- Joined
- Jan 19, 2007
- Messages
- 314
Hi Everyone,
I was hoping some of our ceph keepers and/or scientists would be able to share their opinions on whether cephalopods can feel pain. Not only in the sense of perceiving noxious stimuli (presumably not in question), but also whether they experience the subjective 'emotional' component of pain.
I am interested in the adaptive value of pain-related behavioural changes, but pain is a difficult thing to measure in animals (and let me stress I am not planning to subject any cephs to painful stimuli in the near future, its mostly a theoretical interest for now).
Apart from the various conditioned-avoidance studies out there, I am curious to gather any reports of things like altered food-handling behaviour after tentacle/arm injuries (like avoiding the use of an injured body part), changes in exploratory or social behaviour after an injury, or changes in body patterning (perhaps more inclination toward camouflage) that might suggest recuperative behaviours indicative of ongoing sensations of pain.
Cephalopods are an interesting group to consider the adaptive value of pain for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because of their advanced cognitive abilities, it is possible that they may exhibit not only the sensory aspect of acute pain, but also some analog of its emotional component, something commonly assumed to be present in humans only. Secondly, pain is important to signal to animals that they are injured and need to either attend to a wound or protect themselves during the healing process. Given that cephalopods do not have the value of a social group on which to rely if they are incapacitated during a recovery process, ongoing pain that interferes with hunting may be maladaptive. Being prey-animals (in most cases), hiding outward signs of distress is adaptive, thus perhaps we might see clear physiological indicators of pain, but very subtle behavioural indications.
There are not many invertebrate pain models out there (most work is done on rodents), I would like to see more serious scientific study into pain perception in cephs, which might provide some impetus to see them covered by vertebrate-centric animal welfare laws.
I was hoping some of our ceph keepers and/or scientists would be able to share their opinions on whether cephalopods can feel pain. Not only in the sense of perceiving noxious stimuli (presumably not in question), but also whether they experience the subjective 'emotional' component of pain.
I am interested in the adaptive value of pain-related behavioural changes, but pain is a difficult thing to measure in animals (and let me stress I am not planning to subject any cephs to painful stimuli in the near future, its mostly a theoretical interest for now).
Apart from the various conditioned-avoidance studies out there, I am curious to gather any reports of things like altered food-handling behaviour after tentacle/arm injuries (like avoiding the use of an injured body part), changes in exploratory or social behaviour after an injury, or changes in body patterning (perhaps more inclination toward camouflage) that might suggest recuperative behaviours indicative of ongoing sensations of pain.
Cephalopods are an interesting group to consider the adaptive value of pain for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because of their advanced cognitive abilities, it is possible that they may exhibit not only the sensory aspect of acute pain, but also some analog of its emotional component, something commonly assumed to be present in humans only. Secondly, pain is important to signal to animals that they are injured and need to either attend to a wound or protect themselves during the healing process. Given that cephalopods do not have the value of a social group on which to rely if they are incapacitated during a recovery process, ongoing pain that interferes with hunting may be maladaptive. Being prey-animals (in most cases), hiding outward signs of distress is adaptive, thus perhaps we might see clear physiological indicators of pain, but very subtle behavioural indications.
There are not many invertebrate pain models out there (most work is done on rodents), I would like to see more serious scientific study into pain perception in cephs, which might provide some impetus to see them covered by vertebrate-centric animal welfare laws.