"Do insects feel pain?—A biological view."

It simply makes no biological sense at all that an earth worm would feel no pain when strung on a fish hook.  The first purpose of a sensory system in single celled animals is in part to avoid harmful stimuli.  You can call it what you wish if you do not like the idea of a worm suffering pain due to that hook.  But, any substitute word you want to pick translates into pain in my mind.  Saying an insect does not feel pain is about as dumb to me as telling me my dog does not understand a good bit of what I am saying to her.  Now, it was only a few years ago that prevailing wisdom was my dog did not understand and was reacting only by instinct.  Then along came Chaser the border collie and totally refuted such stupid nonsense once and for all.  In fact when I was a kid I was taught in school that animals can not think.  What a total pile of crap!  Even as a kid I knew it was a total pile of crap.  Any farm kid with a brain a little bit better than my dog has knew it was a total pile of crap.  But, it seems some of my teachers did not have the intelligence of my dog.  Not terribly surprising when I think back and conclude I only had two teachers in all of high school who were actually qualified by their own knowledge to teach the subject they were paid to teach.

For the record I stopped fishing with live bait about forty years ago due to the pain I caused the bait.

Dick

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