Can we equivocate human pain to animal pain?

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alaskandream

alaskandream

UC Davis c/o 2016!!!!
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Current federal law says that the concept of "pain" is only applicable to humans because it is a physical AND emotional response. I myself find this difficult to agree with but I was interested in seeing what other people thought. Do you think animals feel pain?
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We'll never know exactly what they are experiencing if put into a stressful or painful situation. That being said, animals do show visible signs of distress in certain situations. It would be cruel of us to assume that they cannot experience "pain" in any sense just because they do not feel the same pain humans feel.
 
alaskandream said:
Current federal law says that the concept of "pain" is only applicable to humans because it is a physical AND emotional response. I myself find this difficult to agree with but I was interested in seeing what other people thought. Do you think animals feel pain?
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I have worked in the field of pain research for the past 4 years. I do not think animals experience human pain, and I do not think animals are great models for human pain. I think there are vast differences in the neurobiology of rodents and humans.
 
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If you step on a dog's paw, it'll yelp in pain. Similarly, have you never seen a dog emotionally pained by, say, his owner's death? That's not a whole lot different than how we experience pain.
 
Porfirio said:
I have worked in the field of pain research for the past 4 years. I do not think animals experience human pain, and I do not think animals are great models for human pain. I think there are vast differences in the neurobiology of rodents and humans.
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Also, what about differences between rodents and other mammals (dog, cat, horse, etc..)
 
alaskandream said:
Current federal law says that the concept of "pain" is only applicable to humans because it is a physical AND emotional response. I myself find this difficult to agree with but I was interested in seeing what other people thought. Do you think animals feel pain?
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I don't know, can you EQUIVOCATE when speaking of such things as pain? It seems to me that MOST of our patients are EQUIVOCATING the entire time when they come in:

RN: "So, tell me, where is your pain"
Pt: "It hurts. It's serious pain"
RN: "Ok...On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, what is your pain?"
Pt: "Oh, definitely an 11 but it was a 12 when was standing up a few minutes ago."
 
daman1337 said:
Such as?
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Example:

Rodent microglia express TLR4 receptor protein in vitro and in vivo.

Human microglia do not express TLR4 receptor protein in vivo (adult human tissue), but they do in vitro.

Here is the silly thing. Even though we (pain researchers) know that human microglia do not express TLR4 in vivo, we continue to use LPS (ligand for TLR4 receptors) in our studies to "activate" our microglia. Why would we "activate" a pathway that does not exist in human microglia, and draw conclusions from those rodent studies to proceed from rodent model to human clinical trials?

Edit:

TLR4 receptor protein in humans is not expressed in both "normal" and "diseased" postmortem human tissue.
 
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EBTrailRunner said:
If you step on a dog's paw, it'll yelp in pain. Similarly, have you never seen a dog emotionally pained by, say, his owner's death? That's not a whole lot different than how we experience pain.
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This is definitely interesting, the difference between physical and emotional pain. I guess what I'm interested in, with regards to the law, is the difference in physical pain between animals and humans?
 
alaskandream said:
Also, what about differences between rodents and other mammals (dog, cat, horse, etc..)
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I do not know of any differences, but I would not be shocked. I can say that in the pain field there has been a minor push away from rodent models to more use of dog models. However, this has never gotten off the ground. No one wants to publish or work with dogs in the field of pain because they are man's best friend.
 
Porfirio said:
Example:

Rodent microglia express TLR4 receptor protein in vitro and in vivo.

Human microglia do not express TLR4 receptor protein in vivo (adult human tissue), but they do in vitro.

Here is the silly thing. Even though we (pain researchers) know that human microglia do not express TLR4 in vivo, we continue to use LPS (ligand for TLR4 receptors) in our studies to "activate" our microglia. Why would we "activate" a pathway that does not exist in human microglia, and draw conclusions from those rodent studies to proceed from rodent model to human clinical trials?
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Because you (pain researchers) have found no sufficient alternative.
 
This reminds me of a horrific passage from EK 101 verbal.

They're definitely not equivalent; to say that animals have no feelings is silly, but to say that an animal's life is worth more than a human's is also rather foolish.

