What do we know so far about insects’ social lives, and their ability to experience pleasure and pain?
In: Planetary Science
I think there may be a bit of anthropomorphic fallacy going on here. Pleasure, social lives, and to some degree pain experiences are concepts relating to quality of life we apply to humans or sentient beings.
Insects experience pain. They feel pleasure in so far as they know what sensory inputs align with their goals. Some have a society structure based on cooperation and division of labor.
I think it is safe the say that an insect’s life is significantly narrower in scope than ours; socialization, pleasure, and suffering are not things they experience.
I’m not sure if that answers the question.
Insects can communicate with pheromones, body language, can work together such as bees, recognise individual colony members,display emotions as far as socialising goes.
In terms of pleasure and pain can react to stimuli of a pleasant nature, and im turn when presented with threatening stimuli they may produce a stress or anxiety reaponse, can experience pain and discomfort although to what extent I dont believe we know.
Latest Answers