Can insects feel pain, or have emotions?

[maomao]

The flying ants are mostly male ants, with a few prospective queens thrown in. Most of the male ants never get the chance to mate.

I thought as many of them as possible filled the queen up with cum. She has to use the same cum to make babies for the rest of her life.

 

[maomao]

Plus there's normally more than one queen (or there would only be one ants nest in the world) so it really is kind of like some mid air bukkake party.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Plus there's normally more than one queen (or there would only be one ants nest in the world) so it really is kind of like some mid air bukkake party.

Except I don't think they're coming on the ant princesses' faces.

 

[Callie]

A pic for frogletlady

two grassyhoppers in lurve

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16598207@N06/1781141322/

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Ant penis

 

[frogwoman]

What I am saying is that humans are not better or superior to other species. That ants like humans basically carry on doing their thing until something or someone stops them.

I think what dillinger is saying is that humans do give a fuck about their environment though. Even if it's not effective, there are efforts by humans to prevent environmental damage - sustainable development, kyoto etc. With ants, they don't give a fuck - once they have used all an area's resources up they just migrate and find somewhere else. There's no attempt to prevent "ecological catastrophes" WHILE they are feeding iyswim. Do you think they give a shit about all the animals displaced by their building those huge ant mounds, or rare butterflies whose caterpillars they eat?

do you think they even have a moral concept of environmental damage? Maybe, but i have my doubts - seriously ... i suspect it's a case of "no more food ... let's move on".

Just that humans appear to be concerned about damage to their global environment but are doing nothing about it. Ants also do nothing about it, but, when their environment is sufficiently damaged they like humans have only limited choices, move (migrate) or die.

We are aware of it, and even if it is ineffective we know that it is going on and try to do something about it. I doubt you get ant protesters demonstrating against whatever damage they're doing to a particular area.

If ants lived on the scale we do, do you mean population wise, I expect there are billions and billions more ants than there are humans.

Or do you mean individual size wise, if an ant was as large as a human, well the rules would still apply, do what you do until something or someone stops you.

Land animal habitation requires food and drinkable water, if either become scarce, or too far away to be transported in, the animals have no choice except move or die. It is just the same story for humans and ants, hence no large human cities in the middle of the Gobi desert and hence what will happen for humans if climate change and global warming renders large parts of the earth uninhabitable for humans.

I'm not sure I beleive in "global warming" either. Ants have also rendered huge areas of land uninhabitable but then recolonised it when they've been able to. I don't really think global warming is the catastrophic scenario it is always presented as tbh.

 

[frogwoman]

I don't think anyone ever thought that dogs don't feel pain. They always yelp if you accidentally step on their tail.

Also, if dogs had no emotional reaction, that whole Korean thing about scaring them before you kill them, in order to improve the taste, would be totally misguided.

True but for a long time it was thought that dogs don't feel "pain", they just have an automatic chemical reaction to certain stimuli which makes them do certain things, such as yelp.

Obviously this is nonsense but it was used for a long time to justify painful animal experiments, etc.

 

[frogwoman]

No time to read thread so heres my tuppenceworth, in response to the OP. I think insects probably can feel pain, as can all animals feel emotion and pain. Elephants mourn their dead, a dog or cat can show love, empathy and affection. I stumbled across something recently of karl jung that said that animals cannot feel emotions because of their instinct to survive, kill, and tenderly care for their young. Who was he to know what they are thinking?

I'd agree with you.

However, back to the anthropomorphism question again. If we accept that an ant, an aphid or a beetle can (maybe) feel pain, have emotions etc, then what about things like fleas, or scale insects, which live their whole adult lives attached to a plant, unable to move, sucking out the sap, until they are sprayed with insecticide or eaten by ladybirds.

It's a life so unlike ours that we can hardly recognise it as one. Can such a creature experience pleasure, or any kind of emotion at all? I don't know the answer to that at all.

 

[weltweit]

... However, back to the anthropomorphism question again. If we accept that an ant, an aphid or a beetle can (maybe) feel pain, have emotions etc, then what about things like fleas, or scale insects, which live their whole adult lives attached to a plant, unable to move, sucking out the sap, until they are sprayed with insecticide or eaten by ladybirds.

I agree that there are different levels of brain functioning and perhaps emotion is a preserve of a higher level animal. I do doubt if many insects have emotions, perhaps their life is simpler to control without them, perhaps they have no need of them, perhaps like your earlier depressed aphid having emotions would be altogether counter productive. Do humans always benefit from having emotions which many of them cannot control very well?

It is fascinating how apparently simple creatures or plants know how to do what they do. How does a bulb or seed deep beneath the earth know when to germinate and grow and not just that seed but millions of others that also emerge at the same time. Why does an amoeba, a very simple creature or perhaps not even a creature, do what it does? A simple jellyfish which does not even appear to have a brain do what it does?

