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. 

ink-in-hand:

hustleerr:

soggy-bunny:

eliciaforever:

beyoursledgehammer:

steampunktendencies:

A remarkable Jacobean re-emergence after 200 years of yellowing varnish
Courtesy Philip Mould

PAINT RESTORATION OF MESMERIZING

I saw this on Twitter. He’s using acetone, but a cellulose ether has been added to make it into a gel (probably Klucel—this entire gel mixture is sometimes just called Klucel by restorers, but Klucel is specifically the stuff that makes the gel). 

Normally, acetone is too volatile for restoration, but when it’s a gel, it becomes very stable and a) stays on top of the porous surface of the painting, and b) won’t evaporate. So it can eat up the varnish.

It looks scary, but acetone has no effect on oils, and jelly acetone is even less interactive with the surface of the paint or canvas.

Will someone PLEASE clean the mona lisa

I literally thought this is what paintings looked like back in those days, I didn’t know it was yellowing varnish 👀

This is why you see a lot of non-yellowing on labels of varnish and other sealants.

It’s not that they prevent yellowing of what they’re sealing, but that they themselves won’t yellow.

Everybody is terrified to clean the Mona Lisa and potentially mess it up, but they’ve cleaned off a copy of it that was made shortly after it was. Shows off a lot of the details. 

heartattackle:

lokiandgagaruletheworld:

enfeebler:

naathaaaly:

Reason why I hate cats. They’re so scary.

#Reasons why I hate babies #they do this and everyone blames the pet

THAT’S WHY YOU TEACH YOUR KIDS NOT TO SLAP THE FUCKING CAT

I grew up in a family with lots of animals. [mostly small dogs.] I was taught to respect them. To treat them like my family. Would I hit my mom, my siblings? No. Do I hit the animals? NO. If I hit, slapped or maliciously hurt one of them and they bit or scratched at me.. well, that’s my ass because I should know better and the animal was defending itself.

If any child ever does this shit to my animals.. the CHILD gets reprimanded, not the animal. My nephew was absolutely BANNED from touching our animals because he was mean to them. My baby brother was 5, he straight up PUNCHED our 13 year old dog in the face.. she bit him in the face, he got stitches in his nose. He hasn’t laid a finger on her since.

I think people really  need to teach their children, especially small children to respect animals. 

Good! The cat’s response was entirely reasonable, and now the kid isn’t gonna do that again. That’s not a baby, the kid is old enough to know better. You don’t hit things, especially not things smaller than you.

If I were that kid’s parent, I’d pick them up, wash the scratches (since germs) and explain thoroughly to them that it was their fault. Probably make them apologize to the cat, too, for emphasis. 

That’s a whale of some sort, clearly, a baleen (filter-feeding) whale. If you watch, there’s a ring of bubbles that pops up shortly before the whale does. That’s a bubble net, a ring blown by the whale to herd the small fish into a school. Going by that, it’s a humpback whale. They’re more predatory than other baleen whales, going after larger fish and intentionally corraling them, but still only eat small fish. You can see all the little fish jumping when the whale comes up- those are what it’s after.

if you managed to get yourself into the whale’s mouth, it would open its mouth and let you out. Their throats are only about as big around as an orange, they can’t swallow you. Unlucky birds, sure, but not humans. They occasionally catch sea lions by mistake and just spit them out.

In short, the maw rising from the water to engulf several thousand fish is horrifying, but harmless.

bogleech:

It’s so alarming to look at the history of soft drinks and see how they went from literally something people categorized as a “candy” to something we were pushed to chug down with every meal.

There was a time people “went out for a soda” like it was a special occasion or gave a few sodas as holiday or birthday gifts. Drinking a coke occupied the same sort of cultural place as eating an ice cream cone or having some chocolate cake.

Then Coca Cola and its competitors got to thinking “what if we just advertised it like it’s normal to have our luxurious dessert for every single meal of the day??? Holy cow $$$$$$$$$$$$$” and they successfully normalized that idea to where a huge portion of the ENTIRE WORLD thinks nothing of it.