toss it aside like a newspaper otherwise... 'oh thats okay, it cant feel pain' or 'oops, it broke.'  And I agree that there is a need to recognize that this is an alien being, alien in that it is not human nor does it have human characteristics, much as we would wish them too. They are Different!  If we don't recognize that then we run the risk of hurting them or of being hurt ourselves... common sense that.


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## Nia (Jul 20, 2005)

skinheaddave said:
			
		

> I started here (you messed up the reference, BTW) and would really like to know what this has to do with the ability of inverts to feel pain?  Inverts have also been shown to adapt their behaviour to others of their species -- a perfect hobbyist example is that kingworms will not moult if crowded.  Are you suggesting that they sit there, reason out their best course of action and then take it?


Not necessarily, if at all.  At the most, on a very rudimentary level, they may be making a choice.  Is it haphazard the course of action they take, or are they really making a choice?




> Do you treat mosquitos with the same care?


I do try to treat all creatures with respect... may stumble at times but I do try.  Mosquitos included.



> I'm not suggesting we should all go out and mangle bugs for fun -- certainly we have taken on the responsibility for the wellbeing of our animals and should treat them with respect.


I agree.




> If you want an animal that can really feel for you what you feel for it, then you'd best stick to significant others.


Tried that. My significant other is about as considerate as my tarantulas at times, lol.  I don't expect a tarantula to feel love, or even fondness, those tend to be human traits.


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## MizM (Jul 22, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> Something to ponder, while you throw darts at my image, is that there has been work on the reactions of plants to various stimuli such as music, words, and pain.  The results have been astounding, showing that plants can and will respond to such. Interesting since plants do not even have brains or nervous systems.  In fact it has also been discovered that water crystals will also respond to such stimuli and you certainly know that water does not have brains either. Perhaps we can put this to work with our invert friends... maybe even throw in a bit on behavioral science as we observe and measure the reactions, taking into account that tarantulas tend to be just as individualistic as humans are.


You are a brave woman, I was going to bring this up, but feared the awesome nad kicking I would have gotten!



			
				Nia said:
			
		

> As for myself, I will still treat my fuzzy tarantulas with respect and compassion, always assuming they can feel pain.  I would certainly hope that my keeper would do the same for me.
> 
> Regards,
> Nia


Funny, since becoming a mother, I tend to treat every living thing as if is has feelings. One would hope that nobody DOES treat their fuzzy Ts as if they DON'T feel pain!


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## Code Monkey (Jul 22, 2005)

MizM said:
			
		

> You are a brave woman, I was going to bring this up, but feared the awesome nad kicking I would have gotten!


Dave's comment sums it up best: Everyone in her list of references can tell the difference between pain and taxis, why can't you?

Bottom line is that taxis/kinesis are merely motor functions, they can NEVER be equated with pain, which is defined as having a psychological component. You have to demonstrate the psychological component to have pain, there is no other solution if you want to fly in the face of established consensus.

Plants can get up, scream, and run off for all I care, but unless you can demonstrate the psychological component, they aren't feeling pain by any objective measure.


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## MizM (Jul 22, 2005)

THERE'S that nad kick! ;P  And thanks for the great visual, I can just SEE my houseplants writhing when I crank up the Metallica!!!  

I wonder Chip, IS there a subject that we agree on? Aside from the fact that your daughter is about the cutest thing on the planet, that is!!


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## Nia (Jul 22, 2005)

Then how about a simple experiment... Its not an original experiment but it is easy enough anyone on this board can do.  And since we have some real scientists here they can participate and make sure they have not tampered or biased this experiment in any way.

3 jars of dried grain; rice, wheat, rye, whatever, as long as it is the same type, and the same size clear glass jars (for observation).  Put the lid on the jars and observe for 1 month...

Jar 1 you say nice things to every day.
Jar 2 you say hateful things to every day.
Jar 3 you ignore.

An alternate would be to do this to 3 plants of the same species, age and size.  However you would have to water them the same amount during this month. 

According to what Code just wrote, there shouldn't be any change in the grain at the end of the month.  But if there is, would the grain be responding to the energy we impart, or to emotions?

Now, what if we did that to our tarantulas?

Just a thought.


(This experiment came from Dr. Masaru Emoto, Yokohama Municipal University, Japan.)


