Insects are strange wondrous beings. Butterflies can see parts of the light spectrum that are invisible to human eyes and use these ultraviolet patterns to find their way to tasty plants. Moths use the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves on journeys of hundreds of miles. Bees waggle their butts to tell their hive-mates where to find a juicy stash of nectar. Insects live in our world—or humans live in theirs—yet we inhabit completely different sensory universes.
But just as we are starting to understand insect senses, something is shifting in the way we treat these creatures. Insect farming is booming in a major way. By one estimate, between 1 trillion and 1.2 trillion insects are raised on farms each year as companies race to find a high-protein, low-carbon way to feed animals and humans. In terms of sheer numbers of animals impacted, this is a transformation of a speed and scale that we've never seen before.
It's a weird twist in our already strange relationship with bugs. We squash them, spray them, eat them, and crush them to make pretty dyes. But we also fret about plummeting wild insect populations and rely on them to pollinate the crops we eat. And with the industrialization of insect farming, bugs are being offered up as a solution to the human-caused climate crisis. But before we go down that route, we need to ask some really basic questions about insects. Can they feel? And if so, what should we do about it?
[...] Finding out whether another being can feel pain is really difficult, even when it comes to humans. Until the mid-1980s babies in the US were routinely operated on with little or no anesthesia, due to the mistaken belief that very young infants were incapable of perceiving pain. In one famous case, a premature baby in Maryland born in 1985 underwent open heart surgery without any anesthesia at all. When Jill Lawson, the boy's mother, later questioned her doctors, she was told that premature babies couldn't feel pain—a scientific misunderstanding that was later overturned partly thanks to the campaigning of people like Lawson.
If scientists can misunderstand pain in humans for so long, what hope do we have in figuring it out in insects? When searching for answers, there are a handful of signs researchers look for. One is the presence of nociceptors—neurons that respond to painful stimuli from the outside world. [...]
[...] If we're going to farm animals that are candidates for sentience, then there should be welfare standards, says Birch. Right now there are no widely recognized welfare guidelines for farmed insects, and few laws that specifically require insect farmers to meet certain welfare standards. [...]
[...] An even bigger quandary is how insects should be slaughtered. In the EU, most animals must be stunned unconscious before they're killed, but no such regulations exist for insects. [...] "Trying to make sure that we are killing quickly and efficiently, given the level of uncertainty, is perhaps one of the most important things we can do," Fischer says.
The issue for Fischer isn't whether we should farm insects at all—it's about taking insect welfare more seriously and making sure the industry does too. [...]
And that means two things. One, it's about more work on animal sentience—in particular the handful of species that are most commonly farmed. "For at least these insect species, we would want to have some certainty of what constitutes humane slaughtering procedures and what are acceptable rearing conditions and so on," says Chittka. "We need that research now."
It's also about widening our sense of which animals deserve our compassion. It's easy to look into the eyes of a dog, or a chimp, and intuit that these animals have feelings that we can influence. It's much more difficult to look upon a tray of mealworms and make the same observation. If we're going to start farming these animals en masse, though, the kindest thing to do might be to err on the side of caution.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 23 2023, @01:46AM (5 children)
>Can they feel?
Of course.
>And if so, what should we do about it?
Maybe stop slaughtering whales, dolphins, great apes, monkeys, cows, and stop raising pigs and chickens in absolutely shameful factory farms?
Or not, bacon is very tasty, and it goes well with eggs.
But, still... If you're going to "feel" for the bugs that you simultaneously spread insect-active neurotoxins around your homes and farms, maybe also direct some of that empathy at horrors that are a little easier to relate to, first?
All in all, we should be taking care of the whole biosphere, giving space for wild ecosystems to thrive, not just focusing down on little cause du jour species. https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2023, @02:37AM (2 children)
Maybe one day we'll actually have a breakthrough in AI and be directly responsible for torturing and enslaving another group of billions of creatures...
"But they're not actually sentient or conscious"
How do you know that for sure? Plus we're putting in so much effort to make stuff pretend to be sentient, how can we be sure that in all those efforts, there's no way we'll actually succeed?
🤣
p.s. from what I see I think currently we haven't succeeded and are still years away but maybe someone will somehow figure out the magic behind it, or implement it despite not figuring it out.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday March 23 2023, @01:32PM
Do we even know what the question means?
There's a philosopher that claims he is not conscious. It's hard to prove him wrong.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 23 2023, @01:56PM
A simple rule. If something can be owned, like a toaster, then it cannot be sentient.
Examples: computers, GPUs, robots, bugs, farm animals, pets, slaves, etc.
<no-sarcasm>
Maybe a related question is: what can be owned and treated as property? How can certain forms of property be treated (eg, pets, food animals) ?
</no-sarcasm>
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 23 2023, @05:33PM (1 child)
Well you gotta draw the line somewhere.....otherwise we would be eating poor humans by now.
