GrahamM
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- Feb 23, 1999
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I read this on the forum of a non-angling website and thought it was interesting. The opening sentence is not very complimentary to anglers of course, but would it form the basis of a good reply in any anti-angling debate about fish and pain? Does any scientist amongst us know if the message below is true (apart from the muppets bit!)?
"Who cares about fishing - the sad muppets sat by the river might need their heads testing but the fish don?t care, they have no ability to care.
Their life revolves around brain stem reactions to their environment, they do not have massively-developed neocortex and other specialized brain regions in the cerebral hemispheres, did you lot not go to school?
If the cerebral hemispheres of a human are destroyed, a comatose, vegetative state results - like using the net fish don?t give a toss, they have very small cerebral hemispheres that lack neocortex. If the cerebral hemispheres of a fish are destroyed, the fish?s behaviour is quite normal, because the simple behaviours of which a fish is capable (including all of its reactions to nociceptive stimuli) depend mainly on the brainstem and spinal cord.
so, a human?s existence is dominated by the cerebral hemispheres, but a fish is a brainstem-dominated organism with no ability to feel pain like us. they just react - same as a simple animal, like starfish or something, will move away from a nasty chemical even though it has no brain at all."
"Who cares about fishing - the sad muppets sat by the river might need their heads testing but the fish don?t care, they have no ability to care.
Their life revolves around brain stem reactions to their environment, they do not have massively-developed neocortex and other specialized brain regions in the cerebral hemispheres, did you lot not go to school?
If the cerebral hemispheres of a human are destroyed, a comatose, vegetative state results - like using the net fish don?t give a toss, they have very small cerebral hemispheres that lack neocortex. If the cerebral hemispheres of a fish are destroyed, the fish?s behaviour is quite normal, because the simple behaviours of which a fish is capable (including all of its reactions to nociceptive stimuli) depend mainly on the brainstem and spinal cord.
so, a human?s existence is dominated by the cerebral hemispheres, but a fish is a brainstem-dominated organism with no ability to feel pain like us. they just react - same as a simple animal, like starfish or something, will move away from a nasty chemical even though it has no brain at all."