the fish and pain issue

[Liamsm]

Hi All,

I think that the evolutional, or natural selection angle, is being slightly misunderstood by some in this debate, in so much as that nearly all animals have already evolved from the beginning of time to ovoid being caught.

 

To form better ways to ovoid being caught and develop better ways to counter the avoidance to catch more, is the total basis and driving force of evolution.

 

The avoidance technic is not developed from scratch with each new bait or rig, it only needs to be fine-tuned.

To ovoid being caught is a survival response for the species ( given that fish do not understand catch and release), not a pain avoidance response for the individual fish.

........Liam

 

[ 18. April 2004, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: Liamsm ]

[The Flying Tench]

Malevans and Liamsm

 

You seem to be both coming from a similar tack, suggesting that natural selection somehow gives fish an ability to learn not to repeat being captured in different situations, as they link capture and release with danger and non-survival, without necessarily feeling pain. I don't quite understand how the mechanism would work, but I'm not a biologist - maybe they can advise on this, or maybe one of you knows a fair bit about this? (I don't quite understand about your S curves, Malevans, which probably means you know more about the biology than me).

 

Just to be clear, I accept of course that natural selection has taught the fish to be wary of capture. The issue is how fish that are NOT initially hook-wary become so in a couple of years without there being time for natural selection to kick in. I can see that what they experience might be closer to fear than pain. But there's still the question of the chub hooked in the eye - surely, the level of fear (or inbuilt tendency to avoid capture) would be the same as for a lip-hooked fish, so we need to explain the different response.

 

On a minor point, aren't you playing into my hands, malevans, bringing in Occam's Razor? As I understand it, this says that the simplest solution (the one needing least parameters) is the one to accept. I think pain is quite a simple solution! Or maybe you're saying that pain is an extra and unnecessary parameter, given that we know your suggestion of a built-in tendency to learn to avoid things which link with being captured exists?

 

Whew! I'd still be interested to hear if anyone else has foul-hooked a fish in the eye!

[malevans]

Sorry John I should have answered your query earlier. My son had a 2lb pike strike at his 28gm toby a few years back and that was hooked well and truely in the eye. Made me feel quite "delicate" actually.

 

Its only simple if you translocate the brain function to explain the descrepancy in brain form, and one also associates the tendency to pull harder against the alleged pain with a higher masochistic trait. Therefore your proposition is actually not the simplest, the simplest is that if the relvent organs are not present then the phenomia is surely absent and the pulling against the angler would imply a lack of any sensation that would discourage the fish from pulling harder, which of course is what pain would do in an human. Add these two observations together and QED.

 

Cheers

[Liamsm]

Hi John,

I don’t think that it is necessary for anyone to revel whether or not they are a biologist, or a biophysicist.

As this is a debate between us plain folk, who only have plain logic to fall back on.

I think that at the end of the day, it is down to your interpretation of pain.

Pain in humans, is only a signal from an injured area of the body to the brain.

This induces a biological response by the brain from the body it's self to the injured area.

Apart from this, because we are of a much higher order of intelligence, we are able to administer other medical help to the injury and also reason a sensible avoidance to the injured area and the cause of the injury.

Maybe this is why it is necessary for us humans to have such a high feeling of pain.

Maybe through our own evolution, our brains have deemed it necessary to have such a high feeling towards any injury.

(It is also possible for the human brain to turn off this pain signal completely by the way.)

This high pain feeling of coarse would not be necessary to this extent in lower forms that cannot administer medical treatment in any form.

I have no doubt that all forms of life receive signals of injury of some sort, to varying degrees, to their own limited brains.

However it does not make logical sense for that signal to need to be the same as the one experienced by a human.

Much more likely that it is equatable throughout the evolutionary scale, directly to the evolution of the brain.

All students of nature know that if there is not a need for it, then it will most likely not be there.

The most that a fish can do about an injury, is move to a different environment, this being the case maybe!?, for fish moving into salt water.

Even if this were the case however, it would not benefit the fish to be in any pain for this response to

be triggered in the small minority that were able to do this.

If you take another animal between fish and man in the evolutional scale, intelligence rises to the point that pain is avoided very quickly. Pain is also a signal to warn of further injury as well as the signal of the injury already sustained.

Whether fish feel pain to a degree or not, I will always fish , because pain it’s self is not that important to me.

I live with it every day, as many others do. It is all part of life.

........Liam.

[The Flying Tench]

malevans:

Sorry John I should have answered your query earlier. My son had a 2lb pike strike at his 28gm toby a few years back and that was hooked well and truely in the eye. Made me feel quite "delicate" actually.

