ASK THE ANINMALS AND THEY WILL TELL YOU:

A LOOK AT ANIMAL SENTIENCE, PART ONE

ANIMALS AND PHYSICAL PAIN

“But ask the animals and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and fish of the sea will declare to you.  Who among all these does not know that hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

                                                                                              ~ Job 12: 7-10

            In this blog, I have argued that our creation in the image of God is inextricably intertwined withour relationships with animals and that we are tasked at the creation with the job of reflecting God’s character to the animals.   I have also argued that how well we carry this out is fundamental to our very character as human beings, that Scripture’s teachings on the use of power are just as applicable to our use of power over animals as they are to our use of power over vulnerable human beings, and that our value as humans comes not from our creation in God’s image but from the fact that we are loved by God, which has implications for the value of other creatures, as well.  In later posts, I will address specific passages of Scripture to see what they may have to say about how we treat animals and look at more recent theological thinking about our relationships with animals and the creation care movement in general.  But first, I want to pause to take a brief look at some of the things science is learning now about animal sentience.  Understanding how animals understand and relate to the world is key to understanding our obligations toward them. 

"Knockout mice" at NIH

I will address this in four parts.  This Part One will provide a short introduction and discuss animal awareness of physical pain.  In Part Two, I will look at animal emotions, in Part Three I will look at animal intelligence, and in Part Four, I will consider all of this as it relates to the animals we eat. Just as with my series on the “Minority Report” (that part of the Christian tradition that has always acknowledged our obligations to animals), I expect there will be a detour or two along the way as some current issue catches my attention.  I would love to hear from you, by the way, about what you might like to see more - or less - of on this blog.  

            Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham famously said of animals and our obligations of mercy toward them, “[t]he question is not, Can they reason? nor Can the talk? But, Can they suffer?”[1] Sadly, historically, many thinkers have answered that question no.  It was believed (and in some cases still is believed) that because animals did not have the ability to reason, they could not understand what was happening to them, and therefore did not suffer, at least not in any meaningful way.  It was thought that they merely reacted instinctively to sensations they did not comprehend.[2]  Increasingly, that position is becoming untenable.  Jonathan Balcombe explains that there is “a wealth of evidence now emerging that animals are more perceptive, intelligent, aware, and emotional than humans usually give them credit for. . . . [R]esearchers around the world have found that there is more thought and feeling in animals than humans have ever imaged.”[3]  Indeed, animals are sentient creatures:  they are “responsive to, or conscious of, sense impressions;” they are “aware.”[4]  In fact, significant scientific research allows us to go much further.

            The idea that animal suffering is somehow not real or not significant has been deeply ingrained in our societal understanding of animals.  In her forward to Mark Bekoff’s book Animal Emotions, Jane Goodall explains that as recently as the 1960s “ethologists, along with many philosophers and theologians, argued that personality, mind, and emotions were uniquely human attributes and that the behavior of other-than-human animals was for the most part merely a response to some environmental or social stimulus.”[5]  She writes that despite decades of research to the contrary, “there are countless people among both the scientific and lay communities who still genuinely believe that animals are just objects, activated by responses to environmental stimuli.”[6]  Matthew Scully, in Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy, writing in 2002, quotes a California dairy farmer: “A cow’s a piece of machinery.  If it’s broke, we try to fix it, and if we can’t, it’s replaced.”[7]  Scully also points to a 1996 study that demonstrated that the intensity of a pig’s squeal was correlated to the degree of discomfort the pig felt.  The researchers were unable to conclude, however, that the pigs were suffering in any meaningful way, because whatever they felt, it was “unconscious pain” (215).[8]

     But Jonathan Balcombe writes, “As far as is known from physiological studies, the perception of noxious stimuli and their conduction to parts of the brain that register pain are fairly identical processes among the different mammals that have been so examined. . . . What proof do we have that a needle prick is less painful to a mouse than to a man?”[9]  Even where pain responses are instinctual, that does not mean they are not real pain.  Balcombe explains, “When you jump at a sudden noise, or you blink when something suddenly flashes before your face, you still experience and remember these events, even though your body responded involuntarily.  All of the basic feelings we experience are fundamentally instinctual.”[10]  He cites Marc Bekoff and others who have suggested that fishes and other animals may suffer more than humans because they lack many of the resources we have for dealing with pain.[11]  Balcombe argues that physiology supports this idea, pointing out that the adrenal response to stress, for example, is significantly less in humans than animals.  This is true whether animals experience pain themselves or watch others being killed or mistreated.  Regarding farm animals, whose pain response has been extensively studied, “[p]hysiological and behavioral responses to such routine practices as castration, hot-iron branding, tail removal, horn cauterizing and beak-searing – all of which are performed without anesthesia – indicate that pain is intense and lasting.”[12]  Notwithstanding these study results, these practices remain legal and routine.  

Cow branding in the 1900s

Awareness of pain is not limited to mammals, however.  A recently released study led by Robert Ellwood likewise suggests that crabs also feel pain and will avoid even superior hiding places when they have previously received electrical shocks in those locations.[13]  Even insects and invertebrates feel pain and are more aware then previous believed.  According to Jonathan Balcombe, “a 2001 review of scientific evidence by British biologist Chris Sherwin throws up some challenges to traditional scientific views of the insect as spineless, pre-programmed automaton. Sherwin found scientific evidence that invertebrates can remember and learn, have spatial awareness and mental maps, show preferences, develop habits, and respond to noxious stimuli.”[14]  

NOAA photo of a Maryland Blue Crab caught in a net

 As we will see in later posts, however, animals’ experience of the world involves much more than simple physical sensations.  They have also been shown to have wide-ranging emotions, surprising intellectual capacities, and a keen awareness of their surroundings and fellow creatures.  Refraining from cruelty to animals, therefore, means much more than refraining from causing them physical pain.  It involves allowing them to exercise their normal behaviors, allowing them to interact with the world, and respecting the relationships they form with others of their own and other species. 

            It means allowing them to be who God created them to be and to live as God created them to live.  But at a minimum, we can start by recognizing that animals feel pain, that their pain is as real to them and matters as much to them as our pain does to us.  More than that, it matters to God. 
            We would be well advised, therefore, to heed Humphrey Primatt’s warning:  “Be merciful, as you hope for mercy.”

My photo of a deer resting in our garden

---

[1] Quoted in, Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals. Novato: New World Library, 2007, p. 27.

[2] See my earlier post, Why Has The Church Traditionally Taken A Different View?

[3] Balcombe, Jonathan. Second Nature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p.. 4

[4] Meriam-Webster Online Dictionary, definition of “sentient,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient (accessed January 28, 2013).

[5] Bekoff, p. xii.

[6][6] Bekoff, p. xiii.

[7] Scully, Matthew. Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2002, p. 192.

[8] According to Stephen Budiansky, animals’ supposed inability to have thoughts about their pain means that their pain has no meaning, thus, their “pain isn’t even pain” (Scully, 6, quoting Stephen Budiansky, If Lions Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness (New York: Free Press, 1998) pp 193-94). 

[9] Balcombe, p. 17.

[10] Balcombe, pp. 27-28.

[11] Balcombe, p. 17.

[12] Balcombe, p. 18.

[13] “Crabs Feel Pain After All, Study Suggests,”  Huffington Post, Janary 17, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/crabs-feel-pain-new-study_n_2496841.html (accessed January 28, 2013).

[14] CM Sherwin ‘Can invertebrates suffer? Or, how robust is argument-by-analogy?’, Animal Welfare, 10, (pp. S103 - S118), 2001, as summarized by Balcombe in unpublished personal correspondence, Dec. 24, 2012.