Speaker 1: Hey, Please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, the production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. I'm More Hey, chim and today we're answering
Speaker 1: the question do animals have consciousness? Have you ever looked
Speaker 1: into your dog's puppy eyes and wondered what's going on
Speaker 1: in there? Can animals have thoughts, sense of self and
Speaker 1: even dream What about chickens, or fishes or even bugs?
Speaker 1: Can they have an inner world and feelings? To find out,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to a couple of experts on
Speaker 1: animals sentience, and we're going to learn how to tell
Speaker 1: if an animal has consciousness, which ones have it, and
Speaker 1: we're going to ask the big question about what it
Speaker 1: would mean for them to be conscious. So dream along
Speaker 1: with us as we answer the question do animals have consciousness?
Speaker 1: Enjoy Hey everyone? Today on the episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: find out if different animals have consciousness. We're going to
Speaker 1: learn whether the monkeys have it, where their dogs have it.
Speaker 1: We'll even talk about whether their chickens and crabs have consciousness. Now,
Speaker 1: consciousness is a super tricky topic, so the first thing
Speaker 1: we're going to do is define what consciousness is. And
Speaker 1: to do that, I reached out to an animal philosopher.
Speaker 1: Here's doctor Heather Browning.
Speaker 2: So I'm doctor Heather Browning. I'm a philosopher who works
Speaker 2: at the University of Southampton, and I'm most interested in
Speaker 2: using the methods of philosophy to answer questions about the
Speaker 2: minds of animals. So animal sentience and animal welfare incredible.
Speaker 1: First of all, can you tell us what is consciousness?
Speaker 2: All right? So we start with the really big questions.
Speaker 2: So consciousness is something that's proved notoriously difficult to define.
Speaker 2: A lot of philosophers try to think really hard about this,
Speaker 2: and essentially, when we want to talk about consciousness, I
Speaker 2: think the best way is to think about it through
Speaker 2: examples of the kinds of experiences that are familiar to us.
Speaker 2: So you might think that, for instance, a rock doesn't
Speaker 2: feel anything when water falls on it, but we do.
Speaker 2: When a grain falls on our skin, it feels like something.
Speaker 2: For that, when we're asleep, it doesn't feel like anything
Speaker 2: to be us. When we're awake, we're seeing, we're smelling,
Speaker 2: we're tasting. All these experiences have this quality of feeling
Speaker 2: that are associated with it, and that's what makes up consciousness.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's very tied to the idea of a feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So one way to think about consciousness is that it's
Speaker 1: the opposite of being a rock. Rock exists in the
Speaker 1: world and things happen to it, but it doesn't feel anything.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have thoughts about the things happening to it. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's nothing going on inside of a rock. Another way
Speaker 1: to think about consciousness is that it's also kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite of being a robot. You can imagine making
Speaker 1: a robot that looks like a person in this program
Speaker 1: to act and respond like a person, but that robot
Speaker 1: we don't have an inner life the same way you do.
Speaker 2: But when I look at another person, the only information
Speaker 2: I have about them really is the words that come
Speaker 2: out of their mouth and the behaviors that they do,
Speaker 2: and they all resemble mine in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: But technically that person, you know, they could be sort
Speaker 2: of an android with nothing going on inside, or they
Speaker 2: could be what philosopher's like to call philosophical zombies, which
Speaker 2: is a person who essentially is like a robot. You know,
Speaker 2: if there's no kind of light on, no spark.
Speaker 1: Now, there are other things that are part of being conscious.
Speaker 1: For example, some people say having consciousness is having a
Speaker 1: sense of self, you know, like a feeling that you're
Speaker 1: a person in this world. Another part of consciousness is
Speaker 1: having the power to make decisions that you don't do
Speaker 1: things automatically, but that you think about them. There are
Speaker 1: lots of definitions, but for now, just hang on to
Speaker 1: the phrase. It means that you have an inner life.
Speaker 1: And so the question now is do animals have this
Speaker 1: inner life? Well, the problem is that we can't ask them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean this is something philosophers like to
Speaker 2: debate a lot, and they call it the problem of
Speaker 2: other minds. And we don't know when we look at
Speaker 2: another person, we don't know for sure that they're not
Speaker 2: a philosophicals on video, they're not an android. And I mean,
Speaker 2: right now you're just seeing me on a screen. I
Speaker 2: could just be an AI. You know, shot out. That's
Speaker 2: from program.
