{"id":152516,"date":"2022-12-12T01:25:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T07:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/bees-may-feel-pain"},"modified":"2022-12-12T01:25:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T07:25:41","slug":"bees-may-feel-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/bees-may-feel-pain","title":{"rendered":"Bees may feel pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/bees-may-feel-pain3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We swat bees to avoid painful stings, but do they feel the pain <em>we<\/em> inflict? A new study suggests they do, a possible clue that they and other insects have sentience\u2014the ability to be aware of their feelings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an impressive piece of work\u201d with important implications, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher and expert on animal sentience at the London School of Economics who was not involved with the paper. If the study holds up, he says, \u201cthe world contains far more sentient beings than we ever realized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Previous research has shown honey bees and bumble bees are intelligent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/bumble-bees-are-surprisingly-innovative\">innovative<\/a>, creatures. They understand the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/bees-understand-concept-zero\">concept of zero<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/bees-get-addition-and-subtraction-new-study-suggests\">can do simple math<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/bees-recognize-human-faces\">distinguish among human faces<\/a> (and probably <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/humans-wasps-seem-recognize-faces-more-sum-their-parts\">bee faces, too<\/a>). They\u2019re usually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/don-t-worry-bees-are-happy?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D59512811959031092061303964398277325872%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1658818532&_ga=2.192702057.232720857.1658815640-101389936.1653506990\">optimistic when successfully foraging<\/a>, but can become depressed if momentarily trapped by a predatory spider. Even when a bee escapes a spider, \u201cher demeanor changes; for days after, she\u2019s scared of every flower,\u201d says Lars Chittka, a cognitive scientist at Queen Mary University of London whose lab carried out that study as well as the new research. \u201cThey were experiencing an emotional state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We swat bees to avoid painful stings, but do they feel the pain we inflict? A new study suggests they do, a possible clue that they and other insects have sentience\u2014the ability to be aware of their feelings. \u201cIt\u2019s an impressive piece of work\u201d with important implications, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher and expert on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}