Alexander Schwab is author of the book ‘Hook, Line & Thinker – Angling Ethics’.
Early this year a study by Dr. James Rose, University of Wyoming, concluded that it is impossible for fish to feel pain since fish do not have the brain structure for the experience. Then hardly half a year later came the fanfare from Edinburgh: according to scientists from the Roslin Institute (remember Dolly the first sheep clone?) and the University of Edinburgh fish can feel pain. What are anglers to make of this confusing contradiction? Who are we to believe and what are the consequences for the future?
The first thing that struck me was the timing. Hardly had the ink dried on Dr Rose’s study when the world’s newspapers were full of headlines about fish feeling pain. For the anti-angling lobby there couldn’t have been a more timely moment for an attack on angling (also right at the beginning of the season in the northern hemisphere). I have no evidence that the timing was anything other than coincidental, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if such evidence were to emerge. After all, the Medway report (1979) and the Utrecht study (1988) on which anglers rested their case so far, are a bit worn out and don’t carry much conviction anymore.
At first glance punctuation and style of presentation aren’t of major importance in scientific issues. Nevertheless there is a point worth noting. There have been several official press releases from the institutions involved in this new study. Interestingly enough the headlines differ: “Trout trauma puts anglers on the hook?” is one version and the other is without the question mark. In either case it’s an excellent headline for selling a story – full marks to the PR-department. It wouldn’t have gained half the attention with the original title of the study by Dr. Lynne U. Sneddon, Dr. Victoria Braithwaite and Dr. Michael J. Gentle:
Do fish have nociceptors: evidence for the evolution of a vertebrate sensory system
Question marks are, however, not the only knotty points in a study which is hailed as a shining example of clarity proving “hook, line and sinker that fish feel pain.”
As the title indicates the study is about nociceptors. Nociceptors are receptor cells for noxious stimuli and the job of these cells is nociception, ie, detecting noxious stimuli. The authors claim that “relatively little attention has been paid to nociception” and “to date, little attention has been paid to potential pain perception in fish.”
Now that leaves me absolutely flabbergasted considering that it was exactly the point of Dr Rose’s work to scrutinize the relation between nociception and pain – and there is no doubt that nociception does not equal pain. In fact Dr. Rose’s work isn’t mentioned at all, as if it didn’t exist! Is this a deliberate insult and an attempt to hush up his findings lest anglers get to know them? And “relatively little” in the academic world usually means there are already hundreds if not thousands of dissertations on that particular or related topics: nociception is not terra incognita! Why pretend otherwise?
The reason for which Dr. Rose’s work isn’t even mentioned in the new study is probably the fact that then the authors would have had to be explicit about neurophysiological aspects and their assumptions about awareness in fish. Skipping the central issue of awareness and replacing it by vague assumptions and hints their findings in no way warrant their conclusions – which is putting it politely.
The study is full of suggestive remarks like: “The polymodal nociceptors found here in the trout have similar properties to those found in amphibians, birds, and mammals including humans.” Aha, I always thought there was a little trout in me. This similarity between trout and man has been worked out long ago by folk wisdom hence the expression “green around the gills”. But seriously, what does similarity mean? How much horse is in a man whose laugh is similar to neighing?
So far so good, but where the trout trauma is definitely thrown off the rails and getting itself into a hopeless tangle is in the discussion human pain and animal pain. Human pain, so it is acknowledged, has an emotional dimension and requires awareness. Of animal emotion (awareness?) the authors say: “It is impossible to truly know if an animal has an emotion since we cannot measure emotion directly … what an animal ‘feels’ is possibly nothing like the experience of humans with a more complex brain structure, however the animal’s experience may be unpleasant or cause suffering and their discomfort is no less important in terms of biology or ethics.” These last few words could be straight from Regan, Singer or other animal rights philosophers.
Besides that, what can one make of it? Doesn’t “it is impossible to truly know” mean “we can’t know” and if so, why not say so? Can emotion be measured indirectly? And think about this: they unmistakably say that human experience and trout experience are not the same. Yet it should be assumed to be the same and taken as the basis for ethical considerations: all trout are cute little humans with scales and fins. Again, a crystal clear distinction is drawn between animal experience and human experience, however, in the same breath (a few lines further) the authors conclude: “If a noxious event has sufficiently adverse effects on behaviour and physiology in an animal and this experience is painful in humans, then it is likely to be painful in the animal.” I don’t think it possible to get more confused and incoherent.
