# Only mamals/birds feel pain? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 11, 2001, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691 "2001-10-11T00:39:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/1 "2001-10-11T00:39:07Z")
I was told that other animals than mamals/birds don’t have the brain power to feel pain the way we know it. They get a sense that something’s wrong and they might feel it, but don’t “hurt” necessarily. That true? ---
**Author:** ![ACoverOfNoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a3d4f5/32.png) [@ACoverOfNoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ACoverOfNoise)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/2 "2001-10-11T00:44:35Z")
My first post… Yipee! In response to the question: Ever watch an insect writhe after being sprayed with insecticide? Ever put salt on a slug? My non expert assessment is that they most definitely feel pain. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/3 "2001-10-11T00:47:01Z")
Well like I said, they feel something and sense it’s wrong ---
**Author:** ![Gaspode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gaspode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaspode)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/4 "2001-10-11T01:27:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ACoverOfNoise \* > In response to the question: Ever watch an insect writhe after being sprayed with insecticide? Ever put salt on a slug? My non expert assessment is that they most definitely feel pain. \*\* And a big SDMB welcome **ACoverOfNoise**. Your analogy seems a little lacking however. Remember that most insecticides are neurotoxins, and the twitching you see in insects poisoned with them has a lot to do with a failure to control muscle actions and associated reflexes. Accounts from people who have been poisoned with the same chemicals suggests that while definitely unpleasant the situation isn’t all that painful, mainly symptoms like restlessness, nausea, blurred vision, extreme tiredness etc. ---
**Author:** ![occ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@occ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/occ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/5 "2001-10-11T01:30:29Z")
Also, what’s is the definition of pain, other than a strong sensation that something is physically wrong? I know, I know, symantec debate here. But really, when you think about it, what is pain? ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/6 "2001-10-11T01:33:33Z")
I’m sure most animals feel the full range of emotions we do. Love, pain, passion, loss, etc. We might write poetry and eulogies but emotions are pretty basic biology. **Gaspode** , your point may be accurate but doesn’t address **ACoverOfNoise** ’s point at all. If you poke a slug with a sharp stick for example you’ll see him experience obvious pain as well. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/7 "2001-10-11T01:35:45Z")
I think we can probably safely conclude that they do feel what we would call pain, but aren’t aware of it except _possibly_ in a very vague sense. Most creatures do not have the brain structure conducive to what we loosely term consciousness and self-awareness. I remember Carl Sagan’s “Dragons of Eden” mentioned that a lizard’s reality was like a reality of our less lucid dreams. We don’t know what happens to something. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/8 "2001-10-11T01:41:15Z")
I have had to hold an (evil, nasty, heartless, hate-filled) iguana while it was having an ulcer tended. There is no way that her response fits the category of “sense something’s wrong.” She jerked when the medicine was applied, she writhed about to protect the wound, and when she was released, she favored the leg that had the ulcer. Iguanas do not have the facial muscles or skin to display wincing, (thus they always display only their cold, implacable hatred and disdain of all other creatures), but by any other measure, she gave evidence of feeling pain. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/9 "2001-10-11T01:46:21Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by erislover \* > I remember Carl Sagan’s “Dragons of Eden” mentioned that a lizard’s reality was like a reality of our less lucid dreams. “Don’t know what” happens to “something.”_\* **tom** , I’m not sure such writhing can accurately be called “pain.” While lizards certianly have some higher order thought processes, there is no sense of self and hence nothing to sense pain. Stimulus, response… ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/10 "2001-10-11T01:47:14Z")
Altho other animals’ brains are not as developed as ours, many of them do have the nerve receptors for pain, which are in a very rudimentary part of the brain. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/11 "2001-10-11T01:47:45Z")
…said that their experience of pain was not less unpleasant to themselves as individuals than the corresponding experience of pain experienced by sentient mammals (not to mention birds). > [@](#): > > Ow!! Hurts!! More oww!!! > [@](#): > > Fucking higher-speciesism! Yo, upper-echelon dumbfucks! PAIN HURTS! We are organized to feel as much as we can possibly interpret, as powerfully as we possibly can. We don’t feel lots of existential angst and we don’t spend lots of time aching over lost loves, but OUCH already, and OW! [QUOTE] Fucker! Ow! Killa! Ow! JustWait! Ow! GonnaKillya! Ow! Ow! JustOw! GonnOw! ShitFuckOw! Stingya! Ow! Fuck! Ow! Stingya! OwOwOwOwOwwww! OhFuck! ShitThisHurts!@ [QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/12 "2001-10-11T02:13:29Z")
I’m not sure that I understand why consciousness has to come into it. When I stub my toe, I don’t pause and consider the existential nature of trying to force flesh and bone through some non-elastic material, I yell and pull my foot back. In the same way, once the two-week-long treatment started the evil iguana would jerk away from the applicator every night _before_ the medicine was applied, (indicating the presence of an unpleasant memory) and would attempt to eviscerate me once the application began (indicating that it recognized that the experience was unpleasant). How does one define pain if both response and memory are ignored? The medicine was applied as gently as my wife could manage, but the horrid beast still jerked when touched on the wound (and calmed down when stroked on the head). It just seems as though we have set up a definition to deliberately exclude a condition. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/13 "2001-10-11T02:27:19Z")
There is nothing fundamentally different in pain receptors or nervous system between mammals and birds and reptiles or amphibians, or for that matter fish. If you grant that mammals and birds feel pain, there is absolutely no physiological reason to think that lower vertebrates don’t also feel pain in just the same way. I can see no reason why a frog wouldn’t feel as much pain as a dog. In my opinion, there’s also no reason why most invertebrates wouldn’t feel pain as well. I think the contention that lower animals “don’t feel pain” is mostly used as a rationalization used by people engaged in inflicting pain on lower animals. ---
