Shooting down mosquitos, with freaking lasers!

[umop_ap_sdn]

Possibly. If a limb is damaged then moving it around at all could irritate it, assuming they’re anything like our wounds.

I found a couple of cites, Do Invertebrates Feel Pain? and A Question of Pain in Invertebrates. Each page includes a list of references, and the consensus seems to be that while invertebrates in general tend to respond to heat, electricity, or chemicals, insects in particular seem to not notice when they are injured by crushing or slicing.

[Wesley_Clark]

This is why I don’t believe sci-fi movies. The robots always have terrible aim in those movies. In real life, they can hit a mosquito from across the room.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

The mosquito is the deadliest animal on earth as far as people are concerned. It is not that we must not kill, but we must not kill without reflection.

Having reflected, I say burn 'em out of the sky. (Or nuke them from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.)

[GreatStuffMan]

Haha, this is cool.

[Mijin]

@umop_ap_sdn

Arthropods do feel heat and electric shocks, however - at least an earwig will squirm violently if placed under a heat lamp.

Alas, even squirming about doesn’t prove that they feel pain. They simply may not have evolved a good response to these unusual stimuli.
(And I’d expect any animal with a nervous systen to squirm under an electric shock; even corpses will do that.)

Since we don’t really understand qualia it’s hard to say for sure, but I’d be skeptical since it’s hard to see how the sensation of pain would serve as useful a function for a mosquito as it does for, say, mammals.

Pain says to a mammal: try to avoid doing whatever caused this (as a big simplification). But mosquitoes’ capacity for learning is pretty low. And anyway: situations where mosquitoes may feel pain without also dying seem rare to me.

[umop_ap_sdn]

Even if we don’t know for sure, shouldn’t we still err on the side of humaneness?

[Jenaroph]

@umop_ap_sdn

For an animal capable of flapping their wings a couple hundred times per second, it doesn’t seem logical that they would experience time the same way we do.

If we consider this to be true and that the 1/10 of a second it takes to laser them is inhumanely drawn out, squishing them with your hand would be the equivalent of the garbage masher scene in Star Wars. I guess killing them at all in any way that our glacially-paced human bodies can manage is right out. The mosquitoes must be spared because any death we could give them would be horrible due to their superlative time-percepting abilities.

Never thought I’d see the day someone would actually put forth the concept “Won’t somebody think of the mosquitoes?” in a serious manner.

[running_coach]

@Jenaroph

Never thought I’d see the day someone would actually put forth the concept “Won’t somebody think of the mosquitoes?” in a serious manner.

Jainism.

Jainism’s stance on nonviolence goes far beyond vegetarianism. Jains refuse food obtained with unnecessary cruelty. Many practice a lifestyle similar to veganism, due to the violence of modern dairy farms, and others exclude root vegetables from their diets to preserve the lives of these plants, since they are often uprooted during the harvest.[30] Potatoes, garlic and onions in particular are avoided by Jains.[31] Traditionally oriented Jains do not eat, drink, or travel after sunset, and prefer to drink water that is boiled and then cooled to room temperature. The purpose of these practices is to minimise the harm that may otherwise be caused to living organisms inadvertently.

[ENugent]

@beowulff

That’s a neat demo, but i’d bet money that they’re not going to be able to target a mosquito across the room anytime soon, which makes it much less useful.

You would lose your money.

[Wesley_Clark]

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/09/02/can-insects-feel-pain/

Can insects feel pain? — Darron, St. George, Grenada

Marshall Brain answered:
Let’s first take a look at how human beings feel pain. In our skin and throughout our muscles and joints we have pain receptors. These are nerve endings specialized for recognizing tissue damage. See How Aspirin Works for details on these receptors, known as nociceptors.

The nerves from these pain receptors run up the spinal column to the brain, where we feel the sensation of pain. There are also behaviors wired into the brain to help us respond appropriately to pain. Note that the spinal cord can respond to pain almost instantly – before the brain even gets the signal and starts to create the sensation.