Ants must have some kind of sense of belonging, they belong to that nest, to that type of ant, they are a worker or a queen, they must have some identity, I am a worker ant and therefore I do this! otherwise their lives would be impossible, they would keep getting muddled up about where to call home and what they were supposed to be doing. No?

 

[Dillinger4]

I don't think ants have identity. Or they wouldn't be able to function as a hive. They are not individuals.

I imagine they do what they do more through instinct than any sense of 'self' or 'duty'. They would not be able to separate themselves from the collective, or their ant society would most likely fall apart.

Again, I think you are imposing human experience onto things where it just doesn't apply.

You do know what anthropomorphism is, right?

 

[weltweit]

I don't think ants have identity. Or they wouldn't be able to function as a hive. They are not individuals.

I imagine they do what they do more through instinct than any sense of 'self' or 'duty'. They would not be able to separate themselves from the collective, or their ant society would most likely fall apart.

When worker ants leave the nest for a days work, how do some know to go left and others know to go right unless they have some seperate programming from each other. They cannot all be identical or they would all go in the same direction. So if they are not all identical it must follow that they are in some way different from each other.

Again, I think you are imposing human experience onto things where it just doesn't apply.

You do know what anthropomorphism is, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism
"......... It is also probably true that humans have a natural tendency to deny common traits with other species, most particularly apes, feeling that humans are unique and "special." This tendency may be described as anthropomorphophobia and has been referred to as Anthropodenial by primatologist Frans de Waal, author of Our Inner Ape and other books and articles."

I could accuse you Dillinger4 of anthropomorphophobia

I do think it is interesting to examine other things through the prism of human existance, indeed I would argue that we have no choice, we have no other existence or point of view to view things from.

I wonder if you have ever wondered about the similarities between things in the micro and things in the macro. For example lichen growing on a single rock expands to grow where it can and dies back where it cannot grow. A satellite image of a forested region of the planet looks very similar to the close up of the lichen growing on a rock.

Equally my argument of a human city resembling an ants nest I know you do not like. We humans like to think we are individuals but this only goes so far. We comply with the requirements of our groups, no one in Britain would dare to walk out of their house to go to work dressed as an Australian Aboriginal. No, we conform to the requirements of our group and hence we all wear pretty much the same and have similar daily experiences living largely as our society expects us to.

 

[frogwoman]

I agree that there are different levels of brain functioning and perhaps emotion is a preserve of a higher level animal. I do doubt if many insects have emotions, perhaps their life is simpler to control without them, perhaps they have no need of them, perhaps like your earlier depressed aphid having emotions would be altogether counter productive. Do humans always benefit from having emotions which many of them cannot control very well?

It is fascinating how apparently simple creatures or plants know how to do what they do. How does a bulb or seed deep beneath the earth know when to germinate and grow and not just that seed but millions of others that also emerge at the same time. Why does an amoeba, a very simple creature or perhaps not even a creature, do what it does? A simple jellyfish which does not even appear to have a brain do what it does?

Ants must have some kind of sense of belonging, they belong to that nest, to that type of ant, they are a worker or a queen, they must have some identity, I am a worker ant and therefore I do this! otherwise their lives would be impossible, they would keep getting muddled up about where to call home and what they were supposed to be doing. No?

I think growing in the case of bulbs and seeds must be an automatic process, like breathing, or like a baby growing. The same goes for things like metamorphosis - but the question i was asking is to what extent insects are aware of what happens to them. They do possess sensory perceptions to an extraordinary degree in some cases.

I don't think that all insects have equal powers of thought either. I would guess that "higher" insects such as flies, butterflies, ants, beetles, wasps etc would be more intelligent and able to pre-plan to an (albeit limited) degree, as well as some species of homoptera such as a few species of aphid and some stink bugs that look after their young after they are born. Many of them have a greater awareness of their surroundings than we give them credit for. I have my doubts however as to whether a scale insect or something similar would have evolved anything approaching a consciousness however.

Interesting point about the ants. I suspect it is something like that but a lot more simple. I don't think they would question what they had to do or think critically about it. It would probably be more along the lines of "Must protect queen. Must protect grubs. Running out of food. Must go that way if other ant is going other way. Must protect queen." Etc. Nonetheless I do think they possess consciousness of a sort - they communicate with other ants and agree about what it is they should be doing. I don't think though that it's comparable to a human's ability of thought.

 

[dash_two]

It would probably be more along the lines of "Must protect queen. Must protect grubs. Running out of food. Must go that way if other ant is going other way. Must protect queen." .

It's so hard to guess what might be going because we have language-with-syntax and they don't. It's very difficult for us to imagine thought without words. There must certainly be computations of some kind going on in insect brains but whether they are aware of them is another matter. After all, you are not aware of most of what your brain is doing when you do a complex task like ride a bicycle.

 

[Dillinger4]

When worker ants leave the nest for a days work, how do some know to go left and others know to go right unless they have some seperate programming from each other. They cannot all be identical or they would all go in the same direction. So if they are not all identical it must follow that they are in some way different from each other.