Speaker 1: I Am an AI. By the way, you're being interviewed
Speaker 1: by an artificial interviewer.
Speaker 2: We're very sophisticated on us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. We worked on it a lot. What doctor
Speaker 1: Browning is saying is that it's hard enough to know
Speaker 1: if another person has consciousness, much less an animal we
Speaker 1: can't even communicate with, So how can we know if
Speaker 1: an animal has consciousness? Well, it turns out scientists have
Speaker 1: come up with sort of an animal consciousness test to
Speaker 1: tell us about it. Reached out to doctor Alex Schnell.
Speaker 1: You might remember her from a few episodes ago. He's
Speaker 1: a comparative psychologist who is all so in National Geographic Explorer,
Speaker 1: and she talked to us about how smart octopuses are.
Speaker 1: It turns out she's also a researcher on animal consciousness. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, doc, there's not for joining.
Speaker 3: Us again, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Are you conscious right now?
Speaker 3: Slightly? It's about thirty two degrees celsius. I don't know
Speaker 3: what that is fahrenheit, it's very very high.
Speaker 1: Scientists like her study consciousness and animals have come up
Speaker 1: with a set of indicators or tests that can tell
Speaker 1: you whether an animal potentially has consciousness. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: What are the indicators? I guess?
Speaker 3: So the indicators are We've got four that are neural
Speaker 3: that really look at the presence of nose receptors, so
Speaker 3: receptors that can respond to stimuli like a prick or
Speaker 3: heat or an electric shop whether they have integrative brain
Speaker 3: regions where that information can be combined and integrated.
Speaker 1: So the first indicator scientists used to tell if an
Speaker 1: animal has consciousness is whether the animal can feel pain.
Speaker 1: And really the scientists are interested in whether the animal
Speaker 1: can feel anything, but they pick pain because there's a
Speaker 1: lot more data out there on it. Then see whether
Speaker 1: an animal feels happy or sad. Okay, that's step number one. Now,
Speaker 1: if an animal does feel pain, the sign of consciousness
Speaker 1: is what the animal does about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then behavior indicators include protective behaviors. So you've
Speaker 3: brought octopus, so I'll tell you for an example, if
Speaker 3: it octopus is inflicted in with something that might cause
Speaker 3: pain or harm, they generally show protective behaviors that you
Speaker 3: might see in your pet dog or cat at home.
Speaker 3: You know, they'll stroke their arm or rub their arm,
Speaker 3: or wrap their injured arm really close to their body
Speaker 3: and protect it with their other arms, and they won't
Speaker 3: use that as often.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So a sign of consciousness is if an animal
Speaker 1: feels pain and then acts to protect where they feel
Speaker 1: the pain, because that means they have a feeling and
Speaker 1: they're conscious of it. It affects how they behave The
Speaker 1: next step is whether they learn from their experiences.
Speaker 3: Another indicator is learning from experience, just learning that doing
Speaker 3: a particular activity, if you're getting a negative emotion from that,
Speaker 3: to stop doing that.
Speaker 1: So if an animal feels something like pain and they
Speaker 1: stop doing it, that's a sign that they're in a
Speaker 1: way thinking about that feeling and that they have learned
Speaker 1: what caused that feeling. That's another sign of consciousness. And
Speaker 1: the last test of whether an animal has consciousness is
Speaker 1: whether they can make choices that trade off different feelings.
Speaker 3: And then also the last one is showing a preference
Speaker 3: or an aversion to an experience that is going to
Speaker 3: have a particular vailance. So if you keep getting stung
Speaker 3: or prodded in one particular room, then you might avoid
Speaker 3: that room in the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, these are going to make more sense a little
Speaker 1: later when we apply these tests to different animals, and
Speaker 1: I think you're going to be surprised how some animals,
Speaker 1: even bees, respond to these tests. So this is a
Speaker 1: list of indicators that let's say an animal checks all
Speaker 1: of the boxes, then it's a very clear candidate that
Speaker 1: it may be has sentients and maybe consciousness is how
Speaker 1: you would phrase it.