Edit: Feelings = physical or emotional pain. Sorry for the vagueness.
 
music2doc said:
I don't know, can you EQUIVOCATE when speaking of such things as pain? It seems to me that MOST of our patients are EQUIVOCATING the entire time when they come in:

RN: "So, tell me, where is your pain"
Pt: "It hurts. It's serious pain"
RN: "Ok...On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, what is your pain?"
Pt: "Oh, definitely an 11 but it was a 12 when was standing up a few minutes ago."
Click to expand...


I agree with you that it is difficult to use a scale to rank pain, when level of pain experienced by a person is relative to how they feel. I was more asking about the concept of absolute pain--either animals have it or they don't. When animal cruelty cases come up, it is often difficult to prosecute the defendant because we cannot say that the animal experienced "pain." What animals feel is described as "nociception," not pain. Level of pain aside, do you think that pain evokes the same physical and emotional response in animals that it does in humans.
 
equinsu ocha said:
Because you (pain researchers) have found no sufficient alternative.
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There have been suggestions, but the people making the ultimate decisions (grant funding) made their careers through the use of rodent models.

If you got paid millions of dollars, would you want to admit that you are wrong and wasted all that money/time? Hehe, you can kiss your career good-bye.
 
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Porfirio said:
Example:

Rodent microglia express TLR4 receptor protein in vitro and in vivo.

Human microglia do not express TLR4 receptor protein in vivo (adult human tissue), but they do in vitro.

Here is the silly thing. Even though we (pain researchers) know that human microglia do not express TLR4 in vivo, we continue to use LPS (ligand for TLR4 receptors) in our studies to "activate" our microglia. Why would we "activate" a pathway that does not exist in human microglia, and draw conclusions from those rodent studies to proceed from rodent model to human clinical trials?

Edit:

TLR4 receptor protein in humans is not expressed in both "normal" and "diseased" postmortem human tissue.
Click to expand...

forgetting microglia of course animals feel pain. Pain is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect us from getting seriously injured or killed. I.e. if you put your hand on a hot stove and burn yourself you quickly learn not to do it again, just as animals learn to avoid pain like elctro shock. The painful stimuli is carried on the same affronts to the CNS and we witness very similar physiological changes in the bodies of animals experiencing pain as we do for people experiencing it.

as far as I can find microglia have only been implicated in neuropathic pain btw.
 
Porfirio said:
Example:

Rodent microglia express TLR4 receptor protein in vitro and in vivo.

Human microglia do not express TLR4 receptor protein in vivo (adult human tissue), but they do in vitro.

Here is the silly thing. Even though we (pain researchers) know that human microglia do not express TLR4 in vivo, we continue to use LPS (ligand for TLR4 receptors) in our studies to "activate" our microglia. Why would we "activate" a pathway that does not exist in human microglia, and draw conclusions from those rodent studies to proceed from rodent model to human clinical trials?

Edit:

TLR4 receptor protein in humans is not expressed in both "normal" and "diseased" postmortem human tissue.
Click to expand...

True, there are many neurobiological differences between humans, animals, and even between different animal species but I would think a pathway as simple and important to survival as pain perception and response would be generally conserved across most species. It might be that I'm naive to the complexities of pain perception but do you know of any neurobiological differences between mice and humans that are specifically involved in pain perception. Why do you think the pain animals experience is difference from the pain humans experience?
 
ppfizenm said:
forgetting microglia of course animals feel pain. Pain is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect us from getting seriously injured or killed. I.e. if you put your hand on a hot stove and burn yourself you quickly learn not to do it again, just as animals learn to avoid pain like elctro shock. The painful stimuli is carried on the same affronts to the CNS and we witness very similar physiological changes in the bodies of animals experiencing pain as we do for people experiencing it.

as far as I can find microglia have only been implicated in neuropathic pain btw.
Click to expand...


I completely agree. The problem is that lawmakers do not agree that the emotional and physical implications of pain experienceed by humans is the same as in animals. In animals, perception of a noxious stimulus is called "nociception" and in humans, it's called "pain"
 
ppfizenm said:
forgetting microglia of course animals feel pain. Pain is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect us from getting seriously injured or killed. I.e. if you put your hand on a hot stove and burn yourself you quickly learn not to do it again, just as animals learn to avoid pain like elctro shock. The painful stimuli is carried on the same affronts to the CNS and we witness very similar physiological changes in the bodies of animals experiencing pain as we do for people experiencing it.

as far as I can find microglia have only been implicated in neuropathic pain btw.
Click to expand...