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## cacoseraph (Jul 22, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> Then how about a simple experiment... Its not an original experiment but it is easy enough anyone on this board can do.  And since we have some real scientists here they can participate and make sure they have not tampered or biased this experiment in any way.
> 
> 3 jars of dried grain; rice, wheat, rye, whatever, as long as it is the same type, and the same size clear glass jars (for observation).  Put the lid on the jars and observe for 1 month...
> 
> ...


um, what language do plants speak?  and do you need to yell or speak in the same tone?

couldn't there be a much simpler explanation than plants responding to the emotional content, such as CO2 fluctuations, humidity flux, etc?

rushing to attribute emotional perception from an experiment like that fails Occam's Razor horribly

(note: i didn't read any more about that experiment than what Nia said)


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## Nia (Jul 23, 2005)

cacoseraph said:
			
		

> um, what language do plants speak?  and do you need to yell or speak in the same tone?)


It doesn't matter what language you speak. It might be confusing if you yelled harshly those loving words though lol.



			
				couldn't there be a much simpler explanation than plants responding to the emotional content said:
			
		

> And there may well be... however, since not everyone here has access to sophisticated equipment in order to measure such, this one is easy enough to distinguish if there is a visible difference in the way the jars are treated.  If there is a difference a few times it could be a fluke.  Yet it opens up questions if the results indicate the possibility of an emotional or a type of energy response time after time, under different conditions (temps are going to be different at my house than at yours for instance).
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Code Monkey (Jul 23, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> And if they have emotional response, then there would also indicate a possibility for the ability to feel pain.


But there is NOTHING in your experiment that tests for an emotional response, ergo, any conclusions meant to cast doubt on plants a lacking emotion are null and void by default.

Nice/angry/hateful are interpretations in our brains of purely neutral stimuli. Without our empathic capabilities we'd never be able to discern emotional content of anything, so how do plants discern the intent behind neutral stimuli? You have to answer that question first before you can go drawing any conclusions from tossing some good vibes their way.

We can draw probable conclusions when dealing with animals with a similar nervous system such as a dog, with plants you're going to have to do better than an experiment cooked up by some wackos in the 1970s on too many quaaludes.


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## Nia (Jul 24, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> But there is NOTHING in your experiment that tests for an emotional response, ergo, any conclusions meant to cast doubt on plants a lacking emotion are null and void by default.
> 
> Nice/angry/hateful are interpretations in our brains of purely neutral stimuli. Without our empathic capabilities we'd never be able to discern emotional content of anything, so how do plants discern the intent behind neutral stimuli? You have to answer that question first before you can go drawing any conclusions from tossing some good vibes their way.
> 
> We can draw probable conclusions when dealing with animals with a similar nervous system such as a dog, with plants you're going to have to do better than an experiment cooked up by some wackos in the 1970s on too many quaaludes.



True, there is nothing in the experiment to measure the plants emotional response, just a possibility for a visible _reaction _ to our emotional input.  To do so would mean we would each need a polygraph or some other type of equipment to measure the electrical responses of plants during this experiment. Many of us dont have anything more technical lying around the house than a computer and a kids microscope (nor the ability to construct such).  If you wish to put forth a full blown experiment to prove or disprove this thought Code, go right ahead...   


By the way, since you speculated that this was an experiment on qualudes I thought I'd pass on some sites that are featuring Dr. Emoto's work... keep in mind this is not the scientific aspect of it... I cant read Japanese.  A bit of light reading if you will.  I dont expect everyone to accept his theory. There will always be skeptics, which makes life interesting.  

http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/emoto_exhibit_flash.html
http://www.newconnexion.net/article/05-04/emoto.html
http://www.whatthebleep.com/crystals/
http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm
http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/eprofile.html


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## Code Monkey (Jul 24, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> By the way, since you speculated that this was an experiment on qualudes I thought I'd pass on some sites that are featuring Dr. Emoto's work... keep in mind this is not the scientific aspect of it... I cant read Japanese.  A bit of light reading if you will.  I dont expect everyone to accept his theory. There will always be skeptics, which makes life interesting.
> 
> http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/emoto_exhibit_flash.html
> http://www.newconnexion.net/article/05-04/emoto.html
> ...


