Fish cannot feel pain

Sometime back I read an interesting article in Hindu. Its about study into piscine neurology. After years of research scientists found out fish cannot feel pain. An academic study comparing the nervous systems and responses of fish and mammals has found that their brains are not sufficiently developed to allow them to sense pain or fear. The study is the work of James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology, who has been working on questions of neurology for 30 years. Awareness of pain depnds on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not posses. What fish probably feel is “nociception” and not pain. Similar to a person who is anaesthetized in an operating theatre will still respond to an external stimulus but he or she will not feel pain.

If you are non-vegetarian now you don’t need to feel bad about killing a fish, after all it won’t feel the pain. (similar to deaths during surgical procedure).