An insect is completely different. First, there are no nociceptors found in insects. Second, because insects are invertebrates, they by definition lack a spine. Third, insects do not have centralized brains like people do. Instead, insects have clusters of nerve cells called ganglia distributed around the body. So insects do not have any way to feel “pain” like human beings do. That does not mean that insects lack sensation – they can sense when you grab hold of a leg, for example, and will struggle to get free. But this response is somewhat like the response we would see in a robot.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Entomology-Study-Bugs-665/insects-feel-pain.htm

Expert: Doug Yanega - 3/22/2006

Question
Hello,

I have been wondering this for a while and asked many people - do insects feel pain? I saw a boxelder bug today in my math class and a student squished it a little bit and it wriggled around for a while and seemed to be struggling. It limped over to a corner where it appears to have died. Was it suffering during it’s last few minutes? Is teasing a bug like this a cruel thing? Do insects have emotions such as sadness, madness, happiness, etc?

Thanks
Tom

Answer
Hi. This is a common question, and it’s not entirely philosophical. Pain as WE experience it is based on our nervous system. We have special nerve cells called “nociceptors” whose sole purpose is to create the sensation of pain. Without those special cells, we wouldn’t feel pain. There are, in fact, medical conditions which can selectively kill those cells - the best known is leprosy, but there are others. I personally had a mild seizure once that wiped out the connection to the nociceptors in my left leg, and to this day I cannot feel geuine pain in my left leg - I can tell when I’m being touched, and can tell how much pressure is being applied and to how small or large an area, but (for example) there is no difference for me in the feeling of being poked by a pencil versus an icepick, nor any difference in being touched by an ice cube versus a boiling hot piece of metal. Insects and other arthropods don’t have any nociceptors. They can feel sensations, but PAIN is definitely NOT one of them. Their responses are therefore very different from ours. Aside from my own personal example of what it’s like not to feel pain, consider this: if you gently grab an insect’s leg and hold it, it will struggle violently. If you snap the leg off, it stops struggling and calmly limps away. If they felt pain, it would be the exact opposite.
As for emotions, no, they most definitely do not experience emotions. Things like hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sex drive are not emotions, they are physical sensations.

I hope this helps,

I wonder if subjective consciousness is necessary for pain to be an effective motivator. What good would ‘pain’ do if there is no subjective consciousness to experience it and plan methods of avoiding it?

[Unintentionally_Blank]

@umop_ap_sdn

Even if we don’t know for sure, shouldn’t we still err on the side of humaneness?

I like my hamburger. An animal DIED to provide my with my Hamburger. I’m okay with that.

Human physiology is built to be omnivorous. Has been for millions of years. I choose to not fight millions of years of evolution, mostly because it’s so damn tasty.

I don’t care to have bugs in the house, therefore I fumigate.

I don’t care to have my cats eaten by coyotes or owls, I keep them inside. I don’t care to have my parrot eaten by my cats, so I take steps to keep them separate.

Humans are odd dichotomies. I kill every mosquito I get the chance to.

[umop_ap_sdn]

Completely missing the point. I’m not saying don’t kill them, just don’t burn them.

[CalMeacham]

Oh, God.

In one of the home-grown cartoons in MIT’s student newspaper, The Tech, someone had a series about someone using a laser to shoot down flies. This was in the mid-1970s. Reality has finally caught up.

[Mr.Excellent]

@umop_ap_sdn

Or to use an example, if a large rabid dog were threatening your (hypothetical) young child, and you concluded that the only solution was to kill the dog, would you do so quickly and humanely or would you burn the animal alive?

If that were the best way to ensure my own survival, absolutely. If a quick and painless method of killing the beast improved my odds, I’d use that. But at the end of the day, it’s the dog or me - the dog’s pain simply isn’t a part of my decision-making process.

Now, I actually think that dogs have real personalities - there’s something going on their heads. I’ve known dogs whom I genuinely liked - and I would still burn them alive to save my own life, if that were the option that gave me the best chance of survival. I’d regret it deeply, but I’d do it.

As for mosquitos? Tiny flying automatons, with no minds at all to speak of? I won’t go out of my way to inflict suffering on one (assuming they actually can.) But if inflicting an agonizing death on the bugs truly was the best way to save hundreds of thousands of human lives - it isn’t even a question. Of course I’m for it.