I believe you are looking at too many things. In this statement you have discussed the reflex arc, pain, and learning. All three of which are separately investigated. This is exactly why there was a huge push in pain research to not use electrical shock, hot surfaces or allow for a learning component. Additionally, the thermal component of pain is pretty much ignored because humans for the most part do not complain of thermal pain. They complain of mechanical pain or spontaneous pain.

You are correct that microglia have only been implicated in pain, however this was an example of how the neurobiology of humans is different from rodents.
 
Porfirio said:
I believe you are looking at too many things. In this statement you have discussed the reflex arc, pain, and learning. All three of which are separately investigated. This is exactly why there was a huge push in pain research to not use electrical shock, hot surfaces or allow for a learning component. Additionally, the thermal component of pain is pretty much ignored because humans for the most part do not complain of thermal pain. They complain of mechanical pain or spontaneous pain.

You are correct that microglia have only been implicated in pain, however this was an example of how the neurobiology of humans is different from rodents.
Click to expand...

These things are not mutually exclusive. The reflex arc is a very evolutionary basic technique to avoid extensive damage however any stimuli that activates the arc is still sent to the brain. the reflex arc merely serves to lessen the damage by providing faster feedback than the information traveling first to the brain and then sending a signal back down to the PNS.

Of course the neurobiology is different however we are talking about a very basic evolutionary trait. Modifications have been made but they are few and far between. Pain is pain. Animals, we are talking rats now, obviously remember pain like people do because you can see a measurable increase in stress hormones when the expectation of pain arises. They may not know exact specifics, but babies aren't able to remember specifics either? Should we test pain on babies then?
 
Porfirio said:
I believe you are looking at too many things. In this statement you have discussed the reflex arc, pain, and learning. All three of which are separately investigated. This is exactly why there was a huge push in pain research to not use electrical shock, hot surfaces or allow for a learning component. Additionally, the thermal component of pain is pretty much ignored because humans for the most part do not complain of thermal pain. They complain of mechanical pain or spontaneous pain.

You are correct that microglia have only been implicated in pain, however this was an example of how the neurobiology of humans is different from rodents.
Click to expand...
Should we not take all that into consideration. You are breaking this subject down like we need to do is observe. There are many problems with using the "ubber mammal" (rat) in most of our studies. The best animal model for model for many human attributes is probably pigs. While I agree that the reason dogs aren't used more commonly for research is because of our emotional attachment to the idea of dogs, it's also a commonly held belief in the realm of animal research that if you HAVE to do research on an animal, you should seek to find the lowest animal that would be acceptable and do as least as possible to get the answers required.
Here is why I say just observe, and don't break it down so much. Do animal and humans not both feel hunger? Do we not both have drastically different brains and pathways? I think there will be subtle difference in what we are conscious of, but I don't think there are many people who would say it would say their hunger is "less" than our hunger because of the difference in expression of ONE receptor on ONE type of neuron! I don't pretend to know much about neurosciences, but try to avoid sweeping statements in the future. It makes you look like an ass.
To suggest that an organism would need to experience "human pain" to fulfill both a physical distress and an emotional involvement seems a little anthropocentric...
 
A problem though is that we can't simply tie perceived behaviors to experiences. We have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize things that we need to be weary of. Because of this we may be inclined to assume a certain animal is experiencing pain in a manner similar to humans because see a certain reflexive behavior and then subconsciously associate with that the rest of the human experience of pain for such a behavior. However, even animals that aren't fully encephalized exhibit behaviors we might perceive as "being in pain" when it would more accurately be considered a reflex evolved to minimize damage. There is no good and clear way to relate to just what level or comparability any given animal or species experiences pain compared to humans. We can only try to infer as much based on neuroanatomy, because behavior can be useful on some level, but often deceiving.
 
Sephiroth said:
A problem though is that we can't simply tie perceived behaviors to experiences. We have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize things that we need to be weary of. Because of this we may be inclined to assume a certain animal is experiencing pain in a manner similar to humans because see a certain reflexive behavior and then subconsciously associate with that the rest of the human experience of pain for such a behavior. However, even animals that aren't fully encephalized exhibit behaviors we might perceive as "being in pain" when it would more accurately be considered a reflex evolved to minimize damage. There is no good and clear way to relate to just what level or comparability any given animal or species experiences pain compared to humans. We can only try to infer as much based on neuroanatomy, because behavior can be useful on some level, but often deceiving.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this on many occasions but pain originated long before humans. While it can be debated that animals feel emotional pain there is little doubt that they feel physical pain.
 