You do realise that nobody has been able to replicate his experiments and his publications are not peer-reviewed? That means they are not in any sense of the word "scientific". They are, in every sense of the word, pseudoscience. All he has done is put a new spin on the same crap that people were purporting in the 1970s like I said - it wasn't valid then, it isn't valid now.


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## defour (Jul 24, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Plants can get up, scream, and run off for all I care, but unless you can demonstrate the psychological component, they aren't feeling pain by any objective measure.





			
				Nia said:
			
		

> According to what Code just wrote, there shouldn't be any change in the grain at the end of the month.


Amazing stuff, and almost painfully frustrating; how can there be such a semantic disconnect? But, after a lot of pondering I think I've figured it out. Are you all sitting down? I've got big news, and I'm betting the farm on it:

This is the FIRST POSITIVE TURING TEST RESULT EVER!!! This thread just made history, people, and I'm astonished and honored to have been a part of it. I for one took it hook, line and sinker, and don't tell me the rest of you didn't. I hope you don't take it too hard, Chip; there was a little cheating after all, since the official rules require that one knows what the game is.

Man, in the afterglow I kind of feel like Garry Kasparov. 

Steve


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## danread (Jul 24, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> By the way, since you speculated that this was an experiment on qualudes I thought I'd pass on some sites that are featuring Dr. Emoto's work... keep in mind this is not the scientific aspect of it... I cant read Japanese.  A bit of light reading if you will.  I dont expect everyone to accept his theory. There will always be skeptics, which makes life interesting.
> 
> http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com/emoto_exhibit_flash.html
> http://www.newconnexion.net/article/05-04/emoto.html
> ...


Wow. Do you really believe this stuff?


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## skinheaddave (Jul 24, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> Is it haphazard the course of action they take, or are they really making a choice?


More to the point, are they making a "decision" based on contact, chemical levels etc., or are they reasoning on the best course of action for the survival of the species?  Are they looking at the Jones' next door and deciding not to have kids because the Jones' boy got fed to a tarantula?  

But on to more fundemental things.  The problem here seems to be that you have enough training to access "scientific" papers, but not enough training to make some fundemental distinctions such as:

- emotion vs. taxis
- reason vs. reflex
- peer-reviewed vs. not peer-reviewed
- statistically significant vs. not statistically significant
- correlation vs. cause
- effect vs. cause-effect relationship

In other words, you are more than welcome to continue espousing your views -- but I think I speak for at least a few of us here when I say that you ought to drop the veil of scientific legitimacy until you have a better understanding of the scientific method and critical thinking.  

Cheers,
Dave


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## SpiderDork (Jul 25, 2005)

Nia said:
			
		

> To do so would mean we would each need a polygraph or some other type of equipment to measure the electrical responses of plants during this experiment.


 I am really confused here, please elaborate how a polygraph machine would be useful in determining the electrical responses of plants.


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## Code Monkey (Jul 25, 2005)

defour said:
			
		

> This is the FIRST POSITIVE TURING TEST RESULT EVER!!! This thread just made history, people, and I'm astonished and honored to have been a part of it. I for one took it hook, line and sinker, and don't tell me the rest of you didn't. I hope you don't take it too hard, Chip; there was a little cheating after all, since the official rules require that one knows what the game is.


As usual, your humour is an expertly sharpened blade, now if only it were genuine insight, it would explain much 

---------

@Nia: Without insulting you personally, there is major problem with your alleged counterpoints, and that is that they are built on top of a stack of one bunk claim after another. For instance, when we look at how *you* think Masaru's grain experiment is working, it's based upon this notion of vibrational energies causing effects. See, we don't even need to nitpick at the extremely poor experimental design, because we know from the first that there can't possibly be anything to test. "Vibrational energies" have never been proven to exist either. And if you can't even prove the existence of these "vibrational energies", you can't test for whether they are "positive" or "negative" vibrational energies, further you can't even begin to define what a positive or negative vibrational energy signature would be.

