Animals Feel Pain: An Uncontestable and Evident Proposition
The experience of pain by animals seems to be an uncontestable and an evident proposition. However, scientific world needs empirical evidence for all its propositions that should be tenable philosophically as well as based on experiments and inference. The first question in this context is: what is the way to find out whether humans and animals experience pain? We all, as the members of human species, do experience pain. A simple demo can be done with the help of a needle. Try to insert a needle on our hands. We definitely experience pain at that time. At the same time we cannot experience the pain felt by another when the same thing is done, whether it is a friend or a dog. Pain is a mental experience and it can not be observed. The cry, the attempt to run away from the source of pain etc are not experiences of pain. They are the reactions to pain and the attempt to avoid it. So, the best way to infer the pain experienced by animals is by observing the symptoms of pain in them when they are faced with the infliction of pain.
Almost all the outward indications help us to conclude that there is evidence of pain found in many animals, especially in higher mammals and the avian fauna. There are many external signs of pain exhibited by animals. The common ones are writhing, twisting and turning of the facial muscles, whimpering and other recognizable cries typical of discomfort. There is also a desperate attempt to keep away from the source of pain and the fear at the sight of the cause of pain. These are the normal reactions to pain in mankind too.
Moving from these external symptoms of pain, if we make a more invasive journey into the inner of workings of body mechanism, more evidence comes to the lime light. Like humans, animals also experience an initial rise in the blood pressure. The pupils dilate as result of pain and many animals show perspiration and augmented pulse rate. At the persistence of pain, like in man, the blood pressure falls in animals too.
In the evolutionary march of species the experience of pain is somewhat genetically coded and is the ultimate tool of survival. The capacity to feel pain in fact increases the possibility of the species for survival. Since pain is an experience to be avoided for survival in the scheme of evolutionary development of the animals, the experience of pain is a tool of survival. How is it possible to argue that man alone is endowed with this tool, as survival is a shared need of man and animals?
There is a wrong notion that animals feel pain in a lesser degree than human beings. In fact, animals have fewer channels for the expression of pain compared to man. Most of the animals have only limited reaction to pain and techniques to avoid it. Man can use reason and tools to avoid the sources of pain. Man’s life is also organized in a social way and there are different approaches to the initiator of pain. For example man can organize collectively against a situation that causes pain. The animals do not have the capacity for an organized campaign against a situation that causes them pain. This helplessness of animals does not indicate a lesser experience of pain.
One of the contentions is that since animals do not have a language and hence do not have state of consciousness. This is an absurd argument. First of all animals do have a language though they are not as complex as ours. When this argument is stressed too much we are landing in trouble. It could be argued that infants also do not have a language as adults have and hence they do not fee pain. Infants too have a language from the day one of their birth, a very expressive cry. The child expresses all its needs through this cry and the mother is able to understand the meaning of the cry. The caring mothers are sensitive to the cry of distress of the child as an expression of pain. So the argument that animals do not have language is somewhat wrong. The same applies in the case of deaf and dumb who cannot use the language that we use. They also suffer as much as a man endowed with speech. There are no valid arguments to prove that animals do not suffer. If we can accept that human beings feel pain then we can definitely accept that animals also feel pain.
The pain experienced by animals and man is indeed a reality. However, animals have limited mechanisms to avoid pain. They are entirely dependent on genetically coded reactions to pain. In the case man he is a tool maker. He has developed various tools by which he can avoid pain. For example, the pain of extreme temperature is managed by man by the use of air conditioners, while the animals are somewhat helpless in a hot climate.
In fact man has been the source of much pain to many animals. His skill as a tool maker has given him dominance over the beast of the earth and the birds of the sky. Has man misused his power to cause pain to the helpless creatures? Instead of denying the pain experienced by the animals it is essential that man makes a sincere soul search about his role in inflicting pain on the helpless animals for satisfying his many whims.
The list of extinct animals in Africa features the animals that have become extinct on the African continent and its islands, like Madagascar, Mauritius, Rodrigues, Réunion, Seychelles, St. Helena, Cape Verde, etc.
Global Holocene Extinctions
Extinctions in the wild