That is called 'the identity of indiscernibles'. Descartes used such an idea to prove that there are seperate minds (given that minds exist somewhere non-physically).

I still don't agree that ants have any level of consciousness. I don't think they have notions of left and right. I am not saying they are identical. I am saying they have no notion of self.

They don't wake up in the morning and open their little ant eyes and say "who am I? Oh! I am adrian the ant! Today I will just wander aimlessly around my hive, see kevin and sandra, see the Queen if I am lucky!" ETC ETC.

They are simply programmed with enough concepts to survive.

I do think it is interesting to examine other things through the prism of human existance, indeed I would argue that we have no choice, we have no other existence or point of view to view things from.

Well no. You have no quite got it there. You are applying what it IS to be human onto other creatures. And that is not right.

I wonder if you have ever wondered about the similarities between things in the micro and things in the macro. For example lichen growing on a single rock expands to grow where it can and dies back where it cannot grow. A satellite image of a forested region of the planet looks very similar to the close up of the lichen growing on a rock.

Yes.

Equally my argument of a human city resembling an ants nest I know you do not like. We humans like to think we are individuals but this only goes so far. We comply with the requirements of our groups, no one in Britain would dare to walk out of their house to go to work dressed as an Australian Aboriginal. No, we conform to the requirements of our group and hence we all wear pretty much the same and have similar daily experiences living largely as our society expects us to.

But you are only taking certain parts of what you know of an ant colony, and then applying certain characteristics of human life, and then fitting those little bits together and thinking that it is a full picture.

Yes there are similarities, I guess.

Tigers are fiercely individualistic. I bet you could find similarities with they way they live. But it doesn't really mean anything.

 

[frogwoman]

It's so hard to guess what might be going because we have language-with-syntax and they don't. It's very difficult for us to imagine thought without words. There must certainly be computations of some kind going on in insect brains but whether they are aware of them is another matter. After all, you are not aware of most of what your brain is doing when you do a complex task like ride a bicycle.

That's also a good point. Can insects imagine thoughts in pictures, iyswim?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Does a mosquito feel jealous when it sees another mosquito with a bigger proboscis?

 

[weltweit]

... but the question i was asking is to what extent insects are aware of what happens to them. They do possess sensory perceptions to an extraordinary degree in some cases.

Ants and the suchlike have undergone a different evolutionary process to humans and where humans have emotions etc it may simply not have been an advantageous trait in an ant even assuming that in something so small, it was a possibility.

... "Must protect queen. Must protect grubs. Running out of food. Must go that way if other ant is going other way. Must protect queen." Etc. Nonetheless I do think they possess consciousness of a sort - they communicate with other ants and agree about what it is they should be doing. I don't think though that it's comparable to a human's ability of thought.

The point was made earlier in the thread that humans are able to ride a bike, a relatively complex activity while almost completely unaware of the complexity of the task. Perhaps therefore insects like wasps are simply able to fly as they do without really thinking about it. After all many birds are like this, when they leave the nest they fly.

 

[weltweit]

... It's very difficult for us to imagine thought without words. ...

But we do not think in words. Words are just one way that we can express our thoughts or communicate but we do not think in them.

 

[weltweit]

That is called 'the identity of indiscernibles'. Descartes used such an idea to prove that there are seperate minds (given that minds exist somewhere non-physically).

I still don't agree that ants have any level of consciousness. I don't think they have notions of left and right. I am not saying they are identical. I am saying they have no notion of self.

I would probably go along with that. How would it benefit them to have a notion of self, therefore the ants surviving or evolving would probably not have that trait were it even possible.

They don't wake up in the morning and open their little ant eyes and say "who am I? Oh! I am adrian the ant! Today I will just wander aimlessly around my hive, see kevin and sandra, see the Queen if I am lucky!" ETC ETC.

They are simply programmed with enough concepts to survive.

Again we probably agree.

But you are only taking certain parts of what you know of an ant colony, and then applying certain characteristics of human life, and then fitting those little bits together and thinking that it is a full picture.

Yes there are similarities, I guess.

All I am pushing is that there are similarities, no more than that.

Tigers are fiercely individualistic. I bet you could find similarities with they way they live. But it doesn't really mean anything.

No cant see much similarity between humans and tigers.

 

[frogwoman]

Ants and the suchlike have undergone a different evolutionary process to humans and where humans have emotions etc it may simply not have been an advantageous trait in an ant even assuming that in something so small, it was a possibility.



The point was made earlier in the thread that humans are able to ride a bike, a relatively complex activity while almost completely unaware of the complexity of the task. Perhaps therefore insects like wasps are simply able to fly as they do without really thinking about it. After all many birds are like this, when they leave the nest they fly.

interesting idea

Not sure what to say to that. The truth is that we'll probably never know. After all there's no way of actually asking the insects themselves.

 

[frogwoman]

bump