What you wind up with is your typical pseudo-tautological system. You start with a premise that nature actually gives a flying fart about notions of beauty and symmetry. You move onto another premise: that all living things give off these vibrational energies related to their quantity of beauty, balance, etc. You move onto yet another premise, that these vibrational energies affect things around it even though you have yet to demonstrate their existence, quantify their strength, range, or anything else. You make the assumption that angry thoughts must be negative vibrational energy and that happy thoughts must be positive vibrational energy, even though you have no reason at all to make this assumption beyond it fitting with your initial bogus assumptions about nature. At last you reach the notion of "testing" their effects upon inanimate objects such as grain or water. You ignore the fact that you can't actually replicate any of the claims in the majority of trials, explaining away the failure as interfering vibrational energies from the angry neighbor, your inner skepticism, etc. You do seize upon the ones that happen to match your expected outcome. You really seize upon the cherry picked crap that Emoto published and conclude that you have seen proof of these vibrational energies in action, and the proof is that you wind up with things that fit your initial assumption of how nature loves beauty and symmetry.

You come full circle, proving what you wanted to believe in initially, but never having tested anything at all, just tricked yourself like you do with all your pseudoscience and outright mystical beliefs.

To bring this back on topic, this is what people do when they insist they can "argue rationally" that the tarantula can feel pain. They start at the assumption they can feel pain and cherry pick only those phenotypical phenomena that support their initial assumption. They discard the wealth of quantitative data that may not outright prove they can't, but that does suggest with the strongest of possible inductive and deductive reasoning that they cannot. Once they've successfully cleansed their mind of all that nasty EPSP data and dissection information, they're free to argue that based upon what "we know" they must be feeling pain.

Real knowledge, on the other hand, works a lot like a mathematical proof. Each step backwards should be solid, not just more wishful thinking.


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## Dark (Jul 25, 2005)

I think that inverts do experience pain. I know that when i am holding my chilean rose she will just sit on my hand but if i accidentally pushed on her to hard or if one of her legs were to be crushed that she would atempt to bite me or go into a threat position. It wouldn't want to bite me if it didn't feel something negative against what I did. The pain of her loosing her leg would make a negative reaction. All Inverts have nerves and when something happens to a part of the invert that is going to do damage and increase the chance of an early death the invert will react negatively. If i am wronge and inverts feel no pain it still is cruel in my eyes to injure and kill inverts. And so no one asks about my chilean rose i was speaking what if something bad happened nothing really injured my chilean rose   

Eric


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## Code Monkey (Jul 25, 2005)

darkpredator said:
			
		

> I think that inverts do experience pain. I know that when i am holding my chilean rose she will just sit on my hand but if i accidentally pushed on her to hard or if one of her legs were to be crushed that she would atempt to bite me or go into a threat position. It wouldn't want to bite me if it didn't feel something negative against what I did. The pain of her loosing her leg would make a negative reaction. All Inverts have nerves and when something happens to a part of the invert that is going to do damage and increase the chance of an early death the invert will react negatively. If i am wronge and inverts feel no pain it still is cruel in my eyes to injure and kill inverts. And so no one asks about my chilean rose i was speaking what if something bad happened nothing really injured my chilean rose
> 
> Eric


Let me guess, you haven't read anything in this thread? 

Short version is that what you are describing is stimulus-response and has nothing to do with the issue of whether the G. rosea possesses enough aware consciousness to experience the psychological component of negative stimuli. No one argues that tarantulas (or amoebae for that matter) cannot sense and subsequently avoid negative stimuli, that has absolutely nothing to do with the question of "can they feel pain?".


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## Dark (Jul 25, 2005)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Let me guess, you haven't read anything in this thread?
> .


I have only read the first few comments.


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## Drachenjager (Feb 20, 2006)

*Pain*

I think one thing that everyone is overlooking here is why would you want to inflict damage to any animal? Ok it's one thing to kill for food, or even feed one creature to another, but to do something like rip the wings off a fly for meanness is something else. I think it say a lot about US and how human we are. 
Ok lets say that Inverts Cant feel pain (by that I mean have an emotional or mental stress or discomfort from it, Not that they don’t sense the damage or injury) the fact remains that if you do things to harm its physical well being you are in fact torturing it. The invert may not have physiological damage or sense pain emotionally or even physically the same as we do. That’s not even the point to me. If you intentionally cause harm with no reason its torture even if the one receiving the torture can’t "feel" it or can’t understand that it’s being tortured. 
To me it has more to do with YOU than the Invert. You can be pretty sure that animals that are generally the prey wouldn’t have been given the sense of pain or torture by God or evolution (which ever you believe, not going to discuss that here lol ) God wouldn’t have done that and it would serve no evolutionary purpose that I can see. 
So those of us with supposed morals and consciousnesses should look at ourselves in this discussion more than the effect on the inverts..


