AUDIO: BUGS FEEL PAIN
Well, this is disconcerting. A study by researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia is the first to prove that not only do insects feel pain from an injury, but they suffer from chronic pain after recovering from one. The study builds on prior work that showed lots of different invertebrate animals have a sense that can detect potentially harmful stimuli like heat, cold, or physical injury, or what insects experience as ‘pain’. What’s more, an injury could lead to long-lasting hypersensitivity in a similar way to human patients’ experiences. They describe this as a neuropathic pain, which in humans occurs from such conditions as sciatica, shingles, a pinched nerve, spinal cord injuries, or from other kinds of damage to the nervous system. For the study, the researchers damaged one leg on fruit flies and then allowed them to fully heal. They found that even after the fruit flies recovered, their uninjured leg grew more sensitive, a reaction likened to chronic pain in humans. (The study is published in the journal Science Advances.)
* Oh, jeeze, wait’ll PETA hears about this.
* Now I feel horrible about peeing on that anthill back in Boy Scouts.
* Maybe it’s time we just sit down at a table with the Murder Hornets and discuss our differences.
* On the bright side, fruit flies only live about a month and a half, so …
* Don’t swat the flies. Spank them gently on the po-po.
CLIP: Now I feel bad about using this stuff. Our “Black Flog Roach Spray” parody spot.
