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.
I thought this should be obvious to anyone who’s interacted with an animal, ever. But sadly there are a great many people who don’t agree there is a ‘soul behind the tv screen’ as it were with animals more primitive than things like cats and dogs. It can be easy to use to justify human cruelty.
And it’s easy for you to say it’s obvious and you’ve thought that all along. You’re not the demographic they’re trying to inform.
I found that too many people who call themselves a dog person because they are terrible with animals. Dogs have been bred to put up with us. But give them a dog that’s either bred for a specific task, or one that is a bit feral and they’ll say the dog is difficult. It isn’t, the owner is just incompetent.
I’m no dog or cat person. It’s easier for me to name the animals I hate (damn mosquito’s). I get along with most animals, even instant-swatting cats labelled as difficult. Only because I respect their boundaries. And I’ve stuck my hand behind a fence to pet a pitbull more often than a sane person would consider healthy.
I think that pet breeding should be banned and only allowed by veterinairy instances, universities and animal shelters. Imagine if people couldn’t buy a pet on a whim? Imagine if they had to order in advance and get certified they know how to take care of one? We’d have less animal cruelty, and less strays.
Also, sheep are underrated pets. Holy damn they are social. They are basically a walking pillow and love scratches behind the horns. And wag their tail when happy. Same for rats. I say rats are more suitable as pets than dogs. Social, fun, trainable (be warned of the lazy males), don’t bite, love cuddles, and you don’t need to castrate them to “keep their fun behaviour.” You do have to remove the ovaria as it makes female rats prone to cancer otherwise.
I’m gonna have to pass on the sheep, well at least the males. We had one, as a companion to a horse, and the damn thing would head butt us half the time and try to hump us the other. We had to carry a stick in just to feed it, or risk ending up with a line of spooge down our backs. It wasn’t right.
Rats, on the other hand, are great pets. More people should give rats a chance.
Shoutout to rats, really amazing creatures. Apparently they have metacognition!
Oh damn. The sheep I pet was a male. I’m not surprised about the assholery though.
I’m a dog person because between cats and dogs, I lack respect for cats. Yes they are cute and soft and sometimes cuddly. It’s not worth the ammonia smell everywhere and the scratching me when they come to me for pets, or the biting, clawing furniture, etc. Mostly the pee in the house.
I’ve done the things like changing the litter box and using new litter frequently. I’ve given them off limits spaces so they aren’t bothered. I’ve done the things and more. My daughter still has a cat downstairs. I’m not a jerk to the cat, but I just don’t like cats. I’ll pet, hold, play, etc. Cats are simply not a favorite for me.
Dogs… Ok the other hand… Obnoxious playful dopey friends that can learn cool things. Big cuddle bugs is what they are.
You share the same problem with the “too many people calling themselves dog people.” You state you lack respect to an animal, and then complain about said animal who is known to fight when threatened. That cat can tell you don’t like him, and so he doesn’t like you. Similar with horses. Just like many other animals, they sense your emotions. Except horses are very very good at it, and cats much less so.
I mean… The cat in the house is still our cat. We love him and have had him for 10+ years. He’s chill and tromps around the house. Sometimes plays and sometimes cuddles with everyone. I love the cat but I generally don’t like cats.
I’m not sure I follow what you’re putting down. I don’t feel like it applies to me.
Be that as it may, wasps can still fuck right off.
What was obvious to most of us as kids (and what was attempted to be beaten out of us as kids) is now being accepted by scientists. Love it.
Right, I had no idea scientists were trying to say these animals weren’t sentient. Stupid scientists.
It’s not really that they all thought they didn’t, it’s that there was a lack of evidence to declare it to likely be true. Better testing methodology to exclude other possible explanations have contributed.
In the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes argued that animals were merely “material automata” — lacking souls or consciousness.
I believe we’re all “material automata.” The mistake isn’t thinking animals are more primitive than they are, but thinking we are more sophisticated than we are. We’re nothing special.
The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?
Jeremy Bentham, 1789
This is self evident to any animal lover
This reads like “scientists find that women have emotions and feeling and can feel pain”
It’s self evident to anyone not plagued by speciesism, regardless of their feelings about animals; I don’t think we ought to allow that much latitude to opt-out of the obvious moral consequences of this truth.
Considering that as sentient beings ourselves, we don’t really even understand sentience, it’s kinda bold to assume we’ve got a monopoly on it.
Similarly I wonder how much of the observation is projection. We don’t know what the bee thinks it’s getting out of rolling the ball around, we don’t know that the fish was actually reacting to seeing itself. At some level we’re assuming that’s what’s going on because it makes sense to us.
We are limited by our own understanding and imagination, but I don’t know any other explanation for silly little nonproductive activities other than “play”. Is it because it is play, or is it beyond our understanding? We can’t communicate with them, but we can draw parallels between their behaviors and our own natural behaviors.
Humans have a really, really hard time NOT assigning human attributes to every other living thing.
One thing that makes this hypothesis seem possible, is that some researchers are suggesting consciousness is external, and eternal. Meaning all living things are essentially antennae.
That really reeks of “scientists invent God.” And I question the actual motives of any researcher that would suggest such an idea.
Show me the data that suggest that. Describe a test that might prove it.
I dunno about all that, but I used to have an African fish that would always get the zoomies when I’d come home from work. He’d spit water at me or gravel at the glass to get my attention, and loved playing hide and seek and always brushed up on my hands when I was working on his tank. He never reacted this way to visitors, just me.
Exactly this.
And to get to this you need experience, research, and knowledge.
