Yes, fish Feel Pain
The Scientific Evidence of Fishes' Suffering
In this clear and compelling book, ethologist Ila France Porcher examines one of the most persistent myths in the natural world. Drawing on modern neuroscience, animal behaviour research, and years of underwater observation of sharks and fishes in the wild, she explains what pain really is, how scientists detect it in animals, and why the evidence that fishes feel pain and suffer, is now overwhelming.
Fish possess the same basic pain systems found in other vertebrates. They learn to avoid harmful events, remember injuries, and change their behaviour for long periods after being hurt. Pain relieving drugs relieves their symptoms. Their brains become active in ways strikingly similar to our own.
So why does the myth persist?
This book explores the scientific evidence, the historical misunderstandings, and the powerful industries that benefit from the belief that fishes are insensible.
Along the way, Porcher introduces readers to the surprising intelligence and awareness of fishes—animals capable of advanced cognition, learning, cooperation, and complex decision-making. The conclusion is difficult to ignore. If fishes can suffer, the way humans treat them must be reconsidered.
Written in an accessible and engaging style, Yes, Fish Feel Pain brings together science, field experience, and clear reasoning to illuminate a question that affects trillions of animals every year.
Once you understand the evidence, you will never think about fish in the same way again.
The scientist who made the initial discovery that fish feel pain and suffer, Professor Lynne U. Sneddon, of the University of Gothenburg, wrote:
Why is there so much debate over fish experiencing pain? What does the science demonstrate? Ila France Porcher's book provides a compelling read and answers these questions and more. Just as Charles Darwin proposed pain is an essential motivational driver that allows animals to avoid danger and injury, the text provides sound reasoning based upon science.
There are many fallacies surrounding the ability of fish to experience pain and Ila dismantles these faulty opinions, concluding that humanity must consider fishes as sentient beings worthy of protection. I highly recommend this fascinating book written by an expert who has intimate knowledge of aquatic animals. Animal behaviourists and welfare scientists as well as the general public who value the aquatic world will find this is a must read.
Professor Culum Brown, researcher in fish cognition and sentience at Macquarie University wrote:
Fish have long been viewed as mindless automatons ripe for plunder. And that is precisely what we have done. Freshwater fish, sharks and rays are among the most imperilled animals on earth. Even the language we use in relation to fishing refers to “stocks” and “harvesting” as if fish are inanimate objects. Until recently, few people took stock of the welfare impacts humans have on fishes, but if fish are sentient and can suffer, then the effects far outweigh anything that happens in terrestrial ecosystems. The numbers are simply staggering.
Ila takes us on a journey exploring the scientific literature on fish pain and welfare. She does an admirable job translating scientific jargon into regular language, making the content accessible to the lay reader. The book is also a personal journey and there are many examples dotted throughout of her own experiences with fishes and sharks during her life in Tahiti. Her passion and love for the marine environment and the animals that live within it always shines through.
Jonathan Balcombe, Author of What a Fish Knows and Super Fly wrote:
The author has produced a highly readable, insightful and comprehensive explanation of pain in an enormous (and enormously important) group of animals in which it is still commonly and conveniently denied. This book will be a valuable reference work for anyone who wishes to be armed with the evidence supporting fish pain. Written by a world-travelled biologist and naturalist with a rich library of experiences, this insightful, lucid, and important book deserves a wide audience.
Reviews
A Personal Tale of Fish Suffering
Ila does a fantastic job of translating a complex scientific issue into one that everyone can understand. Her explanations of the scientific evidence of fish pain are dotted with her own personal experiences with these animals. In the end she challenges the reader to rethink how we treat all animals when faced with the reality that fish can suffer.
