Insects and Other Animals [Possibly] Have Consciousness

Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare

A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.

In 2022, researchers at the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London observed bumblebees doing something remarkable: The diminutive, fuzzy creatures were engaging in activity that could only be described as play. Given small wooden balls, the bees pushed them around and rotated them. The behavior had no obvious connection to mating or survival, nor was it rewarded by the scientists. It was, apparently, just for fun.

The study on playful bees is part of a body of research that a group of prominent scholars of animal minds cited today, buttressing a new declaration that extends scientific support for consciousness to a wider suite of animals than has been formally acknowledged before. For decades, there’s been a broad agreement among scientists that animals similar to us — the great apes, for example —  have conscious experience, even if their consciousness differs from our own. In recent years, however, researchers have begun to acknowledge that consciousness may also be widespread among animals that are very different from us, including invertebrates with completely different and far simpler nervous systems.

The new declaration, signed by biologists and philosophers, formally embraces that view. It reads, in part: “The empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including all reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects).” Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.

If you swat at a fly, it flies off.  It clearly has a survival instinct, i.e. it doesn't want to die. I can't imagine how that is possible without consciousness. Yes, you could program a machine to get out of the way if it's sensors sense something nearby but in the case of organic creatures, isn't consciousness a simpler and therefore more likely explanation?  I don't understand why it has taken scientists so long when simple everyday observation tells us so much.

[Laird]

Exactly, Brian. I made a nearly identical point elsewhere, and not so long ago, to a guy claiming that non-human animals - including dogs and cats - were literally automata without subjective experiences. If that is the case, then somebody's programmed those automata to act exactly like conscious beings motivated by feelings - emotions and sensations - because it is impossible to explain their behaviour in any other way.

It's so strange that so many intelligent people are so idiotic, failing to see what's right in front of their faces: the obviousness of sentience throughout the animal kingdom, including insects, given the obviousness that they are motivated. The failure to recognise it in the vegetable, fungal, and microbiotic kingdoms is more understandable because it's not quite as obvious in those cases.

What's odd to me is the simultaneous denial of animal consciousness in tandem with the propaganda that one day computer programs will be conscious.

Feels very much like an attempt to prematurely bias the public into thinking consciousness can be explained in terms preferable to particular viewpoints rather than honest science.

[Laird]

Yep, it's certainly predicated on a particular viewpoint: I don't know how the idea of animals-as-automata - despite their behaving in ways we easily recognise in other humans as being motivated by sentience - can be sustained or even contemplated other than on the materialist viewpoint that through abiogenesis followed by a process of unguided evolution, unconscious matter became more and more complex, until at some arbitrary point - presto! - it became sentient, and all creatures below that point lack sentience, but nevertheless behave in ways similar to us because they are similarly a product of evolution.

What's odd to me is the simultaneous denial of animal consciousness in tandem with the propaganda that one day computer programs will be conscious.

Feels very much like an attempt to prematurely bias the public into thinking consciousness can be explained in terms preferable to particular viewpoints rather than honest science.

I think a lot of the resistance to the view that consciousness of various sorts resides in many or most non-human animals of many kinds arises because of practical socio-political reasons, and also for psychological reasons. For instance taking this new understanding seriously would mean fully realizing the unimaginable abysmal suffering being routinely imposed on millions of factory-farmed animals like cattle, pigs and chickens, to say nothing for the fish. This would be rationalized as a perhaps necessary evil perpetrated by human beings in order to live. This realization makes people uncomfortable, leads to feelings of guilt and to difficult to deal with cognitive dissonances. So many people probably either deny it or just deliberately keep it out of their minds.

Of course it could also be seen purely logically as an acceptible tradeoff because for humans to live they must eat, and meat seems to be essential in the human diet (of course vegetarians and vegans would disagree). It certainly seems psychologically essential in that meat seems very naturally to form a large part of the human enjoyment of eating, as a kind of built-in syndrome.

Also, a large segment of the resistance to the notion of pervasive animal consciousness must be the natural opposition of the established commercial food production interests, which make untold profits from this rather dirty at base business. A major impending threat to these profits must engender a lot of socio-political resistance involving political manipulation.

All these reasons for the considerable resistance to and denial of the idea of pervasive animal consciousness across the animal kingdom must certainly have the end effect of discouraging much research into the issue, due to the resultant reluctance of funding sources for instance.

Of course it could also be seen purely logically as an acceptible tradeoff because for humans to live they must eat, and meat seems to be essential in the human diet (of course vegetarians and vegans would disagree).

Of course we disagree.  I have been vegan for many years now and I am still alive and healthy and climbing the local rock without losing breath at 59 years old whenever the weather permits.  Two of the major dietary science bodies in the world say that a planned vegan diet is adequate for people at all stages of life.  Statistically, vegans have the highest life expectancy.  Whatever else you might be able to say about meat, it is not essential unless you live in a country that is inhospitable to plant life.  I am still alive - when do you expect me to die from malnutrition?

Of course we disagree.  I have been vegan for many years now and I am still alive and healthy and climbing the local rock without losing breath at 59 years old whenever the weather permits.  Two of the major dietary science bodies in the world say that a planned vegan diet is adequate for people at all stages of life.  Statistically, vegans have the highest life expectancy.  Whatever else you might be able to say about meat, it is not essential unless you live in a country that is inhospitable to plant life.  I am still alive - when do you expect me to die from malnutrition?

Honest question - Aren't infants suggested to have certain nutrients from milk (beyond a mother's breast milk) and possibly even meat when developing?

Honest question - Aren't infants suggested to have certain nutrients from milk (beyond a mother's breast milk) and possibly even meat when developing?

I haven't brought an infant up since being vegan but apparently it is possible to do it without animal products.  Many vegans do.  When I brought up a child, after coming off formula milk and on to solids, cows milk was only a supplement so is probably easily replaced.  I know Unnatural Vegan on Youtube has brought up two healthy children on a vegan diet and many other vegans do too.  I imagine they have to work closely with a registered dietitian to do it safely.