DO FISH FEEL PAIN? I had promised that this month I would write a piece on the subject of ‘do fish feel pain’ having read a report recently published by Dr James D. Rose of the University of Wyoming an the USA. The full report is published, under this same name, on the NFSA’s own Website www.nfsa.org.uk if you wish to read it. It concludes that fish cannot feel the emotion of pain because they lack the cerebral hemispheres, ‘especially the frontal lobes’ found in humans. This sounds all very reasonable, especially to an angler and more especially to any trout or sea angler who kills their catch for the table. To put it crudely, one tap to the right spot on the ‘napper’ and the fish is no more, hence the instrument to inflict this last rite is called a priest. The fish’s brain is very simple and if drawn looks a bit like a cockle shell opened up and therefore, being quite fragile, it doesn’t take much to inflict a death blow if it is directed to the correct spot. For those of you not happy about this course of action, think about the fish caught on trawlers that are left gasping on the decks or have their bellies cut and their guts ripped out before they finally meet death. That’ll put you off your cod and chips. Well, before I planned to add my comments to Dr Rose’s fine submission, I heard on the BBC’s news programmes on the 30th April about some new research carried out in Edinburgh that proved that fish DO feel pain. This was done by injecting bee venom into the mouths of trout whereupon they behaved in a strange way often banging their heads on the glass of the tank. This, it was said, proved that fish do feel pain, but I believe that you would have to be a complete moron to conclude any findings from that kind of research. In the BBC’s morning programme they had CA spokesman Charles Jardine, a nice man and good angler, but not the best spokesman for anglers. It was rather short notice and it must have caught him off-guard so to speak, but my policy is ‘if you don’t have anything useful to answer back with, it’s best to keep quiet until you do.’ He said that this research ‘perhaps’ did place doubt on whether or not fish do feel pain, but that then lets in the critics. Sorry Charles, but you should have launched into an offensive there and then and poured scorn on this report. NOT BEST QUALIFIED ANYWAY The first point to establish is that this research was carried out by people who are not the best qualified in marine biology. That casts doubt straight away on their credibility. Then you could have added that the report leaves many questions unanswered (if anyone asks ‘What questions?’ you simply reply ‘Those that haven’t been asked yet.’) As a final point you could also say that there must be a definite link between the researchers and the anti-hunt lobby who are responding to a recent well-founded report that clearly stated that fish DO NOT feel any pain. We really do need some better spokesmen to represent our sport. What I find wrong with this Edinburgh research is the fact that they used bee venom. Bee venom has a complex structure and induces different reactions in humans let alone fish. For some people, bee-keepers for example, they merely remove the sting and venom sack, which is always left behind causing the bee to die, and carry on about their business. For others it can cause an anaphylactic shock, as far as I understand it’s where anti-bodies go haywire in the body trying to fight off the venom, which might even require hospitalization and can cause death. No wonder, therefore, that the trout were banging their heads against the glass – they were probably trying to commit suicide. As Dr Rose points out in his findings, fish do know when chemicals will affect them and avoid them if they can, but this doesn’t mean that their emotional response is a reaction to pain as we know it. Pain, as we all should know, is like a length of elastic. Some people talk of having a low pain-threshold whereas for others you could almost perform surgery on them without an anaesthetic at all. Take my mother-in-law (no not the old joke) for example, years ago she was kind enough to wash a woollen pullover for me except that when it dried it wouldn’t have fit a three-year-old. As a result of this I found out that she can’t distinguish the difference in temperatures of water. She said it should be hand-washed and that it was, but unless the water was bubbling like a boiling kettle she could not feel the heat which would scald most of us. WOULDN’T FREEZING COLD WATER BE PAINFUL IF THEY COULD FEEL IT? Another example is Grimsby trawlermen who plunge their hands into freezing cold water day after day, so cold that you or I would instantly feel intense pain. I sometimes have to fumble around in my outside pond in winter and after 30 seconds or so, go indoors to dry my hands and warm them on the radiators. You must also have returned fish in freezing cold water and can’t wait to dry your hands off and stick them under your armpits to get them warm again. It hurts, well it hurts us at least, but you will notice how happy the fish are to get back into it. Fish are cold blooded creatures for if they were anything else then they might well feel such freezing cold water as a pain. Isn’t this logical? Dr Rose likens the fishes brain to a 1949 Volkswagen with very basic features, whereas our brains are more like modern-day cars with electronic ignition, air-conditioning, ABS brakes, emission controls, electric windows, an all other creature comforts. He states that the human brain, “although built on the same basic plan as that of a fish” has massive expansions and many addition capacities. Where once upon a time our predecessors inhabited the same primordial swamp that fish came from, we have enjoyed millions of years living in a different environment and therefore our requirements have changed from those of fish. Referring to pain, Dr Rose likens it to having a dentist fill your teeth. You are aware of what is happening, you can feel the drill, but there is no pain because the anaesthetic is blocking some of the signal getting to the parts of the brain that lead to the response of pain. This is how it must be for fish. WHY WOULD THEY NEED TO FEEL PAIN? Which leads me to ask, why do fish need to feel pain? This has for 20 years or more been my argument. We need pain to remind us that something, an object or threat, is dangerous and could be harmful to our health. Take for example a hot plate which when you touch it causes pain and you withdraw your fingers at once. If you didn’t feel that pain, your reactions might be a lot slower thereby giving the heat more chance to damage your skin. So pain is a part of our defence mechanism. For fish the story is quite different. They live in a liquid environment which is controlled by weather as much as anything and, I believe, they can even tell when there’s a drop of one millibar in air pressure. Water in itself is non-injurious to anyone’s health and that includes fish. They don’t have to handle hot plates or sharp knives or anything else than could cause them severe injury and so there is no need for them to feel pain. Should the time ever come when they are captured by a pike or osprey (yes, or a cormorant) then pain is still of no use to them whatsoever because then it’s too late. Game Over! You have heard many anglers say before how fish, particularly chub, can chomp up swan mussels including their razor-sharp shells or crayfish. How many times have you bitten your lip or your tongue or had a small piece of broken shell in your moules marini  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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