About Doug Yanega Expertise I`ve been studying entomology for some 20 years, and I`ve been answering questions about insects on the net for nearly a decade now, and am familiar with virtually all groups of insects, both in North America and elsewhere. My greatest expertise is with bees, but I also work with wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, and moths. If I don`t know the answer to a question, I can generally direct folks to a book or person who *can*. But no spider questions please, I don`t do arachnids.
I have been wondering this for a while and asked many people - do insects feel pain? I saw a boxelder bug today in my math class and a student squished it a little bit and it wriggled around for a while and seemed to be struggling. It limped over to a corner where it appears to have died. Was it suffering during it's last few minutes? Is teasing a bug like this a cruel thing? Do insects have emotions such as sadness, madness, happiness, etc?
Thanks
Tom
Answer Hi. This is a common question, and it's not entirely philosophical. Pain as WE experience it is based on our nervous system. We have special nerve cells called "nociceptors" whose sole purpose is to create the sensation of pain. Without those special cells, we wouldn't feel pain. There are, in fact, medical conditions which can selectively kill those cells - the best known is leprosy, but there are others. I personally had a mild seizure once that wiped out the connection to the nociceptors in my left leg, and to this day I cannot feel geuine pain in my left leg - I can tell when I'm being touched, and can tell how much pressure is being applied and to how small or large an area, but (for example) there is no difference for me in the feeling of being poked by a pencil versus an icepick, nor any difference in being touched by an ice cube versus a boiling hot piece of metal. Insects and other arthropods don't have any nociceptors. They can feel sensations, but PAIN is definitely NOT one of them. Their responses are therefore very different from ours. Aside from my own personal example of what it's like not to feel pain, consider this: if you gently grab an insect's leg and hold it, it will struggle violently. If you snap the leg off, it stops struggling and calmly limps away. If they felt pain, it would be the exact opposite.
As for emotions, no, they most definitely do not experience emotions. Things like hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sex drive are not emotions, they are physical sensations.
