c ROB BROWN Ouch! T he People: for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have dug deep into their PETA pockets and spent millions of dollars on-a war against anglers — barbarians, they say — who derive perverse pleasure ‘from inflicting pain on fish. Commercial fisher folk who snare wild fish that will die by some form of asphyxiation, crushing, or clubbing, escape the ire of these sensitive doers of good. The net pens of aqua- culture, concentration camps of the piscine world where inmates are subjected to genetic experimentation and fed chemicals to alter their morphology are ethically sound to PETA. , Before they hurl ane-more rock into a Brit- . Ce ev ogra ss ish trout stream, or call one’more catch and re- tease angler a sadist, the PETA people will have to come to terms with, the findings of Dr. James D. Rose, a professor of zoology and phy- siology at the University of Wyoming who has been working on questions of fish neurology for almost 30: years. In his recent paper Do Fish Feel Pain?, Dr. Rose goes right to the heart of the matter, which is to be found in the brains of fish and men. Pain, says Dr, Rose, has both a perceptual aspect and emotional aspect. For example, a few weeks ago I reclined in Dr. Rick Tabata’s dental chair and watched a TV embedded in the ceiling as he deftly removed the decay and nerves from one of my incisors. I felt no pain, - and, thanks te Dr. Tabata’s considerable skill, _Jhe only,emotion Lexpenienced wasrglief. ¢ ax 4 fs Without freezing; it's safe to say I would , have experienced a suite of contrasting emo- “tions. The nerves in my jaw were absorbing pain but Rick had chemically disabled the transmis- sion line that normally relays pain messages to my brain, proving that behavioural reaction to pain is separate from the pain itself. Physiologists refer to the detection of injury by the nervous system as nociception, Nocicep- tion, it turns out, does not have to be accompa- nied by that unpleasant psychological exper- ience we cal] pain. Brainless amoebas and star- fish react to nociceptive stimuli,’ without being aware of it. : In back-boned animals like;fish and men, the spinal cord and the brain stem control reac- tions to injuries. Human existence is dominated by functions of the massively developed cere- bral hemispheres. Fish have only primitive cere- bral hemispheres and their existence is domina- ted by brain stem functions. The brains of verte- brate animals differ greatly in structural and functional complexity. Cold-blooded animals, such as fish, frogs, salamanders, lizards and snakes, have simpler brains than warm-blooded “vertebrates. Fish have the simplest types of brains of any vertebrates, while humans have the most complex brains of any species. — Specific regions of the human cerebral hemispheres, especially the frontal lobes, gen- erate the unpleasant emotional aspect we know as pain. But, as Dr. Rose points out, these re- gions simply do not exist in the much simpler brains of fish. A fish‘ brain is a regulator capable of a limited number of operations. _Dr. Rose uses an automotive analogy: think of a fish’s brain as a “1949 Volkswagen auto: mobile," he suggests. “By comparison, the human ‘brain is built on the same basic plan as that of a fish, but with its massive expansions and additional capacities the human brain is more like a modern luxury car with all-wheel drive, climate control, emission controls, elec- tronic fuel injection, anti-theft devices and ‘computerized systems monitoring. These refine- _ ments and additional functions couldn’t exist without massive additional hardware. The mas- sive additional neurological hardware of the ~ psychological dimension of our existence, in- cluding pain experience.” "It appears that the s‘:sggles of a fish in the talons of an eagle or the claws of a bear are no “more a result of suffering any more than the flight of a fish hooked by an angler. Does this flight we anglers call a fight signify fear? Unli- ‘|. kely, argues Dr. Rose, who points out that some of the same brain regions responsible for pain are also responsible for that complex emotion we call fear; they too are absent in the brains of ‘fish, Butterfly collectors who gas their ephem- eral victims then pin them to display boards and anglers who hook fish in the lips with barbless hooks — only to let them go so that they. may re- “produce ~ are not the ogres brigades of sancti- ~ monious. ethicists have made them. out to be it seems, oes : - The PETA people, "bang for their bucks. By SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN TERRACE’S hottest teen curling rink is just days away from competing against the nation’s top 13 teams as the Canada Winter Games get boys won gold at the 2002 B.C. Winter Games earning them the right to represent the pro- vince at this week’s competition. Not bad for a team from deep in the north- west where curling clubs are separated by hun- dreds of kilometres and high level competition is hard to come by. oO The team is known for its natural talent, the ability to keep cool under pressure and an in- credible sense of dedication to their sport. Michael Dahms, Carl Haugland, Kore Me- lanson and Matt Gyorfi make up the quartet and for the past 10 months they’ve been train- ing hard on and off the ice. week, they have high level coaches helping train them mentally and physically and of course, they spend every bit of spare time they They work out at the gym several times a ALL. DUDDED UP: Terrace’s red hot juvenile curlers are heading Team B.C. jackets and on and off-ice uniforms last week before to the Canada Winter Games in style — they were presented with Countdown to the games can afford on the ice. “We've got the sleeping plan, we’ve been in the gym, we're ready,” says skip Michael Dahms. * Gnder way in Bathurst;;Néew Brunswicks'"'" ie»! The “sleeping plan” is meant to get them 4 *: The excitemeit’ 4 /and the pressurél!2"Hhs\, a tustomed, to, the, time, change ;time''hefore,, bédh building for.nearly a year, ever since the