Animals feel pain because they have – like us human animals – a central nervous system. Despite the evidence of this biological fact, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the debate about the nature of animals as sentient beings was unleashed with intensity, together with the laws of the global environment elaborated to combat animal abuse and the violent practices committed against them, both in the domestic environment and in industry.
However, what seems to be not so clear yet is the way in which animals feel that pain : if it is a purely physical issue or it also has an emotional component, such as the suffering of human beings. For example, we now know that the same brain regions that respond to painful sensory experiences are activated during intense experiences of social rejection, as demonstrated by researchers from the University of Michigan (USA) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (PNAS)
And is that pain is a matter that is perceived by two channels: sensory and emotional . The physical perception of pain translates very differently in emotional terms, even from one person to another, which has to do with the situation we find ourselves in, stress levels, and so on.
All pains are different from each other : back pain, scratch pain, menstrual pain … And not only that. In our daily lives we come to feel pain even though there is no type of physical stimulus that causes it, constituting an essentially emotional type of pain.
In the case of animals, physical pain, many species usually communicate it through their facial expressions or their movements or by emitting shrieks and cries of alert, although they cannot do it verbally. In the veterinary field, the so-called Glasgow Scale is used , which is designed to be able to measure pain – as far as possible – in order to be able to treat it effectively also in animals. Biologically, in addition, pain fulfills a very clear function: to alert the body that it could be in a state of danger in order to make it react in time.
The reactions of some animals to the presence of pain have characteristics that are reminiscent of the way we human beings manage it. Moreover, behaviors have been observed in them that do not seem to have to do with addressing pain from a totally physical point of view, but also psychological, such as moving away from their peers or their owners avoiding socialization or stopping eating. In any case, the question of pain in animals and how it manifests should continue to be addressed from the investigation, since there is still much to clarify.
