ABSTRACT
The capacity to respond and withdraw from a pain-inducing event, or injury, helps an animal protect itself and also decreases the risk of further damage occurring. Thus, asensory system that supports the detection of tissue damage helps animals react appropriately to noxious events (Bateson 1991; Broom 2001). Animals that respond to tissue damage are more likely to survive and reproduce than those that are unable to detect when something harmful occurs. So being able to detect noxious events is an adaptive process and one that we should expect to be widespread across the animal kingdom (Kavaliers 1998).
