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You're cooking dinner, distracted, and your hand brushes a hot pan. Nerve signals race to your spinal cord and back to yank your arm away in a fraction of a second, with no thought required.
Then comes the pain. A sharp, spreading sting gives way to a pulsing ache, and you cradle your hand and run it under cold water until it subsides. That felt experience is distinct from the reflex that preceded it. While the reflex moved your body out of danger, pain drives you to protect the wound, recover, and learn to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
We readily accept that other people feel pain by reading cues in their behavior, like the inspection and nursing of an injury. We extend this to some animals too—a dog licking its paw or a cat favoring a limb rightly stir our sympathies. But what happens when we turn that lens on animals far less like us?
In our new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, we searched for behavioral signs of pain in house crickets, one of the most widely farmed insects. After applying heat to an antenna, we found that crickets didn't just reflexively flinch and recover. They nursed the harm, returning again and again to groom the affected site, much as we rub a burned hand.
French philosopher René Descartes considered animals unfeeling biological machines, and for centuries the circle of moral concern barely extended beyond our own species.
Then comes the pain. A sharp, spreading sting gives way to a pulsing ache, and you cradle your hand and run it under cold water until it subsides. That felt experience is distinct from the reflex that preceded it. While the reflex moved your body out of danger, pain drives you to protect the wound, recover, and learn to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
We readily accept that other people feel pain by reading cues in their behavior, like the inspection and nursing of an injury. We extend this to some animals too—a dog licking its paw or a cat favoring a limb rightly stir our sympathies. But what happens when we turn that lens on animals far less like us?
In our new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, we searched for behavioral signs of pain in house crickets, one of the most widely farmed insects. After applying heat to an antenna, we found that crickets didn't just reflexively flinch and recover. They nursed the harm, returning again and again to groom the affected site, much as we rub a burned hand.
French philosopher René Descartes considered animals unfeeling biological machines, and for centuries the circle of moral concern barely extended beyond our own species.
