My comic of 3/12 ended with a fish saying “ouch.” When my website becomes unbroken you can see it here:
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20060312.html [no longer available]
This caused one concerned reader to straighten me out on the subject of whether fish feel pain. I reprint his letter with permission:
Dear Scott:
As a long time aficionado of your Dilbert comic strip, I must point out that the strip published on 3/12/06 in both the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle has done considerable damage to the entire fisheries conservation community because of your attack on Catch and Release. Appropriate Catch and Release is an important conservation tool, particularly on premium fish populations that are being overharvested.
My statement on the pain issue points out that : “Anthropomorphism is defined as an interpretation of what is not human, in terms of what is human. Ascribing human personality characteristics to cold-blooded animals is at best fallacious and at worst destructive of our outdoor traditions. The animal welfare movement has been sidetracked by this view and the result is an extremist animal rights agenda that now attempts to assign human existence values to animals. It has been scientifically established that fish do not feel pain, they don’t hurt, they are not human, and they do not have human rights.”
There is serious scientific data that has been widely published to support this position. Now that you have drawn what many of us believe to be a misleading conclusion, please take the time to review some of the work by Dr. James D. Rose, Professor, Department of Zoology and Physiology, Director, National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research:
Reference 1:
Rose, J.D. (2002). The neurobehavioral nature of fishes and the question of awareness and pain. Reviews in Fisheries Science 10(1), 1-38.
http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/Zoology/faculty/rose/Rose%20Rev%20Fish%20Sci.pdf [no longer available]
Reference 2:
www.uwyo.edu/zoology/faculty/rose [no longer available]
(name withheld by request), President
Of Something to do With Fisheries
This begs the question of what exactly constitutes pain. When you put a hook through a fish’s mouth, then pick him up and watch him twist and suffocate in the air, is that a fish’s way of saying “I am indifferent to this situation”?
I’m no scientists but it sure looks like fish are expressing a preference with all that flopping around and gasping for water. But where is the line between pain and simply not getting your way? It sounds like a Gitmo situation to me. Maybe those fish aren’t gasping for water after all; they’re probably being treated in a humane way and trying to confess where they hid the WMD.
I should note that I’m a vegetarian, but only for selfish reasons. Saving critters from pain is an excellent goal if it’s practical. But I can’t reconcile that goal with what would happen if humans stopped killing animals. The alternative is to wait until the bears – for example – are about to copulate and then swoop in and place the condom on the boy bear without him noticing. Otherwise it seems to me that we’d have too damned many bears. If that happened you’d be all “Where’s that remote control for the TV?” and your spouse would be all “A bear is sitting on it” and you’d be all “Again?!!” And you know how much you hate it when people say “I’m all” instead of “I said.” That has to be at least as bad as killing animals. That’s my only point.