Octopuses also feel pain

When you fall down and get hurt, the pain you feel is not only physical but also emotional. Here “emotional” pain means us feeling sad or angry due to the pain.

Till now, only vertebrates were believed to experience this kind of pain (a vertebrate is an animal that has a backbone and a skeleton). But, it turns out, octopuses might feel pain like we do.

They are the first known invertebrates to respond to pain “emotionally” as we do.

What are invertebrates?

Invertebrates are animals without a backbone or bony skeleton.

Recent experiments by scientists showed that octopuses felt pain like we mammals do, even though our nervous systems are organised in very different ways. The nervous system in the body controls how you process and feel pain.

The experiment

In the experiment, when the octopuses received an injection of painful acetic acid, they avoided the chamber (place) where they received the shot. However, when they were given a pain relief injection, they seemed to prefer the chamber where it was given. This means, just like we would avoid a place where we got hurt, they do the same.

Recently, scientists also showed that cuttlefish are also capable of passing a test for human children. Octopuses, squids and cuttlefish all belong to the family (called cephalopods).

 

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