Introduction
In the past, the welfare of invertebrates was largely unexplored and little attention has been paid to it by many experimental biologists. According to Mather [
1] “Consideration of welfare of other animals often is anthropocentric, focussing on mammals similar to humans”. Fortunately, this view is gradually changing as it becomes clear that other groups of animals may be sentient and capable of feeling pain and suffering in consequence, particularly decapod crustaceans [
2,
3] and cephalopod molluscs [
4,
5,
6] and possibly some insects. This may also be true of other groups of animals, and it behoves us to treat all invertebrates with respect when carrying out experimental procedures upon them.
Many different substances have been suggested and used for anaesthetising invertebrates [
7], some more successfully than others. Clinically used general anaesthetics have several functions and many different types exist, either volatile or systemic anaesthetics. We know the general principles behind their use because of the vast amount of clinical experience with them. In essence, the role of an ideal general anaesthetic is to act as a muscle relaxant, an analgesic, an anaesthetic and an amnesic. To achieve all these properties is difficult with a single substance, and various adjuvants usually need to be used, resulting in administration of a cocktail of drugs. In a clinical setting, the vast majority of patients are unaware of surgery being carried out and have no memory of it, so they can claim to have felt no pain, but this is much more difficult to demonstrate in invertebrates. However, there is strong support for the view that cephalopods can feel pain [
8,
9,
10]. For example, they avoid locations previously associated with noxious stimuli [
11]. There is also accumulating evidence for pain in arthropods [
12]. Thus, we need to exert great care when handling all invertebrates, to reduce stress and pain to the animals, particularly when carrying out physiological experiments.
For some time, it has been suggested that magnesium chloride by itself can act as an anaesthetic agent in cephalopods (e.g. [
13,
14,
15]), but its main use is as a muscle relaxant, which may render an animal immobile but cannot ensure that the animal is pain-free and there has been substantial controversy on this issue [
7,
16]. It works by competing with calcium ions to prevent synaptic release of neurotransmitters in the periphery and does not usually gain access to the central nervous system [
5]. In 2018, we suggested that MgCl
2 might be useful as an adjunct to anaesthesia [
5], and here we explore this concept in more detail. There is a fuller discussion of the mode of action of magnesium salts as muscle relaxants elsewhere [
5], but it should be noted that MgCl
2 may also be a mild central sedative analgesic [
17,
18]. However In our view volatile anaesthetics are preferable and isoflurane has proved successful for anaesthetising
Octopus vulgaris [
5,
19]. Isoflurane is a non-flammable halogenated ether compound used by both clinicians and veterinarians. When administered through the respiratory system it has direct access to both the peripheral and central nervous systems.
We recently developed a successful method for anaesthetising
Octopus vulgaris using clinical and [
19] without any adjunctive agents, but this took approaching two hours from the start of anesthetisation to full recovery. In these experiments, we gradually increased the concentration of isoflurane in seawater from 0.5% to 2.0% and found that at 1.0% isoflurane, the chromatophores started to flash in an uncontrolled manner, a sign of loss of central motor control of chromatophores in
Octopus vulgaris [
20]. After this the animals became relaxed, unresponsive to touch stimuli and anaesthetised [
19]. Recovery and anaesthetisation were judged physiologically by the rate of respiratory pumping, because most clinical anaesthetics depress minute ventilation in mammals (Berge and Warner, 2000). Two behavioural tests were also used: local withdrawal responses of the arms and siphon, and loss of chromatophore patterning. A shorter period of anesthetisation should reduce the stress on the animal as well as reducing the quantity of anaesthetic used. Here we report, for the first time in
Octopus vulgaris, that the use of MgCl
2, as both a pre-anaesthetic agent and as an adjunct to anaesthesia, significantly reduces the time needed to anesthetise the animal successfully and also promotes more rapid recovery.
Discussion
In the experiments described here we demonstrated that Octopus vulgaris can be pre-anaesthetised with MgCl2 for 10 min and then fully anaesthetized with 1% isoflurane for five minutes with a maximum recovery period of about 20min.
