The biggest ever study into fish neurology has found that the brain of a fish is not developed enough to feel pain or feel fear.
James D Rose, 60, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University Of Wyoming, USA, has published the report in the American academic journal ‘Reviews In Fisheries Science’ and has compared the nervous systems and responses of fish and mammals and found that pain is an emotional or psychological response controlled by a part of the brain that is not present in fish.
He said that previous studies that claimed that fish do feel pain were confusing the emotion with the fish’s ability to detect when it had an injury.
Professor Rose stated: “A person who is anaesthetised in an operating theatre will still respond physically to an external stimulus but will not feel pain.
“There are people who aren’t comfortable with my findings but even those who don’t accept them have yet to raise any scientific challenge.”
FISHINGmagic says:
This is a severe blow to PETA and other animal rights organisations who have campaigned for years on the grounds that fishing is just another blood sport where the fish feel as much pain as any other animal.
For the same number of years anglers have strenuously denied this, citing thousands of actual incidents that prove, to anyone with a modicum of common sense, that fish do not feel pain. For instance, a creature than can pull back against a hook through it’s lip, or carry on feeding when mortally wounded following an attack from a predator, cannot possibly feel pain.
The report is certain to provoke PETA and the like into yet another wild scheme similar to the hanging dog advert in order to claw back a little credibility.
The truth, however, will always prevail.