Speaker 3: So definitely like Marx that there's strong evidence that they
Speaker 3: are sentient.
Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, we're going to apply this
Speaker 1: set of tests to a wide range of animals, including dogs, chickens, hermit, crabs,
Speaker 1: and even bees to find out which of them have consciousness.
Speaker 1: So stay with us. We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about whether animals have consciousness, and so far
Speaker 1: we talked about what that means and how you might
Speaker 1: tell even animal has it. Scientists who study this have
Speaker 1: somewhat of a test for consciousness or sentience as some
Speaker 1: people call it, which involves looking at how animals react
Speaker 1: to pain. How they react to, for example, getting tricked
Speaker 1: by a sharp object or getting a slight electric shock
Speaker 1: can tell you a lot about whether they have feelings
Speaker 1: and whether they have complex thoughts about those feelings. And again,
Speaker 1: they use pain because a lot of the research out
Speaker 1: there focuses on whether animals feel pain. Now, the question
Speaker 1: is which animals pass this test to Monkeys, dogs, birds, crabs,
Speaker 1: or even insects show signs of consciousness well. According to
Speaker 1: doctor Heather Browning, it's kind of hard to tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's still a lot of uncertainty and
Speaker 2: controversy about which animals are conscious or which animals are sentient,
Speaker 2: because this is something that we're talking about that's happening
Speaker 2: inside their heads, inside their minds, and we don't have,
Speaker 2: you know, a consciousness scope that we can just go
Speaker 2: and look into the minds of animals and tell us
Speaker 2: what they're thinking or feeling. We don't even have that
Speaker 2: for other humans.
Speaker 1: Now. The thing about consciousness is that most scientists don't
Speaker 1: really see it as a kind of on or off thing,
Speaker 1: meaning that you either have it or don't. The more
Speaker 1: common view is that it's something that's on a scale.
Speaker 2: So that is something that there's still debate about, and
Speaker 2: I think people aren't sure because I think intuitively it
Speaker 2: makes sense to us to think about it as being
Speaker 2: on or off, but that doesn't trap very well with
Speaker 2: how we think about a lot of the rest of biology.
Speaker 2: When we think about the kinds of evolved traits that
Speaker 2: other animals might have, often they do come in degrees.
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, some animals can fly and some animals
Speaker 2: can't fly, but there's all kinds of gradients in between
Speaker 2: there where some animals can glide, some animals can fly
Speaker 2: a little bit, and some animals can't do that at all,
Speaker 2: And so it makes sense that almost all traits and
Speaker 2: biology are actually on these kinds of gradual scales, and
Speaker 2: consciousness is probably something.
Speaker 1: Like that, Yeah, well, I feel like right now we're
Speaker 1: in a very different time zone, and so I am
Speaker 1: only partially conscious right now myself. Yes, okay. According to
Speaker 1: this definition of consciousness, doctor Browning says most experts agree
Speaker 1: that most mammals, down to about a dog or a mouse,
Speaker 1: demonstrate signs that they have consciousness. It's clear that they
Speaker 1: have feelings and that there is some kind of inner
Speaker 1: life going on inside their brains.
Speaker 2: So it's very very difficult, I think, for anyone who's
Speaker 2: had a pet dog and spend any time with it
Speaker 2: to really, you know, and not think that there's someone
Speaker 2: there on the inside in the mind of that dog,
Speaker 2: but they're really interacting with another being or another subject there.
Speaker 1: So there isn't much debate about whether animals like dogs
Speaker 1: or horses, or elephants, or pretty much any mammal has
Speaker 1: some form of consciousness. Where it gets triggier is in
Speaker 1: animals like birds, or even chickens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think what chickens get over looked quite
Speaker 2: a lot. But yeah, they are actually quite cognitively complex animals.
Speaker 2: You know, chickens can learn very well, they have good memories,
Speaker 2: they make complex decisions, they have complex social lives. You know,
Speaker 2: they're able to remember and interact with a lot of
Speaker 2: different chickens as well, and thinking about what they feel.
Speaker 2: Certainly we see chickens that have the kinds of injuries
Speaker 2: that we would think would be painful when a human.