And trying to explain this to humans in general would take several generations in best case scenario (much less actually doing/changing anything with that knowledge).
Usually anything attacking the doctrine of how extra super special & way more unique than other equally unique species are is meet with severe (auto-?)hostility.
Even without our status in question, just the “threat” of something being slightly less/differently inferior to us is immediately attacked by the vast majority.
And once we decide something is inferior to us it takes extra effort to change the popular belief (like racism between humans as well - just designate some human as non-human & they are considered about as much as billions of yeast bacteria as we are baking bread).
I think the auto-hostility is just hubris. Some people would like to pretend they know everything about everything. So when learning new things they get hostile because, oh no, we found them out.
Especially in today’s environment, I agree, hubris and greed.
Ofc they are sentient.
I fail to understand why do we will push the ‘no expression of the face means no intelligence or emotions bcs most of us communicate that way’.
It always turns out that whatever brain mechanics we think of as our own we later & with minimal research find in other animals as well.
Evolutionary speaking too, same brain centres (with various density and relative size - of which we dont have all that dense brains & and most parts are underdeveloped), it’s absolutely unlikely we would have developed something new in a few millions of years (especially given smol & fragmented populations facing extinctions and smol gene pools - tho that could be interpreted the other way too). It’s just specialisation, some (advantageous) functions grew, other were optimised to the point of non-existence.
Then again, given how intolerant are we to our own species in terms of our emotional response to slight visual differences (I mean vcompletely evolutionary, uncanny valley thing, the next village of humanoids might have been competing for the same resources, which makes different culture/colours/face shapes = danger, etc), how we choose to ignore compassion (like ‘look at that idiot, ofc they have no feelings, not unlike me, the superior being’) … ofc we can’t immediately recognise and understand what and how animals are feeling. It takes a lot of time, effort, & empathy (mechanical empathy, like to fully underhand their environment from their pov, and emotional empathy, how they are processing that environment).
And the bigger the difference and habitats, the harder it is (like any sea animal really). Anything non-mammal seems alien to us, no matter the smarts (eg cuttlefish, that can clearly experience psychological trauma on individual and population/cultural level).
And then there are fungi. After that plants. And whatever we choose bacteria to be (like beings, or just a literal matter of environment we live within). Etc :).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Came around to read the paper. Indeed very interesting - also not suited to base broader conclusions about coinciosness in insects in my opinion, the idea that culture might be supported by much simpler neuronal mechanisms is fascinating to me. Very speculative it might very well be than that even coinciosness can emerge in less complex systems then previously thought. Also bumblebees are even more dope than I previously thought. Great read thanks.
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. 🫤
Just give a small summary at the end maybe, like you did after I asked you? Might help yourself to stay on point.
damn, guess i’m more comparable to a goldfish than is reasonably conceivable to the average person.
I always instinctively knew it and that’s why i love animals so much. My son was born just like me, with a love and respect of all creatures, even insects (Beside mosquitoes and flies because these can really eat all my electric tapper)
It seems odd to me that this article is framing octopodes as a surprising inclusion. Aren’t they generally known to be some of the most intelligent animals of all?
Yes and no. It has long been known that they are surprisingly intelligent, but the structure of their nervous system is very strange and decentralized which makes it fairly surprising nonetheless.
I heard there’s a theory that they didn’t originate on earth
Lol what’s even a mollusc amirite?
I also think these eukaryotic creatures that fit neatly in evolutionary lines must be… aliens.
We have fossil evidence otherwise. Their greatest barrier to developing higher intelligence is that they die after reproduction, so they’ll never have pressures to develop more symbolic thought or pass on knowledge.
Octopuses are mostly antisocial anyway and wouldn’t want that. Squid, by comparison, use they high intelligence for social interaction but most of it is trying to navigate a social setting where you want to eat as much as you can, mate with your neighbors, and avoid offending your neighbors enough that they eat you. There’s still only so much you can do when you die after a year or two because of a biological time bomb that kills you with sex hormone overload.
H. P. Lovecraft just in absolute shambles in the corner over there.
This raises some interesting questions. The premise of these scientists is that consciousness can be quantified empirically. Yet many of the tests described in this article can be passed by machines. Does that mean that the scientists who signed the declaration consider some smart devices to demonstrate consciousness? And what are the implications?
These arguments never make much sense because there’s no broadly accepted philosophical consensus on what sentience is.
I agree with this. I’ve read the statement that the scientists wrote and I honestly could not figure out what they are trying to say. I just don’t see how any of the tests they reference would challenge the idea that we don’t know how to define or test consciousness.
Sentience is not necessarily the same thing but its in a similar place. It may be possible to test depending on the definition.
I’d hazard the guess they don’t, and it’s easy to justify it - our current AIs don’t have the internal aparatus needed to develop counsciousness (yet). They’re way too simple and way too straightforward to be intelligent, whether intelligence is an emergent property or a fundamental structure.
Seems like a strong argument that consciousness cannot be determined by testing behaviors.
True, you can’t test a literal rock and expect the result to be telling of counsciousness. Good thing the researchers aren’t solely determining it by testing behaviour, and instead selected a group in which emergent intelligence is one of the probable phenomena.
Is emergent intelligence the scientific definition of consciousness? The article seems to be describing something else.
Is emergent intelligence the scientific definition of consciousness?
There exists no practical or effective difference.
not surprising, I remember watching spider move when I was a kid and thinking they were obviously intelligent. sure they creep me out but I hate killing them for no reason, same with literally any other living thing
So arrogant are we
I’d be tempted to go and say “no shit,” but even the most obvious things have to be proven or tested. How you define consciousness can also change a lot.