**Author:** ![sugaree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@sugaree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sugaree)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/14 "2001-10-11T02:31:42Z")
An iguana that was briefly in my life once managed to push up against his (or hers- I never could tell) heat lamp, and stayed pressed against it while his flesh sizzled; in fact, he snuggled the light until he was discovered and pried away. It left a terrible, permenent scar. This left me with the impression that Kiwi felt the nice glowing warmth but not anything that we the mammals would consider pain. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/15 "2001-10-11T02:43:26Z")
Although, Kiwi’s experience might simply mean that there are no more nerve/pain receptors in scales than we have in hair or birds have in feathers. ---
**Author:** ![Mirage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Mirage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mirage)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/16 "2001-10-11T03:31:26Z")
**Bill H -** > [@](#): > > I’m sure most animals feel the full range of emotions we do. Love, pain, passion, loss, etc. We might write poetry and eulogies but emotions are pretty basic biology. You are anthropomorphizing a little too much here. You must remember that many of the above emotions, love, passion, loss, are unique to social animals. They are mechinism by which social creatures relate to each other. Most non-mammals are not social creatures and so they would have no use for emotions. Emotions as we preceive them are only useful to creatures which have a complex, decision-making behavioral process, something which most other animals have never needed to evolve. Pain is something that requires a consiousness to feel. Rather than a complex behavioral chain reaction generated in response to nervous impulses, pain is a series of feelings which are designed to influence a seperate decision-making process to act in a manner to avoid that stimulus. It is not reflex. Another similar system is the pleasure system, which acts to condition the individual to seek out that stimulus. Pain and pleasure are evolution’s responses to the need for a motivating feedback system for our increasingly complex minds. Other animals might have locuses of nerves which perform the same function, however these nervous systems behave in a fashion more similar to a muscular reflex. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/17 "2001-10-11T06:45:32Z")
No, simple emotions are quite basic biology. Things like lust, aggression, fear, pleasure, you know; the things most religions try to get us to control or eliminate to “elevate” us ABOVE the animals with whom we SHARE these emotions. Pain is about the most basic one I can think of, which any person can see plain as day if they look at an injured or tortured “lower” animal. If it were a simple knee-jerk reaction to physically move away from a stimulus, animals with broken bones, viral infections, severed limbs, or porqupine quills stuck in them would just walk around normal after the fact because there’s nothing to escape from. I tend to notice them limping, huddling up and getting cranky, favoring injuries, wincing, and staying away from whatever caused it. This could be one of those cases where the need for scientific proof by following strict specifications gets in the way of common sense. I have seen papers by scientists who feel no objection to penning pigs up like sardines; there basis? - “there is no scientific proof that a pig needs to be able to turn around”:rolleyes:. Some things are so obvious that we don’t need to test their reality… I don’t need a peer-reviewed Scientific American article to tell me it’s advisable to remove my hand from a red-hot stove element when I start smelling my own burning skin. I think Colibri summed it up best. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/18 "2001-10-11T10:05:49Z")
Squid and octopi (octopuses?) may be invertebrates, but they have big brains for their size and are most certainly capable of learning and problem solving. I don’t know about clams and coral polyps, but I’m pretty sure squids and octopi certainly do feel pain and have some sort of conciousness, even if it isn’t like ours. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/19 "2001-10-11T10:18:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > **I’m not sure that I understand why consciousness has to come into it. When I stub my toe, I don’t pause and consider the existential nature of trying to force flesh and bone through some non-elastic material, I yell and pull my foot back.** I’m with **tomndebb** on this one; my personal WAG is that the obvious evidence (and perhaps therefore our conception for mammalian and avian sensation of pain is that these two groups of animals generally have _voices_ and can cry out when hurt, whereas fish and invertebrates generally don’t have voices. however, on a deeper level, we might as well be asking if [insert animal] percieves the colour red in the same way that I do. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691/20 "2001-10-11T10:27:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mirage \* > \*\ ***Bill H -** > > > [@](#): > > > > I’m sure most animals feel the full range of emotions we do. Love, pain, passion, loss, etc. We might write poetry and eulogies but emotions are pretty basic biology. > > You are anthropomorphizing a little too much here. You must remember that many of the above emotions, love, passion, loss, are unique to social animals. They are mechinism by which social creatures relate to each other. Most non-mammals are not social creatures and so they would have no use for emotions. Emotions as we preceive them are only useful to creatures which have a complex, decision-making behavioral process, something which most other animals have never needed to evolve. > > Pain is something that requires a consiousness to feel. Rather than a complex behavioral chain reaction generated in response to nervous impulses, pain is a series of feelings which are designed to influence a seperate decision-making process to act in a manner to avoid that stimulus. It is not reflex. Another similar system is the pleasure system, which acts to condition the individual to seek out that stimulus. Pain and pleasure are evolution’s responses to the need for a motivating feedback system for our increasingly complex minds. Other animals might have locuses of nerves which perform the same function, however these nervous systems behave in a fashion more similar to a muscular reflex. \*\* Yes that’s what I mean… Sex for example, not many creatures do it for pleasure, just an impulse. I don’t think there are a whole lot of animals that feel pain as we know it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-mamals-birds-feel-pain/86691.md?page=2)