Speaker 2: They will preferentially go and eat food that has a
Speaker 2: painkiller in it. Even that food tastes worse and a
Speaker 2: normal chicken that wasn't in pain wouldn't want to eat it,
Speaker 2: which you know, is very strong evidence in my mind
Speaker 2: that they are feeling pain, that there is something there
Speaker 2: that they're trying to stop, just like we would.
Speaker 1: I see, there are things they like and they things
Speaker 1: that they don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, And a lot of work in animal
Speaker 2: welfare science is trying to look at, you know, what
Speaker 2: animals like and don't like through doings that they call
Speaker 2: preference testing, you know, giving them different situations and seeing
Speaker 2: what they choose.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is part of that test that I mentioned
Speaker 1: to you before. Here's what the experiment looked like. You
Speaker 1: offer a chicken two balls of food. One are the
Speaker 1: bulls is food that tastes great to a chicken, and
Speaker 1: the other ball has food that doesn't taste that great
Speaker 1: to chickens. Now, normally chickens will choose the food that
Speaker 1: tastes better, But if the chicken is in pain for
Speaker 1: some reason, and you put pain medicine in the food
Speaker 1: that tastes worse, the chicken will choose the one with
Speaker 1: the pain medicine. And this, scientists argue, is a sign
Speaker 1: that chickens can feel and have a preference and make
Speaker 1: a choice based on that preference, all of which are
Speaker 1: signs of consciousness.
Speaker 2: And chickens have been the subjects of a huge amount
Speaker 2: of these tests. And you know, do they prefer to
Speaker 2: stand on the floor, do they like to be on
Speaker 2: a perch? Do they like to be in a nest box?
Speaker 2: Or do they like to nest in a corner on
Speaker 2: the ground. And yeah, they're very good at telling us that,
Speaker 2: And it really does seem like they have those kind
Speaker 2: of rich sets of preferences about what they want and
Speaker 2: what they don't want what they like and what they
Speaker 2: don't like.
Speaker 1: Okay, the next animal we're going to talk about are fish.
Speaker 1: Do fish have consciousness?
Speaker 2: So fish a roment of travelers. They ran into a
Speaker 2: lot of skepticism because their brains are very different from ours,
Speaker 2: and so the kinds of inferences that we make from
Speaker 2: our types of brains and saying well, look, other animals
Speaker 2: have brains that are similar, so they probably produce the
Speaker 2: same kinds of experiences. You should have different kinds of brains,
Speaker 2: And so people wanted to use that as a reason
Speaker 2: to say, well, they can't have consciousness, And people who
Speaker 2: worked with fishes and look at their behavior wanted to
Speaker 2: push back on that and say, well, no, a fish
Speaker 2: might have a different brain than ours, but we might
Speaker 2: still be able to have consciousness. Fish do a lot
Speaker 2: of these sort of complex things. They respond when they
Speaker 2: receive I mean we would think would cause pain, or
Speaker 2: if they get an injection in their lips of a
Speaker 2: mild acid that should cause them pain, they will wrap
Speaker 2: their face on the tanks, they will lose interest in
Speaker 2: their food, They'll be less likely to respond to predators
Speaker 2: because they're distracted. They will preferentially go to tanks. They
Speaker 2: have painkillers in them. All those same kinds of responses
Speaker 2: that if we saw them in a mammal or a
Speaker 2: bird tho sort of experiences we see in fish.
Speaker 1: So according to our definition of consciousness, fishes are conscious
Speaker 1: beings too. They have feelings, they can feel things, and
Speaker 1: they have complicated thought processes that guide how they behave. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we get to even trick your animals. Invertebrates. These
Speaker 1: are animals like crabs and shrimps and octopuses and insects.
Speaker 1: Can we say that they have consciousness too. We'll start
Speaker 1: with an easy one, which are octopuses. Here's doctor Alex Schnell.
Speaker 3: So, for example, we looked at three hundred studies by
Speaker 3: way a team of scientists led by Jonathan Birch to
Speaker 3: find evidence of sentience in cephalopods and decapod crustaceans, and
Speaker 3: octopus satisfied seven of the eight criteria, and the one
Speaker 3: that it didn't satisfy studies in that criteria had not
Speaker 3: been conducted.
