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Does Pain Really Increase Fitness?

So does the sensation of pain really increase fitness? (Fitness as in biological terms - ability to survive and reproduce in the environment).

I just can't see a correlation between pain and increasing fitness. Pain for an human can be an indicator that something is wrong. So we can heal ourselves. But say that an animal gets injured, pain surely let's the animal know that a certain part of his body is damaged so that the animal would be more careful. But does it do anything more than that? Can he heal himself? What is the use of pain?

I feel like pain not only useless but it also decreases fitness. Pain mentally handicaps an animal and the suffering probably makes it even more difficult to sense danger or fight.

Other than that, I can name numerous other ways to indicate that something is wrong other than pain. For instance, sensation of vibration instead of pain.

So how did we evolve to feel the sensation of pain?
You remember that hot thing you touched that burnt your finger/hand/arm etc? And you avoided doing it again? That's why pain is useful.

I'm no evolutionary biologist but I'd imagine that the ability to feel pain was an evolutionary benefit to our ancestor's survival (avoidance of dangerous activities) long before we differentiated into our own species.

I'd actually love to read the thoughts/findings/knowledge of an actual evolutionary biologist on this.

Just thought I'd edit this to add that more serious injuries like breaking a bone are probably more painful to incite more fear in conducting the activity that led to the injury in the first place. It's risk vs reward behaviour; if there's little risk of pain, and a high chance of reward then you're going to want to do the task at hand, but if there's a higher risk of pain and therefore injury, then you'll be less likely to carry out such behaviour.

It's also possible that pain could have played a role in rinsing the gene pool of defective genes. If a person is likely to be in pain for most of their life due to poor genetics, then that makes them less likely to live longer and therefore less likely to produce offspring, thus ridding their genes from the gene pool.

Interesting topic this, OP. I commend.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 2
Original post by lewjen
You remember that hot thing you touched that burnt your finger/hand/arm etc? And you avoided doing it again? That's why pain is useful.

I'm no evolutionary biologist but I'd imagine that the ability to feel pain was an evolutionary benefit to our ancestor's survival (avoidance of dangerous activities) long before we differentiated into our own species.

I'd actually love to read the thoughts/findings/knowledge of an actual evolutionary biologist on this.

Just thought I'd edit this to add that more serious injuries like breaking a bone are probably more painful to incite more fear in conducting the activity that led to the injury in the first place. It's risk vs reward behaviour; if there's little risk of pain, and a high chance of reward then you're going to want to do the task at hand, but if there's a higher risk of pain and therefore injury, then you'll be less likely to carry out such behaviour.

It's also possible that pain could have played a role in rinsing the gene pool of defective genes. If a person is likely to be in pain for most of their life due to poor genetics, then that makes them less likely to live longer and therefore less likely to produce offspring, thus ridding their genes from the gene pool.

Interesting topic this, OP. I commend.


That does make a lot of sense. Thank you!
No - pain is not the same as muscle fatigue. The latter is a sign that your muscles have been thoroughly exercised and will thus develop over the days and weeks after. The former means you have injured yourself and you should not continue exercising that area or else you may cause permanent injury.
(edited 6 years ago)

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