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## bloodred1889 (Feb 20, 2006)

ok, i dont think tarantulas ect feel pain like us or cats say, but i do beleive they can feel ingredibly uncomfortable with somthing... like once when franticly trying to put the lid on my tarantulas tank i shut one of her legs in there and the rest of the night she didnt put the leg on the ground, or if it did touch the ground she would flinch... at this point i haddnt read anything to suggest that they dont feel pain so i beleived that she was in pain and i felt really bad  

also in documentrys ive seen ppl doing stuff to tarantulas that the tarantula clearly dosnt like, and like in the film aracnophobia although not a good example of truth it begs the question if you did set a tarantula on fire surly it would feel somthing, or if you stood on one, pulled the legs off ect

personly i dont want to find out myself but i do beleive that bugs should have some sort of rights.. mainly from an experience i had when i was little...

when i was young there was this boy who had a tarantula but he couldnt care for it and so gave it to this asshole kid who said he wanted it, anyway it turned out that the tarantula didnt last long because the new owner decided it would be fun poke the tarantula with a stick untill it was hardly moving and then pull its legs off and even after that pull one of its fangs out to show how big they where, i witnissed this and it truly broke my heart the poor tarantula just wanted to get away to safty and i couldnt do anything being an 11 year old girl with like a gang of 15year old boys.. anyway thats all i can say on the subject since im not a scientist..


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## bloodred1889 (Feb 20, 2006)

oh and anouther thing why do we think we can decide everything, why do we think its up to us? i mean tarantulas and neerly everyother organism on this planet was here before us untill we came along and started <edit> everything up, now species are dying and losing there homes and all we do is experiment on animals by sticking substences in there eyses to see if its harmfull to us... to us, we are soo bloody arogent, everythings about us how we feel, our safty our world... well its not our world!!! we just happen to live here but not for much longer the way we are going      

sorry this whole subject gets me angry, david attenborough is a hero in the natural world in my opinion and has opened our eyes up to how we need to start treating the world we live in.


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## MizM (Feb 21, 2006)

No one here is suggesting that we hurt inverts. This is simply a discussion ABOUT their perception of pain.


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## bananaman (Apr 22, 2006)

time to revive this heated discussion:
it *pains* me to see people blurt out ignorant opinions based on ideas that come from assumptions and suppositions... seriously... 

Ts cant feel pain, and as MizM said... that doesnt mean we should hurt them, we love them and want to protect them... but given the eventuality of having to do something to a T for the sole purpose of preserving it (ie. pulling off legs), do not feel bad, it is NOT suffering, it is just trying to preserve itself, it doesnt know any better...


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## Anansi (Apr 23, 2006)

This is a funny thread... Not "ha ha" funny, but funny in the sense that so many important facts are being grossly overlooked...

I think most everyone here would agree that pain is a relatively subjective experience. As humans we experience both mental pain and physical pain. The degree to which each type of pain affects us, depends on what kind of people we are. For example, some people avoid the doctors because they are afraid of needles, while others willfully pierce their skin with 12 gauge pieces of metal. 

How can we operationally define pain? Among other physiological aspects, I think it can be operationally defined as that which illicits a fight or flight response. 

It's completely ridiculous to relate human pain to invertebrate pain and then take it one step further and state that invertebrates don't feel pain. If you do something to an invertebrate and it illicits a fight or flight response, it's a safe bet that you're causing it pain. Call it self-preservation or whatever you want, but the point is you're causing the invert a significant amount of distress.

Look at lobsters and tarantulas, etc... They dont have facial expressions or ways to vocalize, so how would we know if we're causing them pain? Maybe because they try to defend themselves or run away? 

What else would you expect them to do? They cant scream... They cant respond to a 10-item questionnaire. They cant do anything but try to fight or run away...

In conclusion, just because invertebrates dont experience the same type of pain as humans, it does not mean they dont experience pain at all... It's a different pain, but a pain nonetheless, and its all they know, so thats all it is.... pain...


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## Code Monkey (Apr 23, 2006)

Anansi said:
			
		

> In conclusion, just because invertebrates dont experience the same type of pain as humans, it does not mean they dont experience pain at all... It's a different pain, but a pain nonetheless, and its all they know, so thats all it is.... pain...


