28 replies to this topic

[biophilia]

It is hard for me to kill anything alive, including /antsinsects.  I have a plastic cup and cardboard to capture and release outdoors.  HOWEVER we get sugar ants from time to time in our kitchen and occasionally they become overwhelming.  I used this product called "Advion" which they swarm too, and then go away.  I see dead ants nearby, etc.  I am concerned that I have caused them pain and suffering.

I do NOT believe ants are unfeeling.

Can someone address?

I am new to this forum, and frankly haven't searched fo this subject ... I should have.

[AntsMAN]

When I first started keeping ants I had trouble killing insects, but after reading up I changed my mind.
 

Humans have nociceptors (also called pain receptors) that can detect uncomfortable stimulus (heat, cold, mechanical etc.) over a certain threshold. This neurological response is called nociception.

 

Nociception and a similar process have been identified in fruit flies but insects do not have nociceptors.

 

I do not personally believe insects feel pain, but are genetically preprogrammed to react.

I once watched a darkling beetle eating a carrot while another was eating into its abdomen, and it just kept eating unconcerned.

Edited by AntsMAN, August 17 2016 - 8:13 AM.

[sgheaton]

Damn nature! You Crazy!!!! 

[Batspiderfish]

If they do not have nociceptors, then that means that they do not feel pain in the same ways as we have studied in ourselves, but I wouldn't say this is proof that negative stimuli cannot somehow be analogously uncomfortable to an insect. Veterinarians in the United States weren't taught animals like dogs and cats felt pain until after the 1980's.

 

I try to find the most humane ways possible to kill my insects.

[biophilia]

In response to AntsMan and with respect (I am new here)...

Fruit fies ARE insects, so if what you said is true about them, then that answers it, insects DO have something similar to nociceptors....

proven by the fruit fly reference.

 

In terms of just reacting,

I will post a photo soon of ants "just reacting" to females as they vie for a go to make babies...

I suppose you can say they are just reacting to a pheromone, but even just to react means something is happening in the little beast head.

Another photo of an ant giving up food to a nest mate...

I may be anthropomorphizing, but that is how we attribute these ideas, something we all can relate to.

I think they have "feelings" we just don't hear them scream.

A Bee swarming, An "angry" hornet, hunger, defecation, etc,etc....all brainless reactions, or more than that.

 

(All these photos can be seen in E.O. Wilson's "Journey to the Ants")

 

 

[Vendayn]

I remember reading somewhere that plants feel pain as well. Which isn't too unlikely, since plants react negatively to music like rap/metal, but react in a good way to more relaxing music like classical.

 

If plants can feel (granted different than people), than other stuff does too. I remember not too long ago, people would put salt on snails to see their reaction. But in modern times, that is proven to be animal cruelty and in the UK is labeled as a crime to salt snails. And again, not long ago no one even thought snails could feel pain until recently.

 

Though their "feelings" would be very different than ours, and could very likely just be a really primitive "pain" sensor with a primitive aggressive/stressed response.

Edited by Vendayn, August 17 2016 - 5:13 PM.

[biophilia]

Coming from New England, I always thought  lobsters were tortured when dropped head first into boiling water...(but they sure are good to eat!).

As an adult, now I always pierce their heads with a knife to kill them first... then I read this on Wikipedia..

 

Lobsters may also be killed or rendered insensate immediately before boiling by a stab into the brain (pithing), in the belief that this will stop suffering. However, a lobster's brain operates from not one but several ganglia and disabling only the frontal ganglion does not usually result in death.^[34] The boiling method is illegal in some places, such as in Reggio Emilia, Italy, where offenders face fines up to €495.^[35]

 

We humans think were "the bees' knees" but should display more humility.

My original question was dealing with "Advion" a very effective sugar ant killer.  The ants SWARM around the dollop of poison devouring it with relish...

pushing others away to eat it... they then bring it back to the nest to share and die.... I feel guilty (my kitchen is happy though)

 

Has anyone used "Advion" and seen this?

[dspdrew]

This is a long discussion on this subject from a while back, started by Vendayn as a matter of fact.

 

http://antfarm.yuku....-ants-feel-pain

[Vendayn]

This is a long discussion on this subject from a while back, started by Vendayn as a matter of fact.

 

http://antfarm.yuku....-ants-feel-pain

Wow, totally forgot I made that years ago. How did you even find that or remember that?   Or did you just google search the question and it came up for some reason after all these years?

[biophilia]

I read the thread thank you.  The best thing from it was the expression..."we don't know, it is best to treat them as if they do"

I will continue to treat all animals with respect and apply the adage; "to put myself in their situation"

Appreciated, now I'll move on.

Cheers

[AntsMAN]

Insects will continue with normal activity even after sustaining a severe injury or removal of body parts. They do not limp when a leg is injured, they don't grasp an injury, they don't show signs of distress, when being eaten alive. When observing insects, they seem unaffected by things that should cause them great distress.