Speaker 1: So octopuses passed seven of the eight indicators that tell
Speaker 1: you they might have consciousness, and some sodis even show
Speaker 1: that octopuses might even dream.
Speaker 3: There was some other research that's not my own, but
Speaker 3: some researchers in Brazil had conducted on octopus looking at
Speaker 3: different phases of sleep, and this was so cool. They
Speaker 3: showed that octopuses have two phases, a quiet phase and
Speaker 3: an active phase, and their active phase looked very similar
Speaker 3: to the way that humans sleep during RAM, so the
Speaker 3: rapid eye movement phase, and in humans that is a
Speaker 3: phase when we dream. And so they had a lot
Speaker 3: of behavior footage of an octopus clearly asleep because their
Speaker 3: eyes are closed and they'd be prodden just to make
Speaker 3: sure that they're asleep, but changing coloration and texture is
Speaker 3: if they were having a dream. You know, sometimes they
Speaker 3: look like they were outfeeding and hiding for a predator.
Speaker 3: So wouldn't that octopus be dreaming? You know, there's still
Speaker 3: a huge question mark, but it was pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: To think that is fascinating. Well, I guess, first of all,
Speaker 1: I didn't know octopuses slap, but that the dream is
Speaker 1: amazing and that you can see it in their coloration.
Speaker 1: They might dreap, sorry, that they might dream, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that you might be able to see it in their
Speaker 1: coloration and their movement.
Speaker 3: That's incredible because there's not many other animals. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can see a dog when they you know, they
Speaker 3: might be dreaming and they're running in their sleep and
Speaker 3: they're whimpering like they're trying to catch something.
Speaker 1: You can see that in dogs. I don't know inn
Speaker 1: a dog.
Speaker 3: So oh, okay. I think there's a whole community of
Speaker 3: YouTubers that share results and videos their dogs and cats dreaming.
Speaker 3: It's very entertaining. But yeah, you can. But there aren't
Speaker 3: many animals like an octopus where you can actually see
Speaker 3: the color of their skin changing. And so I like
Speaker 3: to think that they wear their emotions on their skin
Speaker 3: and maybe that's a window into their mind.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes you wonder what does an octopus
Speaker 1: dreap about? Okay, So that covers octopuses and like extension,
Speaker 1: also curdlefish and probably squids as potentially having consciousness. Now
Speaker 1: we get to even trickier animals like crabs and these
Speaker 1: do insects have consciousness? We'll review the scientific evidence for
Speaker 1: it after the break. Stay with us. You're listening to
Speaker 1: sign stuff and we're back. Okay, we're talking about whether
Speaker 1: animals have consciousness, and so far we talked about what
Speaker 1: that means how to tell if an animal has it.
Speaker 1: And we've gone down the evolutionary tree of life to
Speaker 1: see which animals can be said to possibly have consciousness,
Speaker 1: And now we're at animals that are very different from us,
Speaker 1: the invertebrates, invertebrate animals, that is, animals without bones or
Speaker 1: a spinal cord, separated from us, or we separated from
Speaker 1: them over five hundred and ninety million years ago. And
Speaker 1: yet invertebrates like octopuses clearly have intelligence and can be
Speaker 1: said to have a consciousness too, even perhaps to have dreams.
Speaker 1: But what about other invertebrates like crabs or shrimp or
Speaker 1: even insects. We'll start with crabs. So crabs, what was
Speaker 1: the evidence of crabs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so crabs action there was a surprisingly large amount.
Speaker 2: We went into the project assuming that there'd be quite
Speaker 2: a lot about octopuses, because we know people find octopuses
Speaker 2: very interesting, but crabs. Actually there was almost as much
Speaker 2: evidence in crabs as there was in octopuses. So hermit
Speaker 2: crabs are crabs that don't have their own hard shells,
Speaker 2: but they move into the shells that are left behind
Speaker 2: by other sea creatures and they change those shells over
Speaker 2: time as they grow, or if they find a better shell.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the experiment that's been done with hermit crabs,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty interesting. This was done by a biologists
Speaker 1: named Bob Elwood. Elwood and his team gave hermit crabs
Speaker 1: the choice of different shells to pick for their new home.
