Taxonomy vs. ethics

[Erik Ahlander]

As a museum biologist I have got a phone call with a question on which kind
of animals do suffer.

I this case when experiments on mammals and bird are preformed anaesthesia
has to be used. I was asked which groups of animals do suffer. Herptiles
were supposed to suffer since they tried to avoid pain. Did fish suffer?
Hagfish? Octopuses?

I answered that all animals react to conditions that are not optimal. This
is a way to survive. Pain is not equal to suffer. Suffering in another
organism is impossible to get knowledge about. For biological reasons it is
*probable* that at least our closest relatives, other people, primates,
maybe other mammals has feeling similar to my own but there are no way to
know for true. It is impossible to chose a boundary between "suffering" and
"non-suffering". All such divisions have to be arbitrarily. The question is
not biological. It is rather ethical - philosophical or maybe psychological.
The reason for human reactions is not mainly that animals realy are
suffering but that a human should have been suffering in that situation.

Does anybody have any further opinions/reactions?

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Erik Ahlander, Collection Manager - Fishes
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Section for Vertebrate Zoology
P.O. Box 50007; S-104 05 STOCKHOLM, Sweden
Phone +46 8 666 4118; Fax +46 8 666 4212
email: ve-erik at nrm.se
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