STINGING TESTIMONY: If insects feel pain, why aren’t they given ethical consideration and protected in research?
The resulting scarcity of regulations means that for most invertebrate species, there’s not much to stop scientists from using large numbers of individuals for a particular experiment, amputating limbs without using anesthetic, keeping them in cramped containers, or dissecting them live.
KATARINA ZIMMER: Bees have long impressed behavioral scientist Lars Chittka. In his lab at Queen Mary University of London, the pollinators have proven themselves capable of counting, using simple tools, and learning from nestmates. What really surprised Chittka, however, were the nuances of the insects’ behavior.
In 2008, for instance, a study from Chittka’s lab looked at how bumblebees reacted to a simulated attack by a fake spider on a flower. The bumblebees later approached suspect flowers cautiously and sometimes left even spider-less flowers quickly “as if they were seeing ghosts,” Chittka recalled. By contrast, the bees were seemingly more upbeat after receiving a sugar treat.
Early in his career, Chittka never protested when his colleagues opened bees’ skulls and inserted electrodes to study their nervous system. But he now wonders whether such procedures might create “potentially very unpleasant situations” for the insects. Like most invertebrates — any animal without an internal skeleton — insects tend to be legally unprotected in research. Regulations intended to minimize suffering in vertebrates like rodents largely don’t apply.
Some countries have already improved the welfare of select invertebrates, such as octopus, squid, crabs, and lobster. But there’s disagreement over whether other invertebrate species — a kaleidoscopically diverse cast of animals — also deserve protection. Some scientists believe species with relatively simple brains, like insects, or perhaps even those with no central nervous system at all, also deserve ethical consideration, although the details are under debate.
To Chittka, these observations defy a long-held view that insects are robot-like, controlled by hard-wired cognitive programs. Rather, the bees’ behavior seemed to be influenced by subjective experience — a perception of pleasant and unpleasant. Chittka said he increasingly suspects “there’s quite a rich world inside their minds”…
None of the experts who spoke with Undark argued that research on these invertebrate species should stop… Many scientists are also shifting their research from vertebrates to invertebrates to avoid ethical bureaucracy associated with animal welfare regulation…
The rationale to legally protect animals in scientific research typically rests on their presumed ability to feel pain and suffer — one facet of consciousness, or sentience… Invertebrates have historically been deemed incapable of conscious experiences like pain… Invertebrates are largely left “open to do whatever you want with them,” … said animal behaviorist Jennifer Mather of the University of Lethbridge…
The resulting scarcity of regulations means that for most invertebrate species, there’s not much to stop scientists from, say, using large numbers of individuals for a particular experiment, amputating limbs without using anesthetic, keeping them in cramped containers, or dissecting them live.
Yet some scholars have questioned this binary classification. As two philosophers of science, Irina Mikhalevich and Russel Powell, argued in a 2020 commentary, lumping invertebrates together reflects an outdated interpretation of evolution as a ladder of increasing complexity where spineless creatures rank lower. This idea is morally inconsistent with a growing body of research on the cognitive abilities of insects and certain other invertebrates. Whether an animal has a spine shouldn’t be the criterion for its moral status, said Mikhalevich: “It should be what kind of capacities they have to suffer, to experience joys, pleasures, pains”…
Some countries have acknowledged this for a group of invertebrates called cephalopods, comprising octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses… Although crustaceans — including crab, lobster, and crayfish — generally have much smaller brains than cephalopods, there’s similarly strong evidence that they also experience pain… Chittka and others argue that, much like cephalopods and crustaceans, insects also exhibit sentience and should be similarly protected…
As it stands, most scientists probably don’t see a need to make ethical considerations with insects, said evolutionary biologist Chris Freelance of the University of Melbourne. But he sees an ethical responsibility to take a precautionary approach — that is, to treat them as if they do feel pain until proven otherwise. After all, he said, “we would absolutely adopt the precautionary principle if it was a fluffy furry thing or something with feathers”. SOURCE…
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