Sephiroth said:
A problem though is that we can't simply tie perceived behaviors to experiences. We have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize things that we need to be weary of. Because of this we may be inclined to assume a certain animal is experiencing pain in a manner similar to humans because see a certain reflexive behavior and then subconsciously associate with that the rest of the human experience of pain for such a behavior. However, even animals that aren't fully encephalized exhibit behaviors we might perceive as "being in pain" when it would more accurately be considered a reflex evolved to minimize damage. There is no good and clear way to relate to just what level or comparability any given animal or species experiences pain compared to humans. We can only try to infer as much based on neuroanatomy, because behavior can be useful on some level, but often deceiving.
Click to expand...

Do you think that this argument could be used to argue that those who are severely mentally disabled do not experience pain? What about higher primates? The case studies in this report suggest that chimps certainly are susceptible to psychological trauma as humans are. Could it be that a chimp has a great capacity to feel pain than a severely mentally disabled human? Does intelligence have any bearing on the capacity to suffer?
 
I have to agree. What is to say "human pain" isn't shared by all animals with the "reptilian brain." We may be able to picture pain in our heads differently, articulate is differently, and draw different conclusions, but who is to say they can't draw similar emotional distress. I agree whole-heartedly there is a lot of anthropomorphizing (especially with pets), but it seems to me that pain and (my example) hunger would be pretty basic and conserved. I would want to know what kind of pain stimulus was used in the study that used not fully encephalized animals. I could elicit your knee-jerk response and it would show that as a two neuron reflex, but does that mean that if I took a bat to knee you wouldn't feel pain? I'm not saying they didn't use good methods, but without knowing the nature of the stimulus, it would be folly of me to accept that argument evidence towards those animals not being able to feel pain.
 
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jf1987 said:
Do you think that this argument could be used to argue that those who are severely mentally disabled do not experience pain? What about higher primates? The case studies in this report suggest that chimps certainly are susceptible to psychological trauma as humans are. Could it be that a chimp has a great capacity to feel pain than a severely mentally disabled human? Does intelligence have any bearing on the capacity to suffer?
Click to expand...

I also think your point brings up a big question as well. We are all debating the meaning of pain and how do you define or measure it. Couldn’t we also go to a question that would be something like, “what does it take to be morally relevant.” To cause pain to anything deemed morally relevant would be wrong so how do we know when to bring beings into our moral realms. In order for animal cruelty laws to become more strict and taken seriously, people would need to believe first that animals were beings that deserve to be taken morally seriously. So where do we draw the line. Is it ok to pour salt on a snail but wrong to starve a dog? Why? What is it that makes the snail different from the dog different from us to make them all on different levels?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t put snails on the same level as dogs or humans. But until you can adequately describe the differences and where the characteristics are for moral relevancy, you really can’t have a good discussion about what these laws should or should not do.
 
I would think that in the short term, the physical experience of pain is very similar for different species; it would be the long term that's variable. So with that I'm saying 1) animals experience pain just like we do 2) human's may suffer more in regards to long term, but not necessarily (chimpanzee study)
 
ppfizenm said:
I would agree with this on many occasions but pain originated long before humans. While it can be debated that animals feel emotional pain there is little doubt that they feel physical pain.
Click to expand...
Yes, of course things like the neurons we refer to as pain receptors have been around much longer. I was referring to the human experience of pain, which is markedly different than the Caenorhabditis I poke with a pick while trying to move them and they start squirming away rapidly. There are still neurons firing, but they certainly don't experience it and understand it on the same level.
jf1987 said:
Do you think that this argument could be used to argue that those who are severely mentally disabled do not experience pain? What about higher primates? The case studies in this report suggest that chimps certainly are susceptible to psychological trauma as humans are. Could it be that a chimp has a great capacity to feel pain than a severely mentally disabled human? Does intelligence have any bearing on the capacity to suffer?
Click to expand...
While anyone could argue anything, I don't think so because we can learn a lot more from human experiments (see Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" for an fairly easy overview of some interesting cases that teach us a lot) since they can communicate what's going on. Changes in behavior from animal experiments are telling as well, though not on the same level. That is why I said that we can make our best inferences from neuroanatomy. Procedures done on humans can give us a good idea as to what parts of the brain are responsible for what phenomena. For instance, the prefrontal cortex, especially the left prefrontal cortex, seems to be the main source of the level of consciousness/self awareness we experience. The mentally disabled still have the same neuroanatomy - though with some loss of function and sometimes some damage, but most still demonstrate a considerable understanding of language, which also comes from the prefrontal cortex. And with chimpanzees they are close enough that I would probably err on the side of caution.
 
