1 1 8 The Lije Story of the Fish 



At the same time, the brain is a very much smaller and 

 simpler structure than it is in the higher animals. In man 

 the weight of the brain in proportion to the body is much 

 greater than in fish. In man the outstanding feature of the 

 brain is the highly convoluted cortex of the cerebral hemi- 

 spheres, the thought center which dominates all the restj in 

 the fish there are practically no cerebral hemispheres, and 

 the dominating features are the parts which have to do with 

 the eyes, called the optic lobes. 



The principal exception is, as usual, the shark. In spite of 

 being a primitive fish the shark's brain is more like that of 

 the higher animals than is the brain of the bony fish, con- 

 taining a more advanced stage of the rudiments of the 

 cerebral hemispheres. Another difference is that the olfac- 

 tory lobes, not the optic, are the predominant features of the 

 shark's brain. The relative proportions indicate that the bony 

 fish is an animal whose actions are motivated largely by what 

 it sees, whereas the shark depends to a great extent on what 

 it smells J and the differences in behavior in the two groups 

 show that this is in general true. 



Having surveyed the fish's sense-organs and nervous sys- 

 tem, we are now in a position to consider that much discussed 

 question, "Do fish feel pain?" How the answer can be any 

 other than an unqualified yes is hard to see. But if the ques- 

 tion is changed to "Do fish suffer?" — or, better still, "Do fish 

 suffer as human beings do?" — then there is room for argu- 

 ment. One of the earlier psychologists, William James, 

 maintained that our feelings are the result rather than the 

 cause of our expressions of emotion. His theory that, "We 

 are sad because we weep, not we weep because we are sad," 

 and, "We are happy because we laugh, not we laugh be- 

 cause we are happy," was well known to an earlier generation 

 of college students. If there is any truth in this — and cer- 

 tainly there is to the extent that we can make ourselves 



