Fish are Friends Not Food

Does this fish feel pain from the fishhook?

     There has been lots of debate over if fish feel pain or not. Over the past couple years there have been many studies done to try and prove that fish do not feel pain like humans do. One study done at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries shows that fish do not have the neuro-physiological capacity to have a conscious awareness of pain. This means that when a painful act is enacted upon a fish, they do not have a physical response. For example when a human gets hit in the arm, the conscious response is to grab and rub the area. When fish have pain inflicted upon them there is no physical or conscious reaction. The findings of this experiment show that fish have no awareness of pain in human terms or have a completely different reaction to pain than humans.
     After the release of this study, there was a lot of backlash from others in the science community who did not support the findings of the original experiment. The other experts in the field raised issues about the study of animal emotions, mostly about how when studying animals it is difficult to tell their emotions because they cannot speak them to us. Others disagree with this because it is clear that nonhuman animals can indeed "tell" us how they feel, even if it is not through words. In other studies about animal pain, scientists have found that human pain may not be confined to the cerebral cortex. People used to believe that pain was only processed by the cerebral cortex, which meant that any animal without a cerebral cortex could not feel pain. The cerebral cortex is the furrowed outer layer of gray matter in the cerebrum of the brain, associated with higher brain functions, as voluntary movement, coordination of sensory information, learning and memory, and the expression of individuality. With the discovery that pain might be received by other parts of the body, some scientists are beginning to believe that animals without a cerebral cortex can feel pain.

Diagram of a Fish Brain (notice the lack of a cerebral cortex)

     There is still much debate over if fish can feel pain. There are many online debates about even if fish cannot feel pain, does this make it ok to eat them. Also if fish do not feel pain in the same ways as humans do, does that mean their pain is not real or justified. There have been numerous articles about this debate and I think there will continue to be a debate over the feeling pain in fish.
 

     You may recognize this picture of a flopping fish from the Faith No More music video from their song Epic. After this video came out there was lots of controversy over the fish and if the fish survived. People were also concerned that the fish was in pain during the video, but after doing this research I do not know if the fish was actually feeling pain.