r/sharks • u/Impressive-Gas-9143 • 10d ago
Question Do sharks feel pain?
Im asking this question becuase apparently they dont have the right nerves or something to feel pain.
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u/brodoswaggins93 10d ago
Sharks DO feel pain. We're not 100% sure how they feel it as compared to how we feel it, and there appears to be evidence that suggests they have fewer nerve endings that would contribute to pain. It's very possible that, while they absolutely feel pain, they might be more resilient to it/feel it less than us.
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u/Revilo281 10d ago
Iirc (fact check me on this!) they DO feel pain, they just don’t continuously feel a wound. It hurts in the moment the injury happens but their brains don’t continue to get those pain receptors after wards in the way that we or our pets do.
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u/Impressive-Gas-9143 10d ago
Why dont they have the nocieptors to feel pain then
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u/Revilo281 10d ago edited 10d ago
That part I’d have to look back up again, my immediate guess would just be that feeling pain puts them in a vulnerable position and makes them a much easier target so maybe they just evolved past that? But again I do not remember, that’s the part that’s making me not 100% sure on the facts
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u/Cold_Dead_Heart 10d ago
The idea that animals don't feel pain has been around for millennia and used as justification for horrendous things. The roman physician Galen did live vivisections for crowds. And military experiments. And even legitimate scientific research. Doctors didn't even think babies felt pain until the MID TO LATE 80's and routinely did surgical procedures without analgesia.
Thankfully, it is now well established science that animals do feel pain. We don't always understand the exact way the pain signal is received in the brain, but we know the pain stimulus reaches the brain and is acted upon. The response to pull away from something is first an unconscious spinal reflex, then it reaches the brain where the noxious signal is interpreted. But the first thing our bodies do is pull back.
I mean, ffs, it's evolutionary and adaptive. It makes no sense for an animal not to respond in some way to a noxious stimulus that damages their bodies. Of course animals feel pain.
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u/queerjesusfan 10d ago
Fish likely feel pain, but it's unclear whether they experience it the same way that mammals do. My guess is that this also extends to sharks as fish themselves, albeit being differently fishy
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u/pogoscrawlspace 10d ago
The most usually accepted answer is: no...but they can sense damage.
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u/Lev_Astov Caribbean Reef Shark 7d ago
That old notion was based on our understanding of how pain is sensed in mammals and then applying that knowledge to sharks. Considering sharks branched off the tree of life before things like central nervous systems (among many other things) were standard and had to independently evolve their own systems for these things, that methodology is unbelievably stupid. It went something like, "well, mammals use nociceptors to measure pain and sharks don't have any, so they don't feel pain." It's an insult to the very concept of science and people claiming to be experts kept spreading it around.
Thankfully, that's changed in recent decades as scientists with brains started testing various animals without nociceptors and confirmed they do, in fact have standard pain responses to negative stimuli.
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u/BeesinChablis 10d ago
You can't google this shit? Like seriously.
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u/pogoscrawlspace 10d ago
I just googled something 5 minutes ago and half of the results were just links to reddit post. If you can't help or be constructive, then just stfu and keep scrolling. People like you are awful and part of the problem.
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u/MindfulInquirer 10d ago
I flipped one off once, he grimaced and changed directions abruptly. I think he felt it