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Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

Is this a surprise? Dogs and cats, being injured, show that they feel it and are sensitive to others touching where they hurt. Is it really that 'weird' to think that beings other than mammals would have this?

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It's not terribly surprising, intuitively, that a large range of living things feel and remember pain.

The seeming clarity or obviousness doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to study it, test the assumption, prove or disprove, figure out what creatures are subject to it and to what extent, etc. I imagine we could learn a lot trying to explain it.

Yes. Complex behaviour and memory, ability to execute complicated tasks, and many other features are usually more common in complex/large organisms. It may not be surprising, but it's certainly non-obvious why insects would have persistent pain after injury - especially if it prevents them from effectively getting on with other tasks after the initial injury source / danger passes.

On the other hand, you could say the same thing about feeling pain in humans. Once the danger/injury source passes then being in pain is not good, particularly chronic pain that actually inhibits the person. We still have that though.

I could speculate at least 2 reasons for persistent pain. Before medicine, if you broke a limb, it was likely not as functional / strong as before. Long term pain is probably a good reminder to be careful about it. Also since we can form complex relations in memory, it's potentially useful as "remember how you thought you could do this thing? well, you couldn't, so don't try it again."

I think for people the equation is a bit different. We care about individuals in general and have limited number of kids. That's not the case for ants for example which seem quite replaceable / not able to recognise individuals (or even if they're alive).

The article says the pain causes the fly to protect its other five legs, as though it has learned from losing one leg that losing legs is a thing that might happen again. It's feeling the pain in those legs, not the place where the one was removed.

It's a valid question, not sure why it's downvoted. There are also some good answers here, which is the point of discussion.

The article isn't about "whether the insect feels pain", but about the longevity of that pain and the surprisingly non-locality of the increase in their pain, both happening after the injury. Comments that are focussed on "why are we so species-centrist to find it surprising that an insect would feel pain" are just, well, painfully off-topic.

Insects are mammals?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

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