Oooh! That Hook Hurts
“The fascination of shooting as a sport,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse, “depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.” New research suggests the same may be true of fishing rods.
Lynne Sneddon, a biologist at the University of Liverpool, and her colleagues at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, injected the mouths of anesthetized rainbow trout with bee venom, acetic acid and, as a control, an innocuous saline solution. In the fish treated with venom and acid, Sneddon detected firing patterns from 22 different neurons that were “identical to those found in humans when they experience pain.” In a second, similar experiment, this time without anesthesia, the fish behaved as if they were in pain: They rocked from side to side, their breathing became more rapid, and they took much longer to resume feeding than the saline-injected fish. The trout treated with acid rubbed their mouths against the bottom and sides of the tank.
Some scientists remain skeptical. “Just because an organism responds to negative stimuli does not mean it’s conscious of pain,” argues James Rose, professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming. “Even avoidance-learning behaviors—where an animal learns to avoid noxious situations—can be unconscious.” He points out that fish lack a neocortex, the part of the brain that registers suffering and discomfort. “Pain is a psychological experience with an emotional dimension for which fish are unequipped.”