We observed that the normalised respiratory rate (%) decreases gradually during the first 10 minutes of the experiment due to the presence of the MgCl2 alone, declining by a normalized value of 20%. Subsequently, adding isoflurane (1%) induced a significant decrease in the respiratory rate, declining by 44%. This effect carried over into the subsequent phase in which the animal was put in fresh aerated seawater, but started to decline after a further 2 min, with considerable variation between animals. However, after 20 min (35 min into the experiment overall) of refreshing the bathing solution with clean aerated seawater, all animals recovered, but the normalised respiratory rate did not reach the 100% in all animals (median ± standard error, 90,69 ± 1,60). However, all the animals were in good condition. They were monitored the animals for the subsequent 7 days, and all were healthy and behaving normally.
This compares very well with our earlier study [
19], where increasing doses of isoflurane (0.5 to 2.0% in seawater) were gradually applied to 10 specimens of
Octopus vulgaris over a period of about 40 min, followed by a recovery period of up to 1 hr. Clearly this new protocol is much less stressful for the animals and utilises much less isoflurane. In addition, the animals showed few signs of discomfort in MgCl
2 and there were no flashing responses as the animals became paler in colour and touch reflexes declined as the animals became immobilized. However, in 1% MgCl
2 in aerated seawater, the respiratory rate declined by less than 20% and stabilised after about 10min. On addition of 1% isoflurane the respiratory rate gradually declined as expected, since a declining respiratory indicates an increasing depth of anaesthesia. Furthermore, isoflurane is known to be suitable for maintenance anaesthesia [
25] as it also enhances muscle relaxation, while MgCl
2 diminishes the early excitatory phase of anaesthesia [
26] as we previously suggested [
5].
Although magnesium chloride has been used as an anaesthetic for Octopods and other cephalopods [
16], but is usually applied externally giving little or no access to the CNS. It is our view that it is wholly inappropriate as an anaesthetics because MgCl
2 is a basic muscle relaxant although it may have minimally sedative properties as mentioned above [
19]. We therefore refute the suggestion that it can be used as an anaesthetic substance in its own right as suggested elsewhere [
16] where increasing concentrations of MgCl
2, up to 3.75% were used to paralyse specimens of octopus and cuttlefish over about 20 min and were compared with the effects of ethyl alcohol, another non-anaesthetic. Apparently, these substances reversibly depressed evoked activity in the pallial nerve, but no records were shown. In order to clarify nervous activity under these circumstances, recordings of electrical activity need to be clearly demonstrated, perhaps using the recently published methods of Gutnick et al [
27].
Properties of general anaesthetics. Clinical anaesthetics, such as isoflurane and related compounds, have well-known systemic and cellular actions which have been demonstrated on mammals and on gastropod molluscs such as
Lymnaea stagnalis [
28] and on
Octopus vulgaris [
19]. They include ion channels and voltage-gated channels for sodium, potassium and calcium and tend to block synaptic transmission [
29]. These are general properties and actions and should not be ignored by investigators working on invertebrates. Furthermore, Keltz and Mashhour [
30] recently provided good evidence that a generalisable mechanistic framework for the actions of general anaesthetics is emerging from studies of a wide range of species “from
Paramecium to primates” and includes
Drosophila, C. elegans, gastropod molluscs, such as
Lymnaea stagnalis, etc., as well as plants.
Appropriate Maintenance Anaesthesia for experimentation has not yet been determined for Octopus vulgaris and further experiments are required to determine the most appropriate level of anaesthesia in fresh animals, relaxed with MgCl2, which will probably require a slightly higher concentration of isoflurane if the animal is to undergo surgery.
In conclusion, 1% magnesium chloride is a useful pre-anesthetic agent for isoflurane anaesthetisation of Octopus vulgaris. It reduces the concentration of isoflurane necessary for complete anaesthetization, significantly reduces the stress on the animal and the time course of anaesthesia.
Note on the use of vaporisers. Application of volatile general anaesthetics need not involve the use of vaporisers, although they simplify the protocol. Instead volatile anaesthetics can simply be dissolved in saline at appropriate concentrations as performed by Dickinson (31). Isoflurane is usually a controlled substance, not freely available and is best obtained through collaborating veterinarians.