RE: Insect Studies: Do Researchers Have an Obligation to Their Subjects?
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Nicely written article on insect pain @agmoore!
The topic on whether or not ants can feel pain is not one I had ever considered before, because it is very obvious to me that they indeed feel pain.
All we have to do really is just look at the social behavior of ants. They are very aggressive in defending their colonies usually, and they flee in the face of immediate life threatening danger while still trying to re-organize the chaos. They have both a well ingrained flight and fight response.
The way they die it looks pretty obvious too that they feel pain.
If these behaviors resemble ours, (which I would say they do in some ways) then it's just a common sense thing and the argument would be "Prove to me they don't feel pain then." Although I love science, at certain levels some truth may get lost in the equations from time to time.
It's an interesting topic, stacking comparisons between different types of insects and the how's and if's of their painful experience on this planet.
I think it's generally painful for everything to exist on this planet in some capacity.
Yes! But that's not good enough for science. In order to be persuasive, in order to convince at least a few people to change behavior, I have to prove my case. I always acted as though they feel pain. My kids (middle-aged!)are upset with the whole ant thing. That's the ethic in our house. They know I can't live with them, but they don't like to think about the killing.
Besides being a valid philosophical point, I remember something Darwin said (not exactly). He mused about the cruelty of a divine plan--if there is such a plan--that allows parasitic wasps to exist, to build their nests inside another living being. Darwin obviously believed in insect pain :(
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.