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If your first instinct to notice a pesky fly buzzing around you is to hit it in the hope of sending it somewhere else or even kill it, well, you're pretty normal. We do not think about it often when it comes to sending insects that we find in our homes or even those who come too close to spend time outside, a new study published in Progress of science suggests that not killing an insect and hurting it can lead it to live the rest of its days in agony.
It is tempting to imagine that life forms such as insects do not "feel" pain, freeing us from any guilt we might feel by tapping a fly or walking on an ant, but this way of thinking is not quite right.
Scientists have long known that even less complex organisms such as insects have the ability to detect potentially dangerous stimuli, including physical injuries. It's called nociception, and although it's slightly different from the way humans treat pain, it's not that far.
What researchers did not necessarily know before this last round of research was whether insect injuries produced what we call chronic pain, or pain that persists long after a physical injury. In fact, they do it.
During a series of tests, fruit flies were amputated from one leg in a laboratory. The wounds have had time to heal. The scientists then continued the experiment by exposing the flies to various stimuli. Flies, like other animals and even humans, seemed to be much more sensitive to possible sources of new pain after being injured.
"The fly receives messages of" pain "from its body that then pbad through sensory neurons to the ventral nerve cord, the version of our spine by the fly.In this nerve cord are inhibitory neurons that act as a" "to allow or block the perception of pain depending on the context," says Associate Professor Greg Neely of the University of Sydney, lead author of the book. "After the injury, the injured nerve throws all its cargo into the nerve cord and kills all the brakes, forever.Then the rest of the animal has no brake on his "pain." The threshold of "pain" changes and they are now hypervigilant. "
The researchers suggest that it is the "insects chronic" version of the insect, in which injuries promote hypersensitivity and lower the overall pain threshold. In flies, it could protect them from other dangers, but in humans, it just makes us feel like junk food.
"It is important to note that now we know that the stage that causes neuropathic" pain "in flies, mice and probably humans, is the loss of pain brakes in the central nervous system. and definitely stop the pain, "Neely said.
Image Source: B Borrell Casals / Flpa / imageBROKER / Shutterstock
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