https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain...
It is absurd and unscientific to think that animals have no emotional awareness despite the emotional reptilian complex and the limbic system and a different neocortex for unemotional intelligence.
Besides the problem of consciousness is far from being solved.
https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-223...
For fish there is 0 doubt that whatever they experience, it is radically different than what humans do. On top of this I would generally not waste time on media articles for scientific issues. An interesting overview of the state of 'fish pain' studies is available here. [1] PSU also offers CiteSeerX as a means of finding papers on a given topic. This [1] is a search for fish pain providing further reading. As usual, and especially if you choose to use services more susceptible to spam/blogging including Google Scholar, you should try to isolate the papers down to those that have been published and peer reviewed.
[1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/faf.12010
[2] - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search?q=title%3Afish+pain
Anyway:
- Orcas are mammals and not fish.
- Your study talks about fish. So does the first article I mentioned. "My" article mentions nociceptors and opioids (pain killers) and an experiment with painkiller lidocaine that suggests that fish feel some kind of pain. Note that both fish and mammals have nociceptors and opioids as chemicals in the brain. That fishes eat after surgery does not mean that fishes do not feel pain. Some people eat as response to stress and fear.
Quote from "my" article (I guess finfish means true fish in this context): In 2013, the American Veterinary Medical Association published new guidelines for the euthanasia of animals, which included the following statements: “Suggestions that finfish responses to pain merely represent simple reflexes have been refuted. … the preponderance of accumulated evidence supports the position that finfish should be accorded the same considerations as terrestrial vertebrates in regard to relief from pain.” Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain... Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
A major problem we have with science today, especially in the 'softer' fields, is that it's being heavily affected by ideological bias. Think about the replication crisis in psychology where some 69% of studies were unable to be replicated. It seems that many 'scientists' are increasingly starting with their conclusion and then doing anything they can to 'prove' it, at the minimum including p-hacking. The reason I mention this is that this article also gives an overview of various replication efforts for some of the studies showing stronger results. Time and again, replication was unable to repeat these results.
Thanks for the link to https://sci-hub.mu/
I fail to see the strawman arguments that you mention again. The discussion is about the probability of animals having emotions and feelings.
Based on the structure of the brain and the receptors and the involved chemicals, it is very likely that all reptiles and all mammals feel pain. Even fish might have some sense of pain. Humans follow often the "intelligence" related to feelings (bad diet, lack of sports, depression, fear, laziness, procrastination, addiction,...). IMO it is very likely that animals that can learn are driven by (intelligence related to) emotions and feelings and not by some unemotional intelligence and will or a simple "mechanical" reflex.
Another quote from another article: http://veterinarycalendar.dvm360.com/pain-management-reptile...
It is very difficult to assess pain in reptiles and there are no standard methods or assessments available to assess the level of pain in birds. Therefore, you are left with past experience, observation and anthropomorphism (if I had a fractured bone I would want an opiate). Reptiles seem very stoic and do not cry out in pain. I vividly remember many years ago amputating a rear leg in a chameleon and upon recovery he was making a squeaking-type noise and had tachypnea. Despite having been taught that "opioids don't work in reptiles" I gave him morphine. Fifteen minutes later when he stopped making the noise and breathed a more normal rate, I became a convert and gave reptiles analgesics and became dedicated to study the effects of analgesics in reptiles.
I like the talks by Lisa Feldman Barrett although it might seem to contradict what I wrote.
https://how-emotions-are-made.com/notes/Barb_Finlay_on_the_t...
https://how-emotions-are-made.com/notes/Triune_brain_myth
https://how-emotions-are-made.com/notes/Criticisms_of_the_li...
Beyond experiment I think it also fails through basic logic as well. Evolution dictates what we become, and we can see the vast variety of changes that evolution has forked among us. Go back far enough and even humans and plants share a common ancestor. To this day a banana shares about 60% of its DNA with a human! But of course it's not just what's on the outside the evolution changes. The way things act, behave, perceive, think, and so on is also controlled by evolution. To assume that somehow everything must, at some level, have internal mechanisms similar to a human is also just not very logical. It'd be like suggesting that everything must have opposable thumbs, because we do. Of course we know that to be very false, but the only reason your statement is not immediately similarly absurd is because you're referencing things that cannot be directly observed.