Far more animals than previously thought likely have consciousness, top scientists say in a new declaration — including fish, lobsters and octopus.
Bees play by rolling wooden balls — apparently for fun. The cleaner wrasse fish appears to recognize its own visage in an underwater mirror. Octopuses seem to react to anesthetic drugs and will avoid settings where they likely experienced past pain.
All three of these discoveries came in the last five years — indications that the more scientists test animals, the more they find that many species may have inner lives and be sentient. A surprising range of creatures have shown evidence of conscious thought or experience, including insects, fish and some crustaceans.
That has prompted a group of top researchers on animal cognition to publish a new pronouncement that they hope will transform how scientists and society view — and care — for animals.
Nearly 40 researchers signed “The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness,” which was first presented at a conference at New York University on Friday morning. It marks a pivotal moment, as a flood of research on animal cognition collides with debates over how various species ought to be treated.
Insects don’t really have brains. The complexity of their ganglia is not really comparable to what we consider a brain and seems rather unlikely that they have anything like our consciousness, just due to the difference in complexity. Does not mean we should treat them like shit, they are living creatures - but also not sure why we need to pretend they are something they are clearly not.
This doesn’t explain complex behavior seen in many insects like how bumblebees can learn how to solve puzzles from watching other bees performing the solution (this requires a minimal degree of visual recognition of the same species, theory of mind to understand they have a goal and what it is, recognition of their actions and the ability to translate them to copy them, etc).
Having a drastically different structure to their neurons doesn’t mean they can’t think.
“Same” neurons (they don’t have all the neuron types we have but in general one can say it’s the same neurons), just no complex brain structures. You can have very complex behavior completely reliant on pheromone systems, quite well studied in ants. I’m not to familiar with bumblebees so I would need to look into literature, but for example simple learning already happens at molecular level and does not require any thinking at all.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019
They show evidence of a degree of culture (socially shared knowledge)
Thanks, will check the paper out.
Yes, and if the argument is that, “we must all become vegans,” because animals experience pain or because they’re closer related to humans than plants and deserve more empathy, it fails for insects, and more so in the case of some animals we’re even closer related to, like echinoderms with decentralized nervous systems. In that case it would make more sense to farm both plants and arthropods (and echinoderms?), and while eating insects doesn’t seem appetizing or appealing to me more, I’m sure it would be fine after a few tries and with some quality recipes.
If it’s about animal intelligence, I don’t see any way to decide for or against it or even begin to approach it, since that definition isn’t even locked down for humans.
If it’s about sapience or sentience or consciousness, we can’t even resolve that with people when it comes to how to think of humans who are severely mentally disabled, comatose, braindead, etc. And obviously neither vegans nor omnivores are trying to eat human vegetables.
Even if we could assume we all agreed on a definition of consciousness, humans still don’t agree on how to treat other conscious humans with empathy, as we see day after day across the world.
It would be nice to at least see animal farming improve the approach to minimizing the pain and suffering of food animals that we certainly know have a pain response.
Not sure how your answer is related to my.
Just agreeing that it doesn’t make sense to attribute qualities to insects that they don’t have, and pointing out that even the terms being attributed don’t have clear agreed-on definitions when they’re used for humans.
Thanks for explaining, I somehow didn’t get your point.
I find it hard to express my thoughts concisely, and it often ends up being a wall of gibberish. 🫤
Yes, I agree, in just pointing out how difficult is to understand that. Theoretically, it’s not like a human-level intelligent insect couldn’t exist.
My thinking to challenge myself/ourselves: Then how do whole colonies decide and plan resources? When to gave truce or war with the neighbouring colonies (of same or completely different species?). Their war strategies resemble human wars without technology/weapons. They also cultivate insects, plants, and fungi. Some within colonies plan, deceive, and try to develop a new queen (instead of the queen doing it in purpose/strategy).
Having brains as such imho is part of the problem as it adds a lot of complexity for humans to relate to.
But even our brains don’t work and govern alone, major organs have a complex nervous systems of their own (complex in the sense of not having a centre).
Not as a direct comparison to insect, but eg cephalopod brains are also vastly different, yet clearly highly intelligent.
We understand most of your questions quiet well. It’s been a long time since I studied biology and I’m not working in that field anymore so I won’t be able to give you most answers from memory, but if you are interested you will find a lot of research on those topics. It’s mostly really rather automatic responses through pheromone systems with involuntary responses. Especially the wars of ants are quite well understood in that regard.
Cephalopod have different but also rather complex brain structures. Again - insects just completely lack higher brain anatomy. If you into those question I would highly recommend you to take an introductory lecture into neuroscience online. We don’t understand everything but we understand some things quiet well.
Jumping spiders show some level of consciousness. They’re intelligent predators that heavily use their sight to identify prey. They can recognise different prey types, learn their behaviours and adjust hunting strategies accordingly. A good example is how they are able to recognise when certain prey is acting odd, deduce it’s injured and drop their stealthy approach for a more direct one. They’re also capable of remembering their environment and using indirect and often complex paths to sneak up on prey.
Scientists have even observed them “dreaming”, which is likely when they do the information processing required for such comparatively complex behaviours https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/jumping-spiders-dream-rem-sleep-study-suggests
Bold claim to go from REM in sleep-like state to dreams and consciousness, and the original paper is not making that claim.
All of this seems rather possible even with basic learning mechanisms on molecular level. Not sure why you would claim that this need consciousness. But if you have a paper on this topic I would be more than interested to read them.
No papers that are actually concrete. Most of it is just speculation.
I’m not a scientist, and for me personally it’s enough to make me spend a bit longer thinking before immediately dismissing all insects as mindless automatons. Most probably are simple biological machines. Jumping spiders are however massive outliers in terms of insect intelligence, and a cursory Google search will provide a wealth of evidence for it.
I personally would also go as far as believing that they dream. I just don’t believe there’s a reasonable explanation for the REM like state other than some form of dreaming, even if rudimentary.
I’m not going to state that jumping spiders are fully conscious as 100% fact, there’s not enough proof for that. But they do have a proven ability to learn, and an ability to make somewhat complex plans. And all I’m trying to say is that we need more research before dismissing them so certainly.
Not a scientist my self, but I studies biology and neuroscience more specifically - just left the field. I will look more into jumping spiders, since it’s sounds interesting and I was not really aware that they are that different from other spiders. Now I’m more curious and I definitely agree that we need more research in general.