Insects do feel pain and may need animal welfare laws to protect them, scientists say

Experts raise prospect of giving ethical protection to creatures in farming and research

Insects can feel pain – and may need to get official ethical protection in farming and research, scientists say.

Researchers say they have found insects’ central nervous systems partly control “nociception” - the detection of damaging stimuli – which may be accompanied by a feeling of pain.

The RSPCA has campaigned against the eating of insects on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, saying that “portraying certain species as nasty or frightening or as objects that can be used purely for entertainment rather than sentient, living creatures sends out totally the wrong message”.

Thousands of people complained to watchdog Ofcom about the use of live animals in the show.

The UK government last year recognised that lobsters, crabs, octopuses and related species are sentient – capable of feeling pain and pleasure – and included them in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, due to become law this year.

It should give them legal protection from being boiled alive and having the tendons of their pincers cut.

After reviewing neurobiological and behavioural evidence, the authors of the new study concluded that insects probably do have a neural system for dampening their responses to potentially painful stimuli.

“The function of this dampening in nociception in humans is to reduce our pain in situations where feeling pain is unhelpful,” said lead author Matilda Gibbons of Queen Mary University of London.

Future research should aim to “clarify whether we should be affording ethical protection to insects in potentially harm-inducing settings, such as farming and research”, they wrote in the paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The idea of eating insects has grown in popularity after scientists have repeatedly called for the world to eat less meat for human health and to slow climate change.

With the world’s population due to hit 10 billion by 2050, the United Nations has recommended mass-producing insects for food.

This year, more than 30 UK companies submitted a dossier to the Food Standards Agency setting out the case for eating crickets.

Vending machines selling edible insects have been set up at a campsite in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan.

Elsewehere, scientists and conservationists have expressed alarm over plans for the world’s first commercial octopus farm, arguing the creatures feel pain and emotions.