Conta Natura

"Perhaps people should think twice before reaching for the fly spray," said Dr Stephen Wickens, of UFAW. Dr "Chris" Sherwin, of the University of Bristol, described experiments in which a chimpanzee had been given an electric shock in its hand ,and had pulled its hand away,thereby showing its great intelligence. But cockroaches, slugs and snails - none of which are protected by anti-cruelty legislation - reacted in the same way. Obviously they did not pull their hands away, having none to pull, but he claims they showed a similar reaction:
"Slugs will perform in some of these tests the same way as dogs, chimps and cats. They show far more complex patterns of behaviour than we had thought. And if they do feel pain, isn't that a welfare issue?"
It may not be easy to know exactly what Dr Sherwin means by a welfare issue, but the suggestion is plainly that we should consider legislation making it a criminal offence to cause suffering among slugs, snails, cockroaches and flies. Nobody mentions worms, so cruelly cut in half whenever anybody puts a spade into the ground. We have always been assured that they feel nothing. Is this scientifically correct? If not, where do we go from there, in an age which is so concerned about pain?
A later speaker at the UFAW conference, Dr Keith Kendrick, of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, raised the stakes even higher by insisting that sheep have many human qualities: The way they recognise faces and the way they process face images is very similar to the way we do it . . . animals like sheep are doing things, as far as the brain is concerned, that are so similar to us it does imply that they are capable of some level of consciousness."
Does this mean that we should treat ovine life as if it were human? Fortunately, Dr Kendrick admitted that he occasionally ate lamb, despite his findings. This seems to put the discovery that cockroaches feel pain into perspective. Like many insects, cockroaches are a nuisance. They are greedy and dirty and widely credited with spreading disease, although I am not sure exactly what diseases they spread. Perhaps they experience pain when they are squashed, swept up and put in the dustbin but most people will harden themselves to the fact and decide they simply do not care.
Cockroaches may fulfil an important role in reducing our present obsession with animals to absurdity. Not even. New Labour will quite dare pass a law forbidding People to kill cockroaches in their own homes. There used to be a song many years ago which remonstrated with people who ate Brussels sprouts on the grounds that they were robbing a cabbage of its young, and reminded us that every lettuce has a heart. It was satirically intended, of course, but the sad truth is that the animal welfare industry, with its millions of dollars from American sentimentalists, is a formidable power in the land. As soon as it has stopped people from hunting, shooting and fishing it will move to protecting caterpillars in our gardens.
Its chief officer in this country would appear to be a large young man called Neil Hansen. From a conventional, middle class background, he is now a full-time activist living on welfare, and foolishly allows himself to be photographed in the newspapers, usually demonstrating outside someone's home. He seems to embody the great animal movement. I wish him no particular harm, but I must confess to a fantasy, that if ever I find myself in the unpleasant situation of having to squash a cockroach, I shall shut my eyes and imagine that it is Neil Hansen under my shoe. I hope it does not hurt too much. The Sunday Telegraph May 14 2000