Inverts & Pain - The Ultimate Thread

[Code Monkey]

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.

 

[defour]

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

 

[Nia]

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.

 

[Nia]

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:

<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!

 

[Code Monkey]

@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.

 

[stewartb]

<
:? 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.

 

[Nia]

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.

 

[Code Monkey]

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.

 

[MizM]

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

 

[Nia]

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

 

[skinheaddave]

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

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.

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.

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

 

[cacoseraph]

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

 

[Code Monkey]

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.

 

[Sheri]

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.

 

[Nia]

. 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.

 

[Nia]

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.

 

[MizM]

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!

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!

 

[Code Monkey]

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.

 

[MizM]

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!!

 

[Nia]

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.)