Professor Culum Brown, Australia
Thought Provoking and Compelling
This book is an assist to better understand the human role in the world. It is one of a number of books written by the author documenting her many years of studying animal behavior around the world. She is an author committed to animal welfare. This book carries on her mission of documenting and publicizing her experiences with a species that many commonly dismiss as irrelevant. It is easy to empathize with “cute” animals such as puppies or kittens – not so much for the less captivating. For years it was assumed most animals felt no pain. Animal cruelty was prevalent and accepted with this excuse. As science, understanding and empathy evolved we gradually accepted that all creatures are sensate and “worth” treating humanely. With time we are realizing that prejudice is what is restricting our perceptions. This book illustrates that fish are also feeling creatures. A copy of this and Ila’s prior books should be on the shelf of every individual who is interested in the science of animal welfare. Our attitudes and legislation is changing to reflect our increased awareness of our prior cruelness. I highly recommend reading and owning a copy of this book.
Dr. Wolfgang Zenker, Canada
Fish Are Sentient Beings
"Yes, Fish Feel Pain" is an amazing read; drawing on her work as an ethologist, Ila France Porcher explains clearly why fish are far more than the inanimate objects they’re often portrayed as.
Through countless examples and case studies, Ms. Porcher shows us what sensitive, intelligent beings fish are, and that they pass the self-awareness test. Fish also display avoidant behavior again and again when shown something that triggers a memory of pain or discomfort.
Not only do they make tools, fish show clear signs of cognition; they apparently have memories far longer than three seconds.
Yes, Fish Feel Pain has confirmed for me something I was always aware of—that we are interconnected on this planet, and fish are much more sentient than most people realize.
*Yes, Fish Feel Pain* is a Fascinating Book
I found the book *Yes, Fish Feel Pain* to be a fascinating read. As a scuba diver, I spend a lot of time underwater with marine life, and from my observations, I have always suspected that fish can feel pain. This book offers scientific evidence that supports this belief.
A fascinating read filled with scientific findings and practical observations. Raising questions on the ethics and the methods by which humans harvest one of the world's largest food sources.
Beth Sopko, New York, USA
Pain Matters to Fish
Fish are the first marine vertebrates to appear in Earth’s oceans more than 300 MA ago, long before the appearance of mammals in the Cenozoïc. Their development has lasted hundreds of millions of years. Being highly evolved creatures, fish have stored an amazing genetic memory.
I always have this memory of strolling by fish market restaurants in Hong Kong, where fish are kept in aquariums open for customers to watch. Holding a fish net, an employee would collect a fish for a diner, throw it on the pavement and without any emotion, hammer it with a wooden stick until dead. Soon to be delivered, cooked, on your plate, sometimes later. A horrifying vision, which depicts the cruel behaviour of mindless humans.
Of course, fish are animals; they can think, feel and perceive electromagnetic vibrations, which help them to navigate the water element. For a human being to think otherwise is an aberration. As a renowned shark ethologist, Dr Ila France Porcher dismisses the stupid belief that fish do not feel pain in her latest book. She brings forward scientific evidence and addresses the concept of pain, fear and anxiety in fish. The fact that, due to their intelligence of observation, they can analyse behaviour and react accordingly for safety. Their memory awareness allows them to navigate and orient themselves underwater. They perceive scent and magnetic fields. Eye contact is important to fish. Their ability for social learning allows them to relate to others and recognise other fish. They practice nest building, create wedding mounds and use tools such as rocks to crush sea urchins. Eye contact is important to them. Fish show curiosity, awareness and facial recognition, definitive proof of intelligence. I have had fish following me into dark underwater caves while diving, to find out what I was up to. As an experienced underwater photographer, I am fully aware of the surprising connection with fish.
Finally, Ila France Porcher analyses myths and misconceptions, having no romantic picture of the fisherman. The fishing industry is bringing forward the 6th mass extinction in the oceans, claiming that fish are lower animals, with no neocortex and no right brain. But they have a highly sophisticated forebrain. The truth is that pain matters to fish. A humane method of killing fish has now become appropriate for moral and ethical reasons. Being different from mammals does not mean you are stupid.
