Do Fruit Flies Have Emotions?
May 15, 2015 at 8:44 am
(This post was last modified: May 15, 2015 at 9:53 am by Hatshepsut.
Edit Reason: omitted word "arises" inserted
)
This just in from Caltech: When a shadow passes over a fruit fly at rest, it might take off or freeze as a defensive response. But researchers have found that is not just a robotic reflex. Fruit flies can be primed by a shadow pass, showing heightened sensitivity to a repeat of the same "frightening" stimulus for several minutes afterward. If they were eating at the time, they do not return to their meal immediately as one might expect of a startle reflex, but continue milling around for a while. Hence they are able to transfer context from moving shadow to food and make an association. This differs from classical conditioning because the flies can't be taught long-term aversion to food.
Does the result mean that fruit flies can experience fear? Anderson and his colleagues at Caltech don't advance a claim one way or the other, cautioning that even if the flies do have feelings, these probably don't resemble ours because of the enormous differences between our brains and theirs.
If it turns out that they do feel, though, then the question arises of whether they should be included within the circle of sentience as many propose that we do for great apes, and granted a status of personhood. With fly as person, you now must put your fly swatters away! The plot premise of The Fly (1986 film, David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum), where a scientist inventing a teleportation device accidentally turns himself into a fly-human hybrid, might not be so absurd.
Rejecting personhood for fruit flies could mean the former isn't contingent on ability to experience subjective feelings, including horrible ones like fear or severe pain. To inflict pain on an animal capable of feeling it then becomes licensed by moral standard provided it's not "sentient." In this view, ability to reason, at least in certain ways, is presumably the criterion for determining sentience. Empathy for others is one such form of reasoning power, where one is able to imagine herself in the position of a peer and so anticipate the peer's feelings and responses.
What think you? Lame, or trending?
Stoller-Conrad on fruit flies in Caltech News: http://www.caltech.edu/news/do-fruit-fli...ions-46769
Does the result mean that fruit flies can experience fear? Anderson and his colleagues at Caltech don't advance a claim one way or the other, cautioning that even if the flies do have feelings, these probably don't resemble ours because of the enormous differences between our brains and theirs.
If it turns out that they do feel, though, then the question arises of whether they should be included within the circle of sentience as many propose that we do for great apes, and granted a status of personhood. With fly as person, you now must put your fly swatters away! The plot premise of The Fly (1986 film, David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum), where a scientist inventing a teleportation device accidentally turns himself into a fly-human hybrid, might not be so absurd.
Rejecting personhood for fruit flies could mean the former isn't contingent on ability to experience subjective feelings, including horrible ones like fear or severe pain. To inflict pain on an animal capable of feeling it then becomes licensed by moral standard provided it's not "sentient." In this view, ability to reason, at least in certain ways, is presumably the criterion for determining sentience. Empathy for others is one such form of reasoning power, where one is able to imagine herself in the position of a peer and so anticipate the peer's feelings and responses.
What think you? Lame, or trending?
Stoller-Conrad on fruit flies in Caltech News: http://www.caltech.edu/news/do-fruit-fli...ions-46769