 

Decapitated insects will still execute normal behavior. A horsefly, will even copulate, after being deprived of its head.” Drosophila flies live for several days completely normally without a head: they will fly, walk and copulate.

 

I believe they do feel some sort of stimuli which helps them to determine hazardous situations to avoid, but I don't think it is suffering or distress, but a reaction genetically preprogrammed through millions of years of evolution.

As I said previously I "Personally" don't think insects feel pain, this is just my opinion. Derived from the evidence out there, and my personal experiences.

 

 

Pain = an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.

 

International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)

The insect nervous system differs greatly from that of higher order animals. Insects lack the neurological structures that translate a negative stimulus into an emotional experience.

 

Pain is more than the stimulation of nerves. In fact, the IASP notes that patients can feel and report pain with no actual physical cause or stimulus. Pain is a subjective and emotional experience. Our response to unpleasant stimuli is influenced by our perceptions and past experiences.

 

I respect your opinions and I think we should be pushing for a lot more research in this area, to get a better understanding.

 

Far as lobsters go, If you are prepared to kill and eat it. Why are you so concerned on how you kill it, its going to die against its will anyway? If you really cared you wouldn't kill them in the first place.

[dspdrew]

 

This is a long discussion on this subject from a while back, started by Vendayn as a matter of fact.

 

http://antfarm.yuku....-ants-feel-pain

Wow, totally forgot I made that years ago. How did you even find that or remember that?   Or did you just google search the question and it came up for some reason after all these years?

 

 

I actually remembered the discussion. But to find it, Google "site:antfarm.yuku.com ants feel pain".

[Reacker]

Why would you care if ants feel pain? While I don't endorse going around killing things for fun, I really don't see why anyone should care at all about insect suffering.

 

If you eat meat then you're already fractionally responsible for raising farm animals in incredibly unpleasant conditions and then killing them in sometimes brutal ways that almost certainly cause lots of pain. Even the stupidest animal with the smallest brain that we regularly eat, chicken, has more brain and other nerve cells individually than most ant colonies will have collectively. Take that up to cows or goats or especially pigs, pigs being particularly intelligent (as smart as some younger or particularly stupid children), these animals certainly have more nerve cells than even the largest and most populous ant colonies and yet we raise them by the hundreds of millions in atrocious conditions that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. Then we bring them to the death factories where they get to hear their peers being murdered and cut to pieces, sometimes in front of their eyes depending on the slaughter house. It is not an exaggeration to say that the conditions that we raise certain animals in and the way in which we kill them are often worse than the conditions in some of the concentration camps of the Holocaust. 

 

The example that I always think of when I think of our cultural attitude towards animal suffering is how they deal with baby chickens. They need very, very few males yet the ratio is still something like 50/50 M/F so what do you do with the roosters that are not commercially viable to raise and sell? Well currently they take the baby male chicks and throw them into a meat grinder and grind them into paste while they're still alive and chirping. There is a video on liveleak of this though I only really needed to see it once so I'll not be finding it to post here.

 

Let's say you want to avoid all of this animal cruelty and be vegan. Well you're still pretty much out of luck because agriculture is very unfriendly to both smaller vertebrates and invertebrates alike. Pesticides kill unknowable numbers of insects of all kinds, including ants, every hour of every day while farm equipment is perfectly content with crushing and slicing and dicing any living thing caught in its path. This includes rodents, lizards, birds having a bad day, whatever can't get away in time. Even if you only eat vegetables you're still killing tons (literal tons) of animals of all sorts just so you can stay alive. 

 

You could be forgiven if at this point you thought that I was making a case for veganism, but actually I'm not doing that. While I hate killing things for no reason, and will generally let spiders go outside rather than kill them, I actually have no problem with consuming all sorts of delicious animal products and intend to continue doing so until lab grown meat becomes equal to animal grown meat in taste, nutrition, and cost. My point is simply this: given that just by continuing to be alive you are partially responsible for causing the violent and torturous deaths of a huge variety of animals ranging in intelligence from none to small child equivalent, being concerned about the suffering of ants that you are directly killing rather than letting someone do it for you at a distance is entirely pointless. If any animal that isn't a human being is causing you troubles in your daily life, you can and should kill or remove it without any more emotion or concern than you give when eating a nice steak or a ripe tomato. 

Edited by Reacker, August 18 2016 - 9:48 PM.

[biophilia]

I don't want to defend "why" I care.  You don't, good for you.

Back on subject;

There are multiple videos of Phorid flies laying eggs on fire ants.. google it.

You see  "panic, and fear.  ants trying to turn and attack..."

another level of feeling...

[AntsMAN]

You see "panic and fear", is this the erratic movements you are referring to? This can be seen in many circumstances, of ants being attacked. What I see here is a normal response to being attacked. No panic, or fear, just the natural response to the colony being attacked. The same responses can be seen when ants attack other colonies, or when dealing with intruders.

 

Feelings are an emotional state or reaction. Insects lack the neurological structures that translate a negative stimulus into an emotional experience.

