Greg Neely

Basically, there's an original animal that we both get some of our genes from.

And 550 million years ago, pain system had already evolved and been established.

And it's very, very ancient.

And then second thing is because we have similar systems, insects can teach us about how our pain works.

And then probably the third implication is that, well, if they can experience something like our pain, then are they suffering?

And how do we manage that?

It's tough to say.

There's some kind of philosophical implication to thinking that insects can suffer.

But really, basically, they have the same kind of senses that we have.

They have the same behaviors we have.

So they can taste, they can see.

It's not shocking that they can detect dangerous stimulus and try to avoid them.

I think one thing to note is when an insect is sensing and avoiding noxious temperature, it's not exactly the same as our pain because their brain isn't as advanced as ours or maybe is advanced in a different way.

And so they don't have some of the higher level processing that we have.

So we have to be really careful we're not too anthropomorphic and like projecting human experiences onto insects.

Their sensing is different than what we sense, but it has a common ancestor.

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