Pierre Constant, France
Observing the True Nature of Fishes
I am always amazed when I read Ila’s books and articles. She is not only a scientist with intricate observations, but also a humanitarian who both understands and cares about nature and the inhabitants at all levels. She observes the true nature of fishes – which is often overlooked especially by industry. Ila has not only walked the talk, but also swam it – along with many different fish species, including sharks. So, when she describes interactions with different fishes in multiple locations and places, this is real (not AI telling a tale). Yes Fish Can Feel clearly demonstrates their reactions from painful experiences along with their ability to learn from such experiences – not just reactions but new habits developed by sentient beings. I strongly recommend this book to anybody who honestly wants to learn and hopefully also help reduce oceanic destruction and support less well understood life forms in whatever ways we can.
Evelyn Abell, Canada
CynicalSnail, Shark Diver, UK
Yes, Fish Feel Pain
Indeed they do!
A well-reasoned case for what should be obvious but is consistently denied from venality or moral convenience. This is no rant of the tree-hugger vegan kind, but a calm progression through the actualities of biology that mean, very simply, that the case is made without logical jumps or fallacies, or indeed emotion (although the mere mention of pain must provoke an emotional response in our limbic system). The argument is made that anthropomorphism should not be part of the narrative, and indeed there is no need, in fact it is quite improper in a scientific account, and although once or twice the choice of words gets dangerously close it does not have any real effect.
If there is a defect it is the absence of references for many of the statements - there are just 18 citations; there should be many more. Knowing some of the background I know that these are not mere assertions, but one or two points I would have been moved to look up, had the reference been there, as it was a matter I thought I ought to understand better. One can hope that the 2nd edition (soon!) will rectify this. Even though many will not have (easy) access to such sources, other reviewers will recognize the effort involved in collating this material, and its accuracy.
Seeing this item, a friend said, spontaneously and firmly: "Of course they do! It's b*****y obvious! Just because they don't look like us ... ". The trouble, is of course, and the motivation for this book, that too many have not given thought to the matter. For them, this may be an eye-opener.
Anyway, in a form accessible to readers of any background, the story is told clearly and (mostly) succinctly (but some repetition of the main points is perhaps inevitable). Thought-provoking, if nothing else, but that was the point, it would seem.
Exciting and informative! A must read if you love animals!
I’m ashamed to say that I have not considered the lives of fish in any serious way! This book has corrected my way of thinking about them. Ila France Porcher has gone to great lengths to illustrate scientifically and with her own personal anecdotes that fish feel pain, and react in ways that prove it. She has told of many examples from her own observations, how fish behave in a thinking, feeling manner to their environment. This is a fascinating read, interesting and informative, and very revealing about the fishing industry worldwide. I would definitely recommend it.
Joyce Little, Canada
The question of what it is to feel pain has been widely discussed in philosophical circles. Is it possible to feel pain and not know you are in pain? Is it possible to doubt whether someone screaming and writhing in agony in front of you, as the result of a fresh and hideous injury, is in pain? In a rare consilience between the abstruse discussions of philosophers and the gold-standard of sanity, common sense, we can affirm with certainty, how to answer these questions.
The question whether fish feel pain is one few have seriously considered, and not for the best of reasons. Given the devastation inflicted on the global populations of these fascinating animals by the commercial fishing industry, it is so much easier to consider them mindlessly en masse rather than to step back and ask – heaven forbid – whether they should be considered as individuals. For, suddenly, we enter a very different landscape (seascape) of discussion based not on crude assertions and convenient presuppositions, but on finely tuned evolutionary adaptations, cognition, physiology, neuroanatomy and behaviours of what instantly become, once the perspective shifts, individuals.
What makes Ila France Porcher’s new book so powerful is how convincingly she welds the points in the two paragraphs above into a seamless whole, that can yield but one conclusion. As an unusually sensitive and thoughtful field-explorer of animal behaviour, it was always obvious to her that fish feel pain. But very, very few people have spent as many hours in the sea as she has, observing, interacting, reacting and playing with fish (first and foremost, for Ila, blackfin reef sharks on Polynesian coral reefs). One can confidently assert that many of those who claim fish don’t feel pain have never spent five minutes in the water with them or, if they have, it is only to spear them and then dismiss their desperate writhing as pain-free.
