According to a Norwegian research

Jan 14, 2010 00:01 GMT  ·  By

In a groundbreaking, new work that could change the way people with a consciousness look at fish, Janicke Nordgreen has demonstrated that, most likely, they can experience pain when they are ill-treated. A doctoral student at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, the expert has recently presented her findings in her thesis, which deals with three types of fish – Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), goldfish (Carassius auratus), and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). If the finding is confirmed by other researchers as well, then this could have significant implications, ScienceDaily reports.

At the beginning of the study, the researcher hypothesized that consciousness was an absolute requirement if an animal was to be considered as being able to experience pain. Therefore, the first stage of the work revolved around teaching fish to solve a task that required conscious attention on their part. Nordgreen established that this was indeed the case, and highlighted the challenges ahead, if the finding was verified. Pain is extremely detrimental to the welfare of all living things, us included. Given the vast amounts of fish that are collected from the world's seas and oceans every year, this study could lead to a new paradigm in the way fishermen should handle their captured prey.

After hooking a measuring machine to the Atlantic salmon telencephalon, the researcher began the experiments by applying noxious galvanic stimulation to the creature. The machines recorded varied levels of activity in the telencephalon, and Nordgreen noticed that the level of activity was directly linked to the amount of stimulation being applied. These conclusions are in tune with the response we, humans, show to pain stimuli. The greater the intensity of the pain, the higher our level of activity in the areas of the brain that process pain.

In additional experiments, the expert also proved that goldfish subjected to a water temperature of 38 degrees Celsius tended to exhibit escape responses. Such a temperature is well within the range that can kill goldfish after a prolonged exposure. Nordgreen concluded that no single experiment could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that fish could feel pain, but added that existing literature on the topic, combined with the results of these new studies, and others that came before, seemed to suggest that the animals could, indeed, feel pain.