The trouble with animals is that they just don’t speak. We are quite a long way from talking to the animals but some recent research has discovered that mice feel pain.
Just like us, mice make faces when they are in pain such as grimacing. Take a look at this picture and you can see from left to right the mouse in increasing pain.
mouse in pain
The pain is detected by making the mouse react to a poke in the back leg making it withdraw its leg. Heating the tail makes the tail flick, surprise surprise! (I thought children discovered this ages ago).
They are thinking of going on and using this information to work out whether painkillers actually work in animals or not.
You would have thought that evolution would have allowed them to go OWW or ARGH by now.
