The behavioural cue of ‘flexible self-protection’ is a way to establish whether an animal feels pain, scientists say

Crickets that received the hot probe “overwhelmingly” directed their attention to the affected antenna – they groomed it more frequently, and tended to it over a longer period of time, he says. “They weren’t just agitated and flustered. They were directing their attention to the actual antennae that was hit with this hot probe.”

Link to the paper

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[–] sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

I remember road trips in the summer, in the 90's, where you'd just see a bunch of bugs splatter on your windshield, and where you'd have to periodically scrub them off with windshield scrubbers.

Now, 25+ years later, I almost never see bugs on bumpers and hoods and side mirrors. Certainly not to the same degree.

And I can believe that computer aided design helped make all cars much more aerodynamic so that fewer bugs would actually be hit and more would slip into the airflow around the car, but the sheer magnitude of the dropoff makes it totally obvious that there are just fewer insects around.