Of course, if this isn’t the best method - and it seems awfully spendy and finicky for the developing world - then that’s reason enough not to use it. But, again, bug welfare doesn’t enter into it at all.

[RandMcnally]

I like to believe that not only are bugs intelligent, they are actually sentient and every year attend a huge meeting where they discuss how best to attack the human race.

And then on the last day, before the ceremonial bug strippers show up, they have a fascinating discussion on how best to fuck over me in particular.

[running_coach]

@RandMcnally

I like to believe that not only are bugs intelligent, they are actually sentient and every year attend a huge meeting where they discuss how best to attack the human race.

And then on the last day, before the ceremonial bug strippers show up, they have a fascinating discussion on how best to fuck over me in particular.

It’s almost like they have a map to your house.

[dragoncat]

@Jenaroph

Never thought I’d see the day someone would actually put forth the concept “Won’t somebody think of the mosquitoes?” in a serious manner.

You didn’t meet me at summer camp, where I was known as the Small Critters’ Best Friend for begging other campers not to kill insects (including ants, though not mosquitoes).

Empathy for insects aside, the mosquito-zapping device and its R&D costs constitute a serious misuse of resources, because the problem with mosquitoes lies in developing countries, where 25 to 30 million people (mostly children) die yearly from malaria.

Healthgrades Health Library

http://www.malariasite.com/malaria/Children.htm

Other posters have addressed this, I know. What is needed is an inexpensive technology that can effectively reduce mosquito-borne transmission, can be distributed easily to remote areas, and is not difficult to use.

To compare the West Nile virus to malaria is laughable at best. I am not saying the virus itself is mild, but its impact on the world is.

West Nile Virus | West Nile Virus | CDC

[Unintentionally_Blank]

But it’s just the FIRST unit that costs a bajillion dollars. By the time it reaches Ronco status, It’ll be 3 ^H^H 2 payments of $19.95

Not only that, but it’s a localised NON POISONOUS solution. No DDT worries…make it solar powered and it could be self contained and cordless.

[Wesley_Clark]

@umop_ap_sdn

Completely missing the point. I’m not saying don’t kill them, just don’t burn them.

I don’t think they feel pain though. Dogs and humans (which can feel pain) have different nervous systems than insects.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/lega-e/witn-e/shelly-e.htm

1. The evolutionary function of pain.

        In vertebrates pain is thought to be an important educational tool6.  Vertebrates are relatively long-lived creatures and learning shapes much of their behaviour.  Learning from pain (and pleasure) plays a vital role in the development of their behaviour6. 
   
        Almost all invertebrates are short-lived and their behaviour is thought to be largely genetically determined7.  Therefore, there is less evolutionary pressure selecting for the evolution of pain in this group of animals6.
   

2. The neural capacity of invertebrates.

        Except for the cephalopods, invertebrates have small nervous systems, consisting of many small brains (ganglia).  Because of the small number of neurons and the distributed organization of their nervous systems, invertebrates are thought to have limited cognitive capacity6.  High cognitive capacity is thought to be a prerequisite for the development of an emotional response6.
   

**
3. The behaviour of invertebrates

        Invertebrates show few, if any, of the behaviours that we would recognize as evidence of emotion6.  Many invertebrates are cannibalistic, and many eat their young when given the chance.  Most have no social behaviour.  Although they can respond vigorously to noxious stimuli, even this response is inconsistent.  Insects, for example, will continue with normal activity even after severe injury.  An insect walking with a crushed tarsus (lower leg) will continue applying it to the ground with undiminished force. Locusts will writhe when sprayed with DDT.  However, they will also continue feeding while being eaten by a praying mantis6.**

Conclusions

        Although it is impossible to know the subjective experience of another animal with certainty, the balance of the evidence suggests that most invertebrates do not feel pain.  The evidence is most robust for insects, and, for these animals, the consensus is that they do not feel pain6.

[Algher]

I need it battery powered, and set up on a perimeter when I go camping. Once it hits twilight, all of my Scouts are brought inside the safety zone and we hit the switch.