Esidence said:
I also think your point brings up a big question as well. We are all debating the meaning of pain and how do you define or measure it. Couldn't we also go to a question that would be something like, "what does it take to be morally relevant." To cause pain to anything deemed morally relevant would be wrong so how do we know when to bring beings into our moral realms. In order for animal cruelty laws to become more strict and taken seriously, people would need to believe first that animals were beings that deserve to be taken morally seriously. So where do we draw the line. Is it ok to pour salt on a snail but wrong to starve a dog? Why? What is it that makes the snail different from the dog different from us to make them all on different levels?
Don't get me wrong, I don't put snails on the same level as dogs or humans. But until you can adequately describe the differences and where the characteristics are for moral relevancy, you really can't have a good discussion about what these laws should or should not do.
Click to expand...

Well, we could start with what we do know. There is tons of evidence, that higher primates can experience profound pain and develop symptoms resembling PTSD following trauma. Therefore, we should prevent this from occurring as a number of countries have already done. Research on the great apes has been banned in the EU. Australia, New Zealand and Japan have also severely restricted its use. I think it would be appropriate for other countries to get on board because causing this type of suffering cannot be defended morally especially when much of the research can be conducted using different methods and/or is not likely to result in a great reduction in human suffering. The IOM recently published a report stating IOM concluded that ‘…most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary.' The only exception was their "inconclusive" decision (a 5-5 split) regarding a "narrow area" of hep C vaccine work.


This approach could then be used to assess the appropriate use of other animals.
 
Sephiroth said:
Yes, of course things like the neurons we refer to as pain receptors have been around much longer. I was referring to the human experience of pain, which is markedly different than the Caenorhabditis I poke with a pick while trying to move them and they start squirming away rapidly. There are still neurons firing, but they certainly don't experience it and understand it on the same level.

While anyone could argue anything, I don't think so because we can learn a lot more from human experiments (see Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" for an fairly easy overview of some interesting cases that teach us a lot) since they can communicate what's going on. Changes in behavior from animal experiments are telling as well, though not on the same level. That is why I said that we can make our best inferences from neuroanatomy. Procedures done on humans can give us a good idea as to what parts of the brain are responsible for what phenomena. For instance, the prefrontal cortex, especially the left prefrontal cortex, seems to be the main source of the level of consciousness/self awareness we experience. The mentally disabled still have the same neuroanatomy - though with some loss of function and sometimes some damage, but most still demonstrate a considerable understanding of language, which also comes from the prefrontal cortex. And with chimpanzees they are close enough that I would probably err on the side of caution.
Click to expand...

How is the understanding important? Pain wasn't originally a human experience. You could make the argument that the physical pain we feel is a base animal experience.
 
Porfirio said:
Example:

Rodent microglia express TLR4 receptor protein in vitro and in vivo.

Human microglia do not express TLR4 receptor protein in vivo (adult human tissue), but they do in vitro.

Here is the silly thing. Even though we (pain researchers) know that human microglia do not express TLR4 in vivo, we continue to use LPS (ligand for TLR4 receptors) in our studies to "activate" our microglia. Why would we "activate" a pathway that does not exist in human microglia, and draw conclusions from those rodent studies to proceed from rodent model to human clinical trials?

Edit:

TLR4 receptor protein in humans is not expressed in both "normal" and "diseased" postmortem human tissue.
Click to expand...

How is TLR4 related to the feeling of pain?
 
alaskandream said:
I completely agree. The problem is that lawmakers do not agree that the emotional and physical implications of pain experienceed by humans is the same as in animals. In animals, perception of a noxious stimulus is called "nociception" and in humans, it's called "pain"
Click to expand...