[XZero38]

So if you are concerned that you are causing them pain and suffering then stop poisoning them?

[biophilia]

Some ants spray formic acid oncolony intruders.... no pain, no discomfort?

So why then?

[XZero38]

its just a different form of defense, just like some ants that sting or bite as a primary way to defend themselves or their colony

[Reacker]

Because you don't have to be able to feel the pain of acid destroying your body and immobilizing you for acid to be able to destroy your body and immobilize you. 

 

You're looking at ants doing things like running around in alarm and staggering around after being poisoned and thinking it's evidence for thought, emotion, and pain. This isn't the case. Ants don't need to have rich inner lives to be successful in their environments. All they need is a few genetically programmed responses to various stimuli that they are likely to encounter. So for instance if you blow on them they freak out and start running in circles. Is this because they are scared of the wind and the scent of your breath? No, it's because they are programmed to aggressively run around in a vaguely circular pattern whenever they encounter novel scents and strong local gusts that are strong indications that predatory mammals of some kind are nearby. In such a way at least a few of the workers have a good chance of finding the intruder and begin stinging or spraying or biting or whatever to defend the nest. None of the ants have a thought in their mind that says, "I think some kind of large predator is in the vicinity, let's all run around in circles so that we can find it and drive it away". They're just tiny little robots doing what they're programmed by 100 million years of evolution to respond certain ways to certain stimuli. 

 

Here's another good example:

 

 

Army ants march in certain ways in response to various stimuli in their environment. They're not making any conscious decision to do any of this movement, they're just moving around in response to environmental stimuli that their tiny, tiny brains have been programmed to respond to by turning left or turning right or whatever other simple response. The video is a great example of that because even though there is literally nothing in their environment keeping them from just walking forwards or turning right, the limited instruction set in their brains doesn't contain any genetic programming for how to get out of this situation so they march until they die. It's the same thing that happens when your computer gets stuck in an infinite loop.

 

Speaking of computers, NPCs in computer games are an excellent demonstration for showing that just because something acts like it's alive doesn't mean that it is. NPCs can talk, they can respond differently to different things you do and say to them, they can path around their environment and follow you, and if you injure or kill them they can scream and burn and bleed. They're still not alive. Some RTS games have units that act strikingly similar to the way that ants act, and yet you still wouldn't call them living or have any concern for their internal state of mind. Sim Ant is perhaps the best example of this concept.

 

If you don't think that virtual agents count, then I can point you to small autonomous robots that some people are working on that exist in the physical world and react to various environmental stimuli according to their programmed behaviors just as ants do.

Edited by Reacker, August 19 2016 - 10:57 AM.

[XZero38]

Because you don't have to be able to feel the pain of acid destroying your body and immobilizing you for acid to be able to destroy your body and immobilize you. 

 

You're looking at ants doing things like running around in alarm and staggering around after being poisoned and thinking it's evidence for thought, emotion, and pain. This isn't the case. Ants don't need to have rich inner lives to be successful in their environments. All they need is a few genetically programmed responses to various stimuli that they are likely to encounter. So for instance if you blow on them they freak out and start running in circles. Is this because they are scared of the wind and the scent of your breath? No, it's because they are programmed to aggressively run around in a vaguely circular pattern whenever they encounter novel scents and strong local gusts that are strong indications that predatory mammals of some kind are nearby. In such a way at least a few of the workers have a good chance of finding the intruder and begin stinging or spraying or biting or whatever to defend the nest. None of the ants have a thought in their mind that says, "I think some kind of large predator is in the vicinity, let's all run around in circles so that we can find it and drive it away". They're just tiny little robots doing what they're programmed by 100 million years of evolution to respond certain ways to certain stimuli. 

 

Here's another good example:

 

 

Army ants march in certain ways in response to various stimuli in their environment. They're not making any conscious decision to do any of this movement, they're just moving around in response to environmental stimuli that their tiny, tiny brains have been programmed to respond to by turning left or turning right or whatever other simple response. The video is a great example of that because even though there is literally nothing in their environment keeping them from just walking forwards or turning right, the limited instruction set in their brains doesn't contain any genetic programming for how to get out of this situation so they march until they die. It's the same thing that happens when your computer gets stuck in an infinite loop.

 

Speaking of computers, NPCs in computer games are an excellent demonstration for showing that just because something acts like it's alive doesn't mean that it is. NPCs can talk, they can respond differently to different things you do and say to them, they can path around their environment and follow you, and if you injure or kill them they can scream and burn and bleed. They're still not alive. Some RTS games have units that act strikingly similar to the way that ants act, and yet you still wouldn't call them living or have any concern for their internal state of mind. Sim Ant is perhaps the best example of this concept.

 

If you don't think that virtual agents count, then I can point you to small autonomous robots that some people are working on that exist in the physical world and react to various environmental stimuli according to their programmed behaviors just as ants do.

that's intense I've never seen anything like that before!