if they're in my house, they're gonna die. otherwise they can do what they please.

This may become my new signature. Though I'm not quite sure why.

is your family scottish?

I feel like I am making the world a safer (less scary) place for my wife, and that makes me happy.

Bugs ain't nuthin but little biomechanical robots what deserves to be smushed before they go for our eyes. (That goes for crustaceans too. I'm not fond of exoskeletons.)

Though I do feel guilty when I get a bee in my car and I let him out miles away from where we started--I mean, what does a lone bee do when it loses its hive?

I thought only things with central nervous systems or something actually felt pain.

I am no scientist, a point which we can all agree on, but I am not really too sure that a bug feels pain.

Plus, a spider isn't an insect is it?

Funny this thread comes up tonight, because we were in the basement watching tv, and my 2 year old son is over playing with his toys, and he comes over to me and my wife, and wipes his thumb on the carpet like he wiped a buggar off. So I say to him, woah, what are you doing there, and I get down close to find the buggar to clean it up, and I see a couple twitching legs. He had squished one of those things with the bazillion legs and came over to us to wipe it off his fingers. Whenever he sees a bug, he just tries to catch it in his 2 fingers and always squishes it.

It cracks me up.

Is your sons name Lenny?

well maybe i'm wrong..
but when i see a bug run for its life, i imagine it feels pain. or else it wouldn't be running from the massive object slamming into its body.

i don't study bugs.

i'm pretty sure the last time i did was in elementary school.

He's 2 not 20.

Iambic post-ameter

I think that is instinct. Like, "shit, I need to stay alive I had better run away." Survival...not necessarily pain. I mean, that's what I assumed and thought. I am not attempting to make declarative statements.

Come on. That was funny.

Look, you're a teenager -- you're already sensitive and your imagination runs away with you. You really shouldn't do drugs. Just give the wacky terbacky a break for a week or two, everything'll be fine.

I would cry from a commercial for AM Gold before I would cry from killing an insect.

never.
are you insane?

Learn to kill it in one stomp.

Since seeing James And The Giant Peach, yes.

LAMEST POST EVER!!!!!!!

Insects do have central nervous systems, and can feel pain, albeit maybe in a robot "danger, will robinson!" sort of way. In my house, if it's an outdoor critter, it gets a free ride back outdoors. If it's a human commensal, such as a cockroach or a silverfish, a firebrat or those damned little sugar ants, it's death time.

I take no pleasure in taking life, but if it serves a purpose, I do it well and swiftly. I have killed many kinds of life in the name of science, hopefully with a pure enough heart that I don't end up on a giant pinning board someday.

I have always done well with animals to near-doolittlean proportions, regardless of how uncuddly they might be. I guess that is a large part of why I'm a biologist.

Uhhh, insects cannot feel pain. This is fairly well documented. Here's one quickie article

http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/comm ... elly-e.htm



Equating 'survival instinct' and pain just does not make any sense

This is in no way definitive proof. This is conjecture by eggheads, who are very often wrong.

Maybe not definitive, but very convincing. If any side of the argument relies on hand-waving and theatrics, it is certainly the side contending that insects feel pain.

Maybe, but I find reasoning along the line of "we find no evidence of pain" to be specious, as they can't actual ask the species.

But I don't buy the "animals can't think or feel love" argument, either.

Grow up with farm animals and you know that's nonsense.