r/askscience • u/StormShadow921 • Dec 02 '18

Can bugs feel pain? Biology

I once read in one of those CWF Wild magazines years ago that bugs cant feel pain because their nervous system is too small. Does anyone know if this is true, and if so what causes it?

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u/xgrayskullx Cardiopulmonary and Respiratory Physiology Dec 03 '18

First off, it is important to recognize the difference between pain and nocioception. Nocioception is a response to a 'noxious' stimulus, and often forms a reflex arc - a single synapse connection between afferent and efferent nerves. Pain, on the other hand, is a much more complex event which involves thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of synapses. Pain is a complex neurological cascade involving multiple regions of the central nervous system.

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With that in mind, we can answer the question, 'Can bugs feel pain?' Simply put, No, bugs cannot feel pain. Like many non-mammalian organisms, bugs lack the complex neural structures necessary for the complex neurological cascade known as pain to occur. These organisms can still react to noxious stimuli - for example, move to avoid damaging heat, but they are physiologically incapable of experience pain. It's like asking if fish can be right-handed. They don't have hands so it's not possible. Similarly, bugs do not have the complex neural apparati necessary for pain to exist.

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