The hard facts of the experiments conducted are not for the faint-hearted. Injections of acectic acid and bee venom in the lips of one group of trout and sucking the brains out of the other (under anaesthetic). So the latter group isn’t of interest to the fisherman because the fish they catch aren’t brain amputated. Of the former group it is said that the injections resulted in anomalous behaviour whereas a control group that had been injected saline behaved normally. The anomalous behaviour was “rubbing the injured area” and “rocking behaviour … reminiscent of the stereotypal rocking behaviour of primates that is believed to be an indicator of poor welfare” (“reminiscent” like “similar” is a suggestive term – and what a bold leap from fish to primates).
Alright, but how does this anomalous behaviour prove that fish feel or experience pain and, in this particular case, are outraged (emotion) at the injustice of being experimented on? If I shoo away a wasp. Does the wasp “understand” the implicit threat in my gestures and does it maybe “feel” rejected? If, after rain, the worms are out and I accidentally step on one it surely reacts but that reaction doesn’t constitute an experience in the human sense. Reactions and responses of animals don’t per se signify awareness or experience! That injection of a massive dose of bee venom and the trout’s speedy recovery from it does not show that fish feel pain but rather that they are practically insensitive which is consistent with the anglers observation of the same fish being caught twice or three times in succession. It also confirms another commonly made point by anglers: if the fish would feel pain when hooked then it wouldn’t run but would swim towards the angler.
Perhaps more enlightening than their study as such is the guideline they go by: “Assessing the subjective experiences of animals plays an increasingly large role in animal welfare” and in this they refer to authors like Broom and Dawkins (both committed to animal rights). They are not just an inch away from the tenets of animal rights – they’re there firmly planted in the animal rights camp.
The last sentence of the study encapsulates the style, spirit and content of the study perfectly: “Future work should examine the cognitive aspects of noxious stimulation to assess how important enduring a noxious, potentially painful event is to the mental well-being of this species.” In other words now that they believe fish feel pain they’re going to torture and mutilate thousands of trout to find out just how badly it affects their psyche. That’s very strange, to say the least, coming from a team which decided to limit their experiments with venom to six rainbow trout for “ethical reasons”.
Talking of ethics and tactics: Dr. Sneddon is reported to have said that she had no problem with anyone who caught and quickly killed a fish for eating. Now angler’s beware! Catch and release anglers of all kinds are implied which leaves the catch and eat anglers in the game. Not for long though because “quickly” is a flexible term and will eventually be construed as “the fastest possible” which obliges again all anglers to fish with broomsticks and abseiling ropes. So piecemealwise we’re all going out of business on the basis of ethics. Whichever way you look at it: ethics is the central theme in all this.
The ostensible aim of the research was to examine nociceptors as “evidence for the evolution of a vertebrate sensory system”. I am not an expert on the matter but some evidence might have been found and this might throw new light on some aspect in evolution. Most of the study is, however, quite simply focused on the question of pain in fish. The frequent inroads into related subjects like animal welfare, ethics or psychology and the way the study was handled on the PR side generates more than a little suspicion about the purpose of the study.
Conclusion: Once more anglers are faced with wild anthropomorphic (attribution of human characteristics to non-human beings) speculation and accusations based on what gives me the impression of being in large parts incomplete, muddled, half-baked, animal rights tainted and all highly speculative. This new study is in no way a challenge to the work of Dr. James Rose yet for years to come anti-anglers and animal rightists will cite it as a conclusive. Be prepared! The research might have found new nociceptors but essentially the number of nociceptors doesn’t say anything at all about what happens with the information in the fish brain. There, the matter of pain is decided and, fish, says British scientist Dr. Bruno Broughton, “literally don’t have the brains for it”.
Biglen, Switzerland, 31 May 2003
Sources:
Do fish have nociceptors: Evidence for the evolution of a vertebrate sensory system, Lynne U. Sneddon, Victoria A. Braithwaite and Michael J. Gentle, Roslin Institute, Welfare Biology, Roslin Midlothian, EH25 9PS UK and Division of Biological Sciences, Ashworth Laboratories, University of Edinburgh, EH9 3JT UK.
The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain, James D. Rose, Reviews in Fisheries Science (10)1: 1-38, CRC Press LLC.
For a full discussion of pain, cruelty, animal rights etc. see Hook, Line and Thinker – Angling and Ethics, Alexander Schwab, Merlin Unwin Books, Ludlow, England.
