Measuring Pain in Insects

Abstract Pain is an aversive subjective experience that is consciously experienced as unpleasant. Causing unnecessary pain to animals is ethically wrong because pain is intrinsically aversive. Trillions of insects are used, harmed and killed per year, but they are excluded from animal welfare legislation because they have not yet been tested for their capacity for pain. Therefore, the evaluation of whether insects can feel pain is a necessity. This case describes potential ways to measure pain in an animal for which there is currently little or no published research about which behaviours might indicate pain. Information © The Author 2025