I have a feeling that the folks that care about bug's feelings are likely NOT spreading insecticides around willy nilly. In fact, I would wager they are level 7 organic vegans who pocket mulch and don't eat anything that casts a shadow.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bean Dip on Thursday March 23 2023, @06:56PM
A Modest Proposal indeed.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday March 23 2023, @02:58AM (5 children)
There should be rules and regulations about how things are grown and such. There are already regulations for normal animals and crops so I don't see why they wouldn't be applicable to growing (or breeding) insects to. They might be different but there should be rules. If there are none or few that would be somewhat unfair to the other growers or breeders. But as soon as there are rules, or to many rules, the price goes up. If the price goes up this growing bugs for dinner thing might just not be as viable for a $ per protein aspect anymore. Or at least not as interesting as previously. They already have to get people used to the idea, the yuck-factor and if they can't compete on a $ level then why would you eat yucky bugs if you could just eat chickens or products made of corn or some other crops.
That said isn't it all cruel to someone or something? The crops we grow that we withhold from the starving, the animals we keep locked away, the animals we slaughter -- separating children and parents, stealing all the milk, hurting their feelings etc. It's not that they do not have feeling or they should be treated badly. I'm sure they have feelings. They feel pain. Animals have bonds to their offspring and such. They might have a grand life in general that we are not aware of but it's not how the world works. We eat them. They would eat us if they could and I don't think they would have to many qualms about it either. Trillions of dead bugs or starving humans? The pick should be a fairly easy one to make.
Since we already squash bugs to make dyes and such I don't see why it wouldn't be better if we eat them instead of having half the population paint their faces with them. Did they get squashed in some cruelty free way?
> In the EU, most animals must be stunned unconscious before they're killed, but no such regulations exist for insects.
Out of curiosity. How do they plan on killing them? Freezing them? I would think that would be the easiest. Or do they just plan to or grind them down alive?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2023, @03:12AM (3 children)
So there's no problem if the food you're making out of the insects etc is from squashed versions.
If you need to do other stuff (like remove the poop etc) then just squash the head really fast.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday March 23 2023, @03:18AM (2 children)
> If you need to do other stuff (like remove the poop etc) then just squash the head really fast.
Is that even a thing? That sounds like a really sucky job if there is one. One would thing they all just get squashed or crushed and then roasted or dried. But to have someone sit there and dissect worms or bugs to pick out the poop or various intestines would seem to be a very expensive and labor intensive process. It's not like they are large animals or even small animals where those things are of at least noticeable size. But you would have to sit there with a scalpel and a microscope to do it on bugs, wouldn't you? That just doesn't seem viable. Perhaps they can create some kind of de-pooping machine with a camera and some blades etc. But that wouldn't be a manual process. That would be insane.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2023, @08:34AM (1 child)
But if you don't mind a bit of insect poop in your insect that's fine.
FWIW I've eaten fried silkworm pupae and like it but I've yet to be convinced that insects as a food source would be more efficient than farmed fish or chicken.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday April 01 2023, @02:52PM
I worked it out, using grasshoppers, as for insects they're relatively feed-efficient.
One gram of edible insect requires about 266 grams of feed. (Which you must harvest, because free range bugs = eats all your other crops.)
Compare:
One gram of edible beef requires about 20 grams of feed (and mostly does its own feed harvesting. Also, for this exercise I ignored the other useful products, which are about half of a steer by weight.)
And if the object is to "reduce CO2" (because we hate breathing) which produces more CO2, growing beef or growing bugs?
Here's a hint: C6H12O6(aq) + 6O2(g) = 6CO2(g) + 6H2O(g)
24g of carbohydrate yields 38g of CO2
therefore each gram of edible beef produces about 31g of CO2
but each gram of edible bug produces about 400g of CO2
Wait, how about humans?
Er... eat more carbs (ie. plant-based diet), exhale more CO2.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/830500/ [nih.gov]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 23 2023, @09:52AM
Madagascar cockroaches (4 inches long) are commonly used for neuroscience research, thus the "Roach cam" scene in the Fifth Element, and so many similar true stories.
Except in France, where it is considered cruel and they have laws to protect the cockroach from such terrible treatment of. And the French also make the best, and the most, pâté de foie gras, because: tradition. https://www.thespruceeats.com/history-of-pate-de-foie-gras-1807640 [thespruceeats.com] https://sentientmedia.org/foie-gras/#:~:text=To%20produce%20foie%20gras%2C%20geese,and%20served%20as%20a%20delicacy. [sentientmedia.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2023, @03:31AM (13 children)
And then there are single cell life forms. Think twice before taking those antibiotics
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2023, @04:11AM (12 children)
Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Thursday March 23 2023, @04:20AM (11 children)
And the article is paywalled. It's a big pain to read.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday March 23 2023, @07:42PM (10 children)
How would a single cell organism have the specialized cells required to feel pain? How would they be attached to the brain?
I mean, sure someone might come up with a completely new definition of 'feel pain', but the one they're using right now on insects is pretty much the same bio hardware as the one in humans.
For me, I'm happy to accept the possibility that they are equipped with biology to detect and avoid injury/damage, and the possibility its the same hardware we use for the same purpose. But that doesn't mean they process it as "pain" in their experience of the world, or that it even means they HAVE an experience of the world.
