• Question: FIRST TO ANSWER GETS MY VOTE!!!! Do insects have feelings?

    Asked by anon-225881 to Sameed, Jose, joannabarstow, Heidi, Freya, Chris on 19 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Jose Brandao-Neto

      Jose Brandao-Neto answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      Hi Minah,
      .
      They do. Be mindful of the ants as they will be of you. Unless you’re a roadkill. Or sleep on a jungle floor.
      .
      The more puzzling question is: why don’t ants die in a microwave oven?
      .
      José

    • Photo: Heidi

      Heidi answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      Insects definitely feel, but not quite in the same was as humans. Insects have a nervous system which allows them to feel pain, smell, hear, taste, etc, and it’s been proven that insects respond to stimuli like pain (poor insects!). They most likely can’t feel emotion though, because their brains are too simple.

    • Photo: Freya Addison

      Freya Addison answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      This is a tough question. We don’t know for sure that insects do or don’t have feelings. There is still debate if dogs do (although any pet owner will tell you, of course, they have feelings). We do know that insects do feel pain. However, they do not have the same rights as mammals in terms of killing and testing on them.

Comments

  • Photo: Pizza Ka Yee

    Pizza Ka Yee commented on :

    Hi @minah, I spotted this good question and would like to share with you what’s going on in the field of Animal Behaviour. Short answer is that we don’t completely know or cannot be completely sure that they do or do not have feelings.
    One argument is that although non-human animals may have very different morphological, physiological, behaviours etc from us, they may perceive and understand the world similar to us (humans). This leads to some studies (see a reference below) examined whether insects such as bees showed physiological and behavioral changes that are analog to feeling. However, because we will never be able to be any insect (exclude those sci-fi like ant man, squirrel girl or wasp girl), we will not be able to know whether they have feelings.
    I understand that to some, the latter statement is true but killjoy. Nevertheless, we have to take the simplest explanation to explain a phenomenon.
    To me, looking for answer to this question is difficult but not impossible. What is more important is to repeat animals and appreciate the diversity of them! 🙂

    Reference:
    Unexpected rewards induce dopamine-dependent positive emotion–like state changes in bumblebees. By Perry te al,2016 Science

  • Photo: anon-226058

    anon-226058 commented on :

    RESPONSE TO JOSE
    ————————————
    Ants don’t die in a microwave because they are so small they go under the waves however the real question is why don’t woodlice survive

  • Photo: anon-225881

    anon-225881 commented on :

    Thanks for answering! By the way, who answered first?

  • Photo: anon-225881

    anon-225881 commented on :

    Sorry you got evicted Freya 😢