The author takes us on a pellucid journey through the realms of logic, evidence and cutting-edge science to establish that, beyond all reasonable doubt, fish indeed fell pain. This is a powerful book not only because of the ineluctable strength of its conclusion, but also because of the enthralling intellectual journey one embarks on as one turns the pages. ‘Yes, Fish Feel Pain: The Scientific Evidence of Fishes’ Suffering’ should be a wake-up call about our barbaric attitude towards, and therefore treatment of, these amazing animals.
Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch, UK
Laurie R., Canada
I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of this new book from a friend of the author. This is an engaging and informative read. I was delighted to learn of fish having personality and agency in their world of water. I was shocked to hear of how fishing businesses operate in the wild and how cruelly fish and other sea creatures are treated, and often discarded and wasted, by the factory fishing process. The author has a great deal of scientific fact and personal experience supporting her thesis that we must begin to see fish as we do other more domesticated creatures, and begin to treat them humanely and with sympathy.
I would caution readers that this book contains some difficult material regarding how sea creatures are treated, and also that the book is written at a somewhat advanced level. It is not for children.
A Powerful and Eye-Opening Must-Read: Yes, Fish Feel Pain
This is one of the most important books I have read in years. In Yes, Fish Feel Pain, ethologist Ila France Porcher tackles a subject that affects trillions of animals every single year, and she does so with clarity, rigor, and unflinching honesty. I enjoyed it immensely from beginning to end. It is not only deeply informative but genuinely transformative. Once you finish it, you will never look at fish—or the way we treat them—the same way again.
What makes this book stand out is how brilliantly Porcher simplifies complex science without ever dumbing it down. She draws on modern neuroscience, animal behavior research, and her own extensive firsthand observations of fishes in the wild to dismantle one of the most stubborn myths in the natural world: the idea that fish are insensible and cannot feel pain. She explains exactly what pain is, how scientists reliably detect it across species, and why the accumulating evidence for fish sentience is now overwhelming. Fish possess the same basic pain systems found in other vertebrates. Porcher presents all of this in an accessible, engaging style that makes the science not just understandable, but compelling and urgent.
Along the way, she also reveals the surprising intelligence and awareness of these remarkable animals—creatures capable of learning, cooperation, strategy, and complex decision-making. These insights alone are fascinating and deeply moving.
The book doesn’t shy away from asking the hard questions. Porcher explores why this myth has persisted for so long, examining historical misunderstandings and the influence of powerful industries that benefit from the convenient belief that fish don’t suffer. Her reasoning is clear, evidence-based, and impossible to dismiss.
Most importantly, the ending is profoundly uplifting. Rather than leaving the reader in despair, Porcher invites us to adopt an entirely new and more compassionate perspective on the countless different minds sharing our planet. She calls for a necessary reconsideration of how humans treat fishes, and in doing so, she opens the door to a broader, more empathetic view of animal consciousness and our ethical responsibilities.
I cannot recommend *Yes, Fish Feel Pain* strongly enough. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about science, ethics, animal welfare, or the future of life on Earth. This book deserves to be widely read, discussed, and acted upon. Porcher has done an amazing job of bringing rigorous evidence to light in a way that truly changes hearts and minds. Pick it up—you’ll be grateful you did.
Matthew Meier, USA
Franzy Porter, Shark Diver, French Polynesia
Rethinking What We Know About Fish
This book presents an important and timely message about how we understand and value fish. It challenges long-held assumptions and encourages readers to reconsider the intelligence, awareness, and emotional lives of aquatic animals. For those who spend time observing marine life firsthand, many of the ideas feel grounded in common sense, even if they have not always been widely acknowledged.
The later chapters are especially clear and direct, and the discussion of fish vocalizations adds a compelling new dimension to the conversation. This book is a thoughtful and meaningful contribution that will resonate most with readers who are open to reexamining their perspectives on the natural world. It invites deeper empathy and a more careful look at the lives unfolding beneath the surface.
Jennifer Idol: The Underwater Designer