Speaker 1: But all the shells were rigged. Each had a little
Speaker 1: ho all drilled into them with the wire that went
Speaker 1: inside the whole. Now, the hermit crab would try on
Speaker 1: all the shells and eventually pick the one the crab liked.
Speaker 1: But here's the twist. After they picked a shell, the
Speaker 1: scientist would send a mild electric shock to the crab
Speaker 1: through the wire place inside the shell. So now the
Speaker 1: hermit crab had a problem. The shell they liked had
Speaker 1: this annoying quality that it would shock them every once
Speaker 1: in a while, and so they had to make a
Speaker 1: choice should they stay or should they go and find
Speaker 1: a different shell. The hermit crabs would get a variety
Speaker 1: of different shells qualities, and some of them would give
Speaker 1: them a shock, So they really had to think about, well,
Speaker 1: which shell do I want?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And can I sustain that shock? And just to
Speaker 3: keep this great house that I'm in or I'm just
Speaker 3: going to get rid of this house and go for
Speaker 3: one that's of less equality to me.
Speaker 2: Well, what they showed is that if they were in
Speaker 2: the good shell, they'd be much less likely to leave it.
Speaker 2: I'd be much slower to get out of it than
Speaker 2: if they're in the badge. And so, you know, they
Speaker 2: were showing that they valued these shells, that they really
Speaker 2: did make this kind of decision based on the badness
Speaker 2: of the shock versus the goodness of the shell.
Speaker 1: And then the scientist made it even more complicated for
Speaker 1: the crabs. They would sometimes put in the water the
Speaker 1: smell of a predator that tries to eat the hermit crab,
Speaker 1: And so now the hermit crab had to make an
Speaker 1: even harder choice. Should I stay in my preferred home
Speaker 1: even though I'm getting shocked, or should I take the
Speaker 1: risk and go find another shell, even though it seems
Speaker 1: there's something out there trying to eat me.
Speaker 3: And so they would have to integrate the risk of
Speaker 3: getting the shock and maintaining that home and trade off
Speaker 3: between those risks and opportunities. And so it really told
Speaker 3: a nice story of how hermit crabs why they might
Speaker 3: not have an inner monologue. They to have the capacity
Speaker 3: to integrate this information and make decisions based on that integration.
Speaker 1: You would have thought that of all animals, the hermit
Speaker 1: crab would have a monologue. They don't really talk to
Speaker 1: any other crabs. Yes, so even crabs seem to pass
Speaker 1: the test or potentially having some form of basic consciousness. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point you might be wondering, how far does
Speaker 1: this go? Do all animals have consciousness, even insects? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out the answer is maybe, Okay. So then
Speaker 1: if we keep going down the complexity of animals from
Speaker 1: shump you and crabs, you would get insects. And so
Speaker 1: what do we know about insect consciousness?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I think insects report will you wear a
Speaker 2: lot of the players right now? I think that's where
Speaker 2: people are paying a lot of attention the question of
Speaker 2: insect consciousness. This is because our use of insects is increasing,
Speaker 2: Insect farming is set to rapidly increase over the coming years,
Speaker 2: and so the question of whether or not they're sentient
Speaker 2: is becoming very very relevant to the ethics of insect farming.
Speaker 1: What do you mean insect farming for what? For food?
Speaker 2: For humans? So insect farms, So say, crickets for instants
Speaker 2: are being seen as potential sources of protein for humans. Know,
Speaker 2: when we're struggling to feed the world in a way
Speaker 2: that has kind of you know, effishient, environmentally friendly protein
Speaker 2: sources and also more than that, as food for the
Speaker 2: animals that we feed. So black soldier fly larvae in
Speaker 2: particular are being used quite a lot to feed feed chickens,
Speaker 2: to feed fish in aquaculture.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so then what do we know about
Speaker 1: insects sentience?
