clipping scorpion stingers

skinheaddave

SkorpionSkin
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John,

I assume you're thinking "inverted" and not "innervated?" The question is whether there are nerves in there or not.

Cheers,
Dave
 

Kugellager

ArachnoJester of the Ancient Ones
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John,

I assume you're thinking "inverted" and not "innervated?" The question is whether there are nerves in there or not.

Cheers,
Dave
Did I mention I was was blonde as a small child?

Yeah...you are 100% correct as to what the hell I was talking about.

John
];')
 

H. cyaneus

Arachnobaron
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Quite as an aside, has anyone thought to question whether the aculeus itself is innervated? I don't have many of the papers on anatomy so I can't say either way. Regardless, the debate on pain may continue in a civilized manner.

Cheers,
Dave
Hi Dave,

I just reread part of Polis' Biology of Scorpions and learned that the telson is innervated, but it doesn't mention the aculeus.

"The fourth ganglion is a fusion of the fourth and fifth metasomal ganglia; from it's posterior border, a pair of nerves extends posteriorly, each dividing into two branches, one innervating the fifth metasomal segment, and the other consisting of giant fibers, innervating the telson (telsonic nerves)." lines 30-34, The Biology of Scorpions.

Figured it'd be easier to type it out, I find it a pain to find the stuff with the small print, and in case someone doesn't own the book.

Cheers,
Mike
 

skinheaddave

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Mike,

Yeah, reading Polis was my first inclination as well. I also had a look through the section of "The Neurobiology of Arachnids" (Barth ed.) that I was wise enough to photocopy before leaving the university. No dice. There are some works referenced in both, obviously, but I do not have any of the ones that might give an answer.

Cheers,
Dave
 

skinheaddave

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Hey this sounds like a great idea for a thesis paper!
I'm sure it has been looked into already. For a fairly hefty period of time, the most fun you could have in biology was dissection. I am quite confident that somewhere, at some point in time, someone has written down what nervous structures can be found in the aculeus. Unfortunately, it may have very well been published in an obscure journal in the 50s (everyone seems to have been hacking up scorpions in the 50s). There are some papers referenced in the other books that are worth looking into before anyone puts in any effort to finding out for themselves.

Cheers,
Dave
 

signinsimple

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My argument was not that it can function without it so it is fine, and not once did I say people couldn't feel pain...

I said that we shouldn't anthropomorphize invertebrates. They cannot feel pain (as far as anybody knows). That's all I said. I'm still very against the practice.
PhilK, your statement is causing mass miscommunication. Let's clear up our language and see if things fall into place. If you define pain as 'that sensation mammals get when c-fibers fire' then you are correct. Scorpions do not feel pain. A scorpions physiology is completely alien to a mammals, so they obviously don't feel mammal pain. However, when faced with tangible stimulus that would injure it, they do behave in an analogous way to mammals. Namely, they do whatever they can to stop the injuring stimulus. From this fact alone, it is a reasonable conjecture that they experience something that is analogous to our pain. Lets call this sensation S-pain. We're not saying that they are cognizant of S-pain in the same way we are, just that they experience it. The direct experiencing of a stimulus is a different thing than the conscious recognition of it (If I were to pinch your arm, you would feel the hurt, then recognize that it hurt you). So even if scorpions do not have the memory or recognition faculties that we do, my question to you is why should that make the S-pain that they experience any less real or significant than our pain?
 

PhilK

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Does a bacterium 'feel pain' in an environment with, say, too low a pH? After all, it tries to escape, too.

Another point I mentioned is that they do not behave in an analgous way to mammals under 'painful stimuli'. In severe injuries (such as losing a leg) a mammal will go into shock and depression (I am not interested in blood loss etc here. Purely on painful stimuli). A scorpion will continue walking and will not even elevate the stump of the leg off the substrate.
 

signinsimple

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Does a bacterium 'feel pain' in an environment with, say, too low a pH? After all, it tries to escape, too.

Another point I mentioned is that they do not behave in an analgous way to mammals under 'painful stimuli'. In severe injuries (such as losing a leg) a mammal will go into shock and depression (I am not interested in blood loss etc here. Purely on painful stimuli). A scorpion will continue walking and will not even elevate the stump of the leg off the substrate.
Bacteria might feel pain, but that is neither here nor there, and your leg comparison argument would only be meaningful if the physiology of a scorpion was comparable to that of a human. It is not. Why don't scorpions go into shock when they lose a leg? Because the loss of a leg is not as serious a threat to a scorpions survival as it is to a human. Pain signals are used by the body partly to gauge how severe a threat a given stimulus is. The greater the threat, the more severe the signal. A human goes into shock from the loss of a leg because the loss of a leg in nature for a human means certain death, so the mass barrage of pain signals coming from the severed leg effectively crashes the system (since there is no point in the signals anymore..you're dead, you just don't know it yet) then you die (or at least you would in nature..thanks to medicine, we can live). To a scorpions body, the loss of a leg is not nearly so serious. It's body is equipped to deal with such a loss. It has 7 other perfectly good legs to move around with so its mobility is not impeded, it's body can close the wound quicker to prevent loss of fluid..it's just not as serious a loss. Hence no shock. Scorpions behave analogous to mammals in face of 'painful stimuli' to the degree that it is appropriate. They don't behave identically, but that should not be too surprising, they are no where near identical to mammals. But, that does not mean that they don't have a similar experience with there S-pain (and if not similar, than significant enough to warrant us not causing them S-pain).
 
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