"RichToyBox" wrote in message
...
Fish may not feel pain by your definition of pain, but they feel discomfort,
which is one of my definitions of pain. If you don't believe it, look at the
actions of a fish with parasites, trying to scape them off, or jumping out of
the water to loosen them. They react to a tummy ache or head ache or whatever
by going and laying off by themselves, rather than swimming with the other
fish and coming to eat. When taken out of water, they do a lot of flopping
around trying to get back into the water, and I would say that was a reaction
to the discomfort of being out of water.

Fight or flight response. Sorry. That is not pain. That is a midbrain
function, an involuntary response. Humans can express laughter and sadness.
Two very different emotional responses. The physiological process involved is
exactly the same. The difference is how your brain interprets the stimulus. It
is a very complex interaction between the nerves and senses of our bodies and
the higher functions of our brain, specifically the neocortex portion of the
cerebral hemisphere. Pain is nearly the exact same physiological response. The
difference between these emotions is in how our neocortex interpretes the
signals. We have it hardwired in our bodies to have those physiological
responses, and to distinguish between what the stimulus means (ever wonder why
people laugh when Dick Van Dyke stubs his toe?). So do other animals,
particularly mammalian predators. The difference in that how we experience
those sensations depend on how our our neocortex interprets the stimulus. We
can make the distinctions between laughter, sadness, and pain because we have
the hardware (and to an extent, the software) to make the distinction. Fish
have no such hardware. They have no neocortex, and very little memory. Our
existence is dominated by our cerebral hemispheres. The life of a fish is
dominated by its brainstem, which exlusively processes and sends out autonomic,
or involuntary responses to stimulus.

Specific wording with specific definitions doesn't change what the respondents
on this thread have been trying to say. Personnally I use the clove oil,
because it is used for other treatments, such as abrasion treatments with
iodine, parasite scrapings, and injections when needed. It may not be needed
for pain, but it makes the fish much easier to handle during these procedures,
and I "assume" much less "painful" for the fish. Seeing a fish out of water is
painful for me, if not them.

Ah, that is the real issue, isn't it? How it makes us feel. Am I Right?
Again, anthropomorphization. It makes us feel bad at least in part, because we
sympathize with it and think that we wouldn't want to "feel" like what we think
the fish is feeling. No offense, but how we feel about the issue has no bearing
on what a fish is or is not feeling.