Do ants feel fear or pain?

Whether ants feel fear or pain as humans do is debated, but current scientific evidence suggests they experience nociception which is detection of harmful stimuli and show avoidance behaviors, but not emotional fear or pain in the human sense due to their simple nervous systems. Ants have sensory neurons that detect damage, heat, and chemicals and cause them to move away quickly, which is nociception, and they will avoid areas where they were previously harmed, indicating learning. For example, odorous house ants will retreat from hot surfaces and ants will avoid crossing substances that irritate them like cinnamon or vinegar. However, fear and pain as emotional experiences involve complex brain regions like the cortex that process suffering, which ants lack because they have only about 250,000 neurons compared to 86 billion in humans and a decentralized nervous system. Studies show ants continue normal activities even after losing a leg, and they do not show prolonged distress behaviors like mammals do, suggesting reflexive responses rather than emotional suffering. Some recent research on fruit flies and bees shows some pain-like responses including trade-offs between avoiding harm and seeking food, leading some scientists to argue for a basic form of pain experience, but this is not conclusive for ants. From an ethical perspective, many researchers recommend minimizing harm and using quick methods when control is needed. For pest control purposes, ants do react to threats and will try to escape, but whether they subjectively feel fear or pain as humans do remains unproven and is an active area of research in entomology.