As an example, if a human is unconscious and brain dead -- can they still feel pain? They have all they biology for it. The signals will fire through that biology from the sensory inputs, but I'd argue that they aren't necessarily processing it as the experience of pain in any meaningful way.
As another example, if you lose a limb, you can experience phantom pain from it, even though the biology to support the pain is gone, your brain is inventing the experience of pain in a limb you don't even have. I think that's a pretty compelling argument for the idea that the experience of pain, and the biology to support pain, are distinct. That pain as an experience is created in the sentient brain, normally in response to biological inputs, but clearly separate from them. Therefore, simply having the biology to transmit injury doesn't imply it gets experienced as "pain". It's entirely possible the signal is simply processed as "damage occurring on left, emit injury pheromone to warn others, attempt to retreat other way" without any actual unpleasant experience. Or perhaps without any sentient experience at all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 23 2023, @08:10PM (3 children)
Why would they need that? We already know they respond to damage to the cell, for example, with chemical signals and moving away from negative stimuli. Pain merely serves as a signaling medium in multicellular animals to do the same.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 24 2023, @04:33PM (2 children)
In order to feel pain. The subject of the story. If they don't have it, are they feeling "pain"?
Yes, that's kind of the point. Is that experienced as 'pain'? Is it ethically problematic for us to induce those stimuli? I'd say the answer to both is: No.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 24 2023, @05:42PM (1 child)
Is it experienced as pain for an insect either? My take is that insects are already way below any concept of experience that is morally relevant to us, yet here is this story. Well, there's a lot of room at the bottom for things to consider to experience pain.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 24 2023, @08:29PM
I'd already made precisely that point. And I tend to agree with you, I think it is unlikely that they experience pain, or experience "anything" at all that we need to be too morally concerned about. But ...
Insects at least have the same general biological structures to support 'pain signals' as we do, so its not unreasonable to at least consider the question of what an insect 'experiences' from those signals.
A single celled organism though doesn't even have the biological structures we associate with pain signals, or the structures we associate with being able to 'feel'. So it becomes quite a reach ask us to consider whether they 'feel' 'pain'.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 24 2023, @12:15AM (2 children)
What is the meaning of "brain dead"? Last I heard, there was no expectation that dead organisms could feel pain.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 24 2023, @04:54PM (1 child)
"brain dead" was the wrong choice of words. I should have said a "vegatative state"; as described here: https://www.healthline.com/health/vegetative-state [healthline.com]
That said, "brain dead" as in non-functioning brain stem, with bodily functions kept going with artificial life support is also an interesting question. Yes, at this point, the organism is *legally* dead, but is it really and truly dead? It can still respond reflexively to painful stimuli but is it feeling pain?
Likewise, the line inquiry applies to comatose organisms as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2023, @08:43PM
Yes [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2023, @02:18AM (2 children)
Why are you assuming that single celled organisms would need additional cells or a brain to feel pain? Many of these single celled creatures evolved billions of years ago to hunt, flee, reproduce and more. Pain was probably around at or close to the beginning of life and retained for its usefulness as creatures went from single celled to multicellular.
Single celled organisms already don't need additional cells to perform complex behaviors:
Like not reproducing when there's insufficient material and resuming when there's enough (which is already smarter than some humans 😉 ).
http://biostor.org/reference/7123 [biostor.org]
After withholding material for a while:
(full text here: https://archive.org/stream/biologicalbullet70mari/ [archive.org] biologicalbullet70mari_djvu.txt )
See also: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24444111 [nih.gov]
Do note many of them make distinct shells - it's not just random. Some of these construct their shells from external stuff and they need to use "scales" of about the right size.
https://arcella.nl/lobose-testate-amoebae/ [arcella.nl]
https://arcella.nl/visual-key-filosea/ [arcella.nl]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 24 2023, @05:09PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2023, @06:13AM
But your assumption that they can't feel pain because they don't have brains or additional cells is close to circular reasoning. You're basically defining that pain can only exist if there's a brain. But you have no evidence of that.
So can a single neuron in your brain feel pain? If no, then how many neurons does it take? Or it's not just the number? Does it have to be a particular arrangement?
Or could it be a single neuron can feel pain, just more pain can involve more neurons feeling pain?
If a single neuron can feel pain then a neuron is a single cell and therefore why can't other single celled creatures feel pain too?
It seems more likely that single celled creatures can feel pain and neurons are just specialized single celled creatures that evolved to handle I/O, think and remember better.
If scientists can truly figure out how supposedly super low IQ cells can be organized to produce high IQ behavior then perhaps they should come up with ways that can make human organizations much smarter than the humans making up those organizations.
(Score: 4, Funny) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday March 23 2023, @05:09AM (1 child)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 23 2023, @01:58PM
People Eating Tasty Insects.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Thursday March 23 2023, @08:06AM (1 child)
Insects are also the group of animals that are the most likely to be parasites, especially by using other organisms (including us) as living incubators for their offspring that eats that incubator literally alive as they grow.
It's not exactly easy to feel compassion for a group of animals like this.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Thursday March 23 2023, @10:38AM
Arthropods and Chordates have been enemies since the Cambrian Explosion produced both of them, so yeah, let's kill the bastards! /s
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.