 

Its only simple if you translocate the brain function to explain the descrepancy in brain form, and one also associates the tendency to pull harder against the alleged pain with a higher masochistic trait. Therefore your proposition is actually not the simplest, the simplest is that if the relvent organs are not present then the phenomia is surely absent and the pulling against the angler would imply a lack of any sensation that would discourage the fish from pulling harder, which of course is what pain would do in an human. Add these two observations together and QED.

 

Cheers

Malcolm, can you remember by any chance whether the eye-hooked pike fought at all?

 

I'm afraid you've lost me in your second para. The eye-hooked chub DIDN'T fight which was why my brother was worried that it felt a lot of pain. Were you thinking I was saying the reverse? Or maybe I'm just not understanding you?

[The Flying Tench]

Liamsm:

Hi John,

 

 

Pain in humans, is only a signal from an injured area of the body to the brain.

 

It's also something we're aware of - at a MIND, not purely an unconscious brain, level. Unless I had this awareness, I wouldn't change my behaviour. The thing I'm still struggling with is the thought that the messages to a fish's brain might cause it to change it's behaviour without it feeling anything. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just find it hard to imagine - and I wish humans could learn the same way, as I find pain difficult to cope with.

 

(It is also possible for the human brain to turn off this pain signal completely by the way.)

 

Are you referring to special times, like when someone passes out through the pain getting so extreme, or are you meaning a human can actually control this? If so, i might like to learn!

 

I will always fish , because pain it’s self is not that important to me.

I live with it every day, as many others do. It is all part of life.

........Liam.

I'm sorry to hear you live with pain every day, and it's great that you can handle it.

 

John

[Peter Sharpe]

If you were to suffer excruciating pain, but it left no marks, no after effects and afterwards you had no memory of it whatsoever...would it matter that it had ever happened?

[Nik]

That is a very good philosophical point Peter, well said.

[Liamsm]

Hi John,

The point that I was really trying to make was that there is a need for the pain that we feel as humans, in our evolutional development.

It is very unlikely that this is the case in fish.

If there is not a need for it then it is most probable that it is not there to the same degree.

Peter's little philosophical point also has a bearing in that the human mind plays a big part as well as just brain function.

We have a very developed memory/mind and can even control our own brain function to a degree.

This control over brain function by mind is probably what will grow in the future development of mans evolution, as it is a lot stronger in some humans than others at the moment. Some have found the need to use it more than others.

We cannot discount that we are able to use drugs to control pain to a large degree as well.

This is just an enhancement for the drugs that the human body is capable of producing its self through brain function.

If pain is what humans feel with our complex brain can you compare it directly to what a fish might feel with it's lower brain development?.

.......Liam

[Leon Roskilly]

An alien landing upon the earth's land, observing all the things that nip and prick and sting, would be in no doubt that creatures live here that can feel pain, and that evolution has endowed many of the earth's plants and insects with the ability to cause pain to those pain receiving creatures as part of their own defence strategy.

 

Not powerful (but self-costly strategies) to disable or kill, but 'miniumum effective force' strategies.

 

Unless of course they land in Hawaii, where many plants, familial to those on the nearby continent, have evolved without the presence of mammals, and so lack the prickles and stings developed by their near cousins.

 

Or, what if those aliens had come from a watery world and landed beneath the sea?

 

As with Hawaii, they wouldn't see evidence of pain recieving creatures there either.

 

What about sea-urchin spines, and stinging fish, you ask?

 

Their strategies have not been developed to use minimal force, they mean to disable and kill, to block the approach of a predator, or to make it difficult for them to be engorged.

 

Strategies far OTT for delivery of nothing more than a sharp pain, to see off a potential predator.

 

The stickleback and perch is eagerly eaten by pike, ask any live-baiter - no deterrence there.

 

Except perhaps it makes the otter more cautious, and the stickleback, inhabiting shallow margins is protected from the kingfisher.

 

But principally those spines make the fish seem harder to engulf, and sometimes prevent ingestation, allowing subsequent escape.

 

In an underwater world of soft fronds and rounded stones, suspended by the water, fish have no fear of tripping and breaking bones, or rubbing and lying upon sharp rocks and sticks, they don't have quite the climbing, running, leaping mammal's need to be reminded of caution in what they do, by being hurt.

 

And lacking the abilitiy to feel pain, no creature sets out to deter them with stings and pricks.

 

The alien would not see evidence of pain receiving creaures beneath the waves, in the defence strategies developed by other creatures and plants there.

 

I wish that it was so above the water line, as I emerge from my swim, stung by nettles, scratched by prickles and bitten by ants!

 

Oh to be a fish!

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 20. April 2004, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]