ISSUE 1812 Thursday 11 May 2000
 [Telegraph]
  Cockroach capable of feeling pain, says study
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

  THE discovery that slugs, snails and flies apparently feel pain could
change forever the way human beings treat the rest of the animal kingdom, it
was claimed yesterday.
Studies also found that cockroaches have the capacity to suffer, cows can
react emotionally and sheep can distinguish one person from another,
therefore possessing the concept of what it means to be an individual.

Dr Stephen Wickens, of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare charity
(UFAW), said society often looked to scientists to tell them where to draw a
line in their concern for animals, but that line was becoming increasingly
blurred.

At a symposium in London today, organised by UFAW, scientists will debate
whether and how animals feel, a concept central to arguments about animal
welfare and the range of species that deserved special protection.

Dr Wickens said: "The idea is to debate where you can draw the line on
consciousness, if at all. People who think insects don't feel any pain may be
wrong. Perhaps people should think twice before reaching for the fly spray."

The meeting at the Zoological Society will be told by Dr Chris Sherwin, of
the University of Bristol, that the criterion used to assess the mental state
of vertebrates, whether dogs, cats or chimpanzees, often produced similar
results among insects.

Dr Sherwin said: "If a chimp pulls its hand away after an electric shock, we
say she presumably must have felt an analogous subjective experience to what
we call pain. But cockroaches, slugs and snails - which are not protected by
legislation - also reacted in the same way, while tests on flies showed they
could associate a smell with receiving an electric shock.

"If it is a chimp we say it feels pain, if a fly we don't. Why? Slugs will
perform in some of these tests the same way as dogs, chimps and cats. They
show far more complex patterns of behaviour than we had thought. And if they
do feel pain, isn't that a welfare issue?"

Dr Keith Kendrick, of the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, will report to the
meeting that while sheep can not be said to be conscious in a human manner,
"the way they recognise faces and the way they process face images is very
similar to the way we do it".

Dr Kendrick, who admitted that he occasionally ate lamb despite his findings,
said: "Even animals like sheep are doing things as far as the brain is
concerned that are so similar to us it does imply that they are capable of
some level of consciousness."

Another team, led by Prof Don Broom, of the University of Cambridge, will
report studies of young cattle which concluded "that cattle can react
emotionally".

Dr Wickens said animal welfare policies were dependent upon the extent to
which people believed animals were capable of conscious states such as pain,
anxiety and boredom. He hoped the discussion of the latest scientific
discoveries in this field would help resolve the different ways in which
cultures around the world treated animals.