Do Insects Feel Pain?

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Insects such as fruit flies provide important insights into human biology and medicine. But should we worry whether insects experience pain and suffering in scientists’ hands? Entomologist Adam Hart visits the Fly Facility at the University of Manchester where researcher Andreas Prokop describes the many insights that experiments on the fruit fly Drosophila have provided on aspects of human biology and health. Globally billions of these little flies have died in the pursuit of this knowledge. Should we give a second thought about the deaths of these creatures? Do insects have the capacity for pain and the experience of suffering? It depends which scientist you ask. Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London says his work on bumble bees suggests that we can’t assume they do not. Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University in Canada is not convinced by existing arguments for insect consciousness. Photo: Robber Fly Asilidae Diptera Insect, Credit: Nechaev-kon/Getty Images Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, Marnie Chesterton from Crowds
0:02.4	here, just gate-crashing the podcast you actually downloaded
0:05.9	to mention mine.
0:07.3	If you're the type of person who's ever wondered
0:09.7	anything about the world around you,
0:11.5	then we are the podcast for you.
0:14.0	We take your questions on anything scientific and scour the globe for answers.
0:18.0	That's crowd science which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.
0:22.0	I'll get out of your ears now as you were.
0:25.0	You're listening to Discovery, in-depth science from the BBC.
0:32.0	Today we're asking, how should we treat insects?
0:36.0	You can buy on the internet a kit whereby you can remote control a cockroach.
0:42.0	You can insert as an amateur completely freely
0:47.2	at home, insert the electrodes into the brain of the cockroach and then move it
0:51.5	about by pressing levers.
0:54.0	Does that sound like fun?
0:57.0	Cool science you can do at home?
0:59.0	Or is it disrespectful towards a living thing?
1:02.0	Or just plain cruel? I'm Adam Hart and I'm an entomologist who studies
1:06.8	insects for a living. If you heard last week's programme you'll remember I triggered
1:11.5	a row in the UK recently about the rights and wrongs of
1:14.8	killing insects in the name of science. We asked the British public to capture and
	...

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