What is the difference between pain and suffering? And I’m pretty sure fish experience most things differently than mammals&birds, since they dont take care of their young most of the time, and many are solitary.

drferox:

In regards to this post.

Pain is a physical sensation. It’s part of physiology, we can measure it, it’s got a hole bunch of neurochemical components, it is a physical thing.

Suffering is a more complex concept. It’s not just physical, but can include mental and emotional factors. Pain potentially causes suffering, but it’s not the only thing that does, and it is possible to suffer without pain.

Hunger, thirst, restricted movement, psychological and emotional distress can call be components of suffering even though they may be technically without pain.

Fish are not mammals and birds. Their bodies and minds are different, sure, but pain and avoidance of things that cause pain is a pretty basic thing to have and is likely to have developed very early down the evolutionary tree.

Fish alive today are just as evolved as everything else (let’s not have that argument again), but ‘Fish’ is a huge group! There are huge numbers of fish, possibly even the majority, which aren’t solitary but associate in pairs or groups, and many that do engage in at least some care of their young, either as eggs or after hatching. Look up the diverse behavior of different cichlids, some of them even form very convincing pair bonds. You can’t fairly discount the complexity of fish behavior because it’s ‘just a fish’. Different maybe, but not necessarily lesser.

Social interaction has no bearing on whether or not an animal suffers. Panthers are solitary, but nobody would look at a limping, bleeding panther and go “oh, it’s solitary, it doesn’t suffer”. 

Fish don’t express suffering in ways that we’re used to interpreting as suffering, they have different ways of expressing everything, but they aren’t mindless little robots. They play, for one thing. 

Corydoras catfish are a good example, they play in the flow of water filters. Dart into the flow, swim against it, wiggle around inside it- basically frolicking.

Corydoras are popular aquarium fish, they’ve been pretty heavily observed at this point.

You see this when the water is properly oxygenated, when it’s clean, when they’re free of parasites, so it’s not a distress behavior. It doesn’t seem to have any practical purpose, yet it’s a widely-seen behavior. 

Those same fish, if injured or sick, act drastically different. They’re normally wiggly and active, swimming with their group or snuffling in the substrate for food, and injured ones stop moving. If they have to move, it’s slow, stiff, tense, fins either flared wide and held stiff or clamped down. They breathe quickly, their colors pale, their patterns fade, and they stop following the group and looking for food. They stick out. Sticking out of a group is not something any prey animal wants to do, it makes them an easy target.