That's not exactly true, alaskandream. Or rather, it's not universally true. In our (vet) curriculum, we view nociception as the detection of tissue damage by nociceptors, and pain as the sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. From our instructors' perspectives, there's no question that animals experience pain just like we mean when we say humans experience pain. So, not all vet curricula are in agreement about how to understand pain in animals.

I would expect (though, obviously, I'm not in the human med world) that human med folks view it somewhat similarly to how we're taught it in the vet world at UMN: that nociception is the physical experience and pain is the amalgam of nociception with emotion. Med students, please correct me?

[Clarification for the researchers out there poking the C. elegans; my comments above are in the context of domestic animals we'd see clinically. I'm happy to grant that at some point down the chain trauma becomes purely a reflexive experience and not a painful experience.]
 
jf1987 said:
Well, we could start with what we do know. There is tons of evidence, that higher primates can experience profound pain and develop symptoms resembling PTSD following trauma. Therefore, we should prevent this from occurring as a number of countries have already done. Research on the great apes has been banned in the EU. Australia, New Zealand and Japan have also severely restricted its use. I think it would be appropriate for other countries to get on board because causing this type of suffering cannot be defended morally especially when much of the research can be conducted using different methods and/or is not likely to result in a great reduction in human suffering. The IOM recently published a report stating IOM concluded that ‘…most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary.' The only exception was their "inconclusive" decision (a 5-5 split) regarding a "narrow area" of hep C vaccine work.


This approach could then be used to assess the appropriate use of other animals.
Click to expand...

But what is the method or the reasoning. There is mounting evidence, though I wouldn't call it "tons" yet, that indeed higher primates have such emotional disorders. And it is also easier to communicate and understand them. But isn't that just a barrier we impose? Just because we don't understand (or communicate) something doesn't mean we should write it off a below us or that it doesn't exist. Also, on the ban on higher chimp research. I don't want to make this sound like I'm ok with researching everything on them, but we have to watch were research sanctions go. In a recent poll, nearly half of Americans believe that we shouldn't do animal research PERIOD. This isn't something that we veterinarians need to educate the public about, it's all research oriented scientists. That is why this thread has crossed forums so easily. If they aren't addressing this problem in your med schools they need to. If animal research is shut down, it affects what you know more than us and could cripple scientific endeavors. So I just urge you to be careful with you following suite with "whatever the IOM says."

We also are taught the same at Auburn LetItSnow. I don't have as much neuro background probably as most of pre-meds that have responded, but we are finally touching on nociceptors and pain.
 
This is more so a philosophical question than anything else. The answer is clearly no. Animal pain is not only physiologically different than human pain, it's also manifested differently in terms of the subjects subjective experience. Animals have a lower degree of consciousness and have a much lower complexity of brain states that constitute subjective experience resulting from pain.
 
alaskandream said:
I agree with you that it is difficult to use a scale to rank pain, when level of pain experienced by a person is relative to how they feel. I was more asking about the concept of absolute pain--either animals have it or they don't. When animal cruelty cases come up, it is often difficult to prosecute the defendant because we cannot say that the animal experienced "pain." What animals feel is described as "nociception," not pain. Level of pain aside, do you think that pain evokes the same physical and emotional response in animals that it does in humans.
Click to expand...

You missed the point. Look up the definition of "equivocate." (Most of our patients in the ED do, in fact, equivocate as they describe their pain in unclear, often exaggerated and/or misleading terms.)

Anyway, yes, animals absolutely feel pain in some sense. You can see this by their reactions to things. When a dog is hit hard in the face, it recoils, its facial expression often changes, and it may became aggressive or fearful. Regardless, there is a definite response. What reason would we have to believe this is not "pain" of some sort? Nociception is essentially nothing more than the physiological process by which pain is generated. While we cannot feel what an animal feels, we can watch their responses to stimuli and compare them to human responses to similar stimuli. There are many similarities (noxious stimuli cause animals and humans to react negatively, including avoidance, fear, and aggression responses, while food generally causes both humans and animals to react in manners that will get them that food, whether it be "politely" waiting or aggressive/violent means, for instance), which gives general evidence to the idea that [higher] animals likely "experience" similar responses to those of humans on at least some level.
 
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