As human beings, we have different attitudes towards living things other than ourselves. For example, vegetarianism has become a huge trend in recent years because many people have decided that they don’t want to kill another living thing for food. Of course, we will not discuss this here, but there is a point we want to bring to the subject: Insects.
Insects, which seem to move around like ‘mad cows’ and move aimlessly and robotically, are perhaps the most ‘meh’ creatures to kill for many people. When most people see an insect, they squash it without hesitation. After the information we will share with you in a moment, you may want to think twice before killing an insect.
Insects suffer as much as humans.
Nociception (the nervous system’s perception of chemical burns, cuts, and wounds or stimuli from impact) has been discovered to trigger a variety of physiological and behavioral responses in animals, one of which is the perception of pain.
A research team that began experiments in 2019 found that the widely studied fruit fly Drosophila showed signs of chronic pain after its leg was amputated. It was discovered that once the fruit fly has fully recovered, the contralateral leg of the fruit fly becomes hypersensitive.
Anatomically, insects have neurons that descend from the brain to the part of the nerve cords where defensive responses to damaging touch originate. For example, the tomato borer beetle even exhibits pain-relieving behaviors, such as grooming itself after being injured.
“We argue that insects have central nervous control over nociception, most likely based on behavioral, molecular and anatomical neuroscience evidence. This strengthens our notion that insects also suffer,” says the team, which began research on this topic in 2019.
Because insects are a large and diverse group, it is also possible that the complexity of their nociception regulation and their potential pain feelings also vary widely among them. So not every insect suffers to the same degree, and some may not suffer at all. But now that we are aware that they are suffering, the idea of experimenting on them raises ethical questions.
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