Sigh, here we go again... To go back a page or two: taxis versus pain; you're simply  wrong with your reasoning. Please do not revive this thread with the same sort of bunk that has been repeatedly addressed.

Pain *requires* a psychological component. full stop.
Inverts do not have any indication of a psychological component. full stop.

Nobody anywhere in this thread has not said they don't have nerve stimuli that in a psychological brain could or could not be interpreted as pain, however, that's where your reasoning falls apart. The nerve sensations and resulting taxis you describe above has never been part of a definition of pain, ethical or otherwise, as it's just nerve firing and response. Living organisms completely devoid of a nervous system avoid negative stimuli, that doesn't begin to mean they're aware beings that suffer pain.

If you want to believe that inverts feel pain, go ahead and do so, but if this particular thread devolves into the same sort of emo wannabe "you can't know" back and forths I'll lock it and people can start it up again in the WH where this sort of Jerry Springer logic belongs.


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## Anansi (Apr 23, 2006)

Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Pain *requires* a psychological component. full stop.


You mean the type of psychological component that may trigger a fight or flight response?



			
				Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Inverts do not have any indication of a psychological component. full stop.


Inverts have brains and Im sure those brains have the psychological components necessary to trigger a fight or flight response. Furthermore, what is your particular definition of a psychological component?



			
				Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Nobody anywhere in this thread has not said they don't have nerve stimuli that in a psychological brain could or could not be interpreted as pain, however, that's where your reasoning falls apart.


No, my reasoning doesnt fall apart. It's ridiculous at best to compare human pain to invertebrate pain, especially given our liberal definition of pain.




			
				Code Monkey said:
			
		

> The nerve sensations and resulting taxis you describe above has never been part of a definition of pain, ethical or otherwise, as it's just nerve firing and response.


In regards to sensation, everything is nerve firing and response. How is invertebrate nerve firing and response any less significant than human nerve firing and response. Just because they dont have the "hardware" doesnt mean they dont subjectively experience their own pain.



			
				Code Monkey said:
			
		

> Living organisms completely devoid of a nervous system avoid negative stimuli, that doesn't begin to mean they're aware beings that suffer pain.


No. 1 - I never said they were aware beings
No. 2 - I never said they suffer. I just said that may subjectively experience their own version of pain.
No. 3 - Why would they avoid negative stimuli unless: 
Their psychological component (which you say they lack) tells them to.
Negative stimuli causes them a significant level of distress and/ or pain.

If it wasnt either of these things, why would they avoid negative stimuli at all? It all has to originate in the brain (no matter how small and simple it is)... and it has to be the result of a sensate experience.


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## Code Monkey (Apr 23, 2006)

The purpose of this particular forum is providing factual information on tarantula husbandry. This debate never goes anywhere because _it's not something you can establish with debate_. You establish whether something can feel pain with actual research followed by analytical reasoning.

This always breaks down into three ranks.

Rank 1: The sum total of the argument amounts to because we know tarantulas exhibit negative taxis to stimuli that we would consider painful, they must feel pain.

Rank 2: The sum total of the argument amounts to since they're alive, they must be able to feel pain.

Rank 3: A far more complex argument that is based in established science and ethical reasoning. Ethically speaking, pain is defined as requiring a psychological component. Negative taxis and "alarming" nerve impulses are never considered as evidence that an organism can feel pain since almost all living things exhibit some form of negative taxis, including plants and bacteria, and all living things with a nervous system have nerve impulses that would be considered "painful" in a reasonably complex brain. The ability to feel pain is related to establishing that an organism is capable of the psychological component.

So, no, we do not know with absolute certainty that a tarantula does not feel pain. However, we do know with absolute certainty that likelihood they can feel is somewhere in the vicinity of me winning the Powerball lottery every week for a year. The number of neurons is too few, the number of interconnections is too few, the behaviors too hardwired, and so on. In the absence of an actual study that demonstrates such a psychological capacity in tarantulas, the answer to the question of if they can feel pain is almost certainly no.

If someone higher rank than me wants to reopen this thread, they can, otherwise anyone who wants to continue the illogical debate of trying to fly in the face of the entirety of neuroscience may take it to the Watering Hole.


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