Speaker 2: So there was a relatively recent review done of the
Speaker 2: evidence for sentience and insects, very similar to the one
Speaker 2: I was talking about that we did in cephalopods and decapods,
Speaker 2: and again found quite positive and promising results. They ran
Speaker 2: into many of the same problems in that there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of research done, and insects are very diverse,
Speaker 2: like there are so many different groups of insects, and
Speaker 2: insects also have very different life stages. You know, they
Speaker 2: have larval stages, they have pupair stages, they have adult stages,
Speaker 2: and so really what you need is evidence for each
Speaker 2: of these different groups of animals at each of these
Speaker 2: different life stages and that is not there. But again,
Speaker 2: there is pretty good evidence for at least some groups
Speaker 2: of insects that they do seem to meet these same criteria. Bees,
Speaker 2: for instance, are pretty well studied, and there's evidence that
Speaker 2: bees can make your flexible decisions, that they respond to
Speaker 2: painful stimuli.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you can beleave it. Scientists have done experiments
Speaker 1: to test whether bees have consciousness. The experiment when something
Speaker 1: like this. They offered bees the option to drink sugary
Speaker 1: water from different feeding stations. Some stations had sweeter water
Speaker 1: than others, but all the feeding stations were rigged so
Speaker 1: that the pads the bees had to stand on to
Speaker 1: drink could get hot, hot enough to make it uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for the bees to drink from that station. Now, when
Speaker 1: nothing was heated, bees would choose the sweetest stations, but
Speaker 1: when those stations were made to be hot, the bees
Speaker 1: would switch and drink from the less sweet feeding stations.
Speaker 1: Meaning the bees had to weigh the pros and cons
Speaker 1: of their options. Should I drink from the sweetest station
Speaker 1: but then it's kind of too hot, or should I
Speaker 1: go for a less sweet station even though I'm getting
Speaker 1: less sugar? And this shows the scientists argue. In this
Speaker 1: case a biologist named Matilda Gibbons and her team that
Speaker 1: bees are doing something that resembles being conscious.
Speaker 3: And so what she was looking at is again whether
Speaker 3: they could integrate that information on the risk of going
Speaker 3: to get the more sugard concentration based on the heat
Speaker 3: on their fate. At what point was it just not
Speaker 3: worth it?
Speaker 1: In that case, they were weighing whether the buzz was
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like what you do there, And it's sort
Speaker 4: of pointing to a sophistication in how they respond and
Speaker 4: make choices.
Speaker 1: It's not a simple mechanism in their little brains. It's
Speaker 1: like they have to kind of think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's kind of the basis of the idea
Speaker 1: of sentience, is that they're thinking about things.
Speaker 3: They're not reflexively responding. Like there's integration going on, there's
Speaker 3: weighing up, there's decision making.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Brownie, bees have even been shown to
Speaker 1: potentially play, so.
Speaker 2: Yes, a very cool work on bees recently showed that
Speaker 2: they seem to play for no other reason but can
Speaker 2: be explained except that they seem to like it. So
Speaker 2: if they get these little plastic balls that they can
Speaker 2: roll around. Even if those balls have got nothing to
Speaker 2: do with their food. You've never had anything to do
Speaker 2: with their food. You know, the food's in another room.
Speaker 2: The bees will still go and roll these balls around
Speaker 2: for you know, decent periods of time. Really only explanation
Speaker 2: that the researchers can give is that they seem to
Speaker 2: be enjoying it, that this is something they like and
Speaker 2: it's fun for them, and so they do seem to
Speaker 2: be these little beings who can have these experiences of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: All right, at this point you may be wondering, well, well,
Speaker 1: what doesn't have consciousness? Well, it turns out people who
Speaker 1: study consciousness and animals do draw a line at some point.
Speaker 1: For example, the general consensus is that worms probably don't
Speaker 1: have consciousness. When you apply the same set of tests
Speaker 1: we've been talking about to worms, they score pretty low.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to have preferences or be able to
Speaker 1: weigh these complex decisions. And also plants, philosophers are fairly
Speaker 1: sure they're not conscious, although not everyone agrees. You just
Speaker 1: put up an interesting point, which there plants, and I
Speaker 1: assume most people greep plants are not conscious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is definitely the mailstream view. At
Speaker 2: the moment, there are people who think the plants are conscious,
Speaker 2: and I've seen some work of people arguing if plants
Speaker 2: are much more complex than I think we used to
Speaker 2: think they were, well communicate with one another. You know,
Speaker 2: trees have these massive underground root systems that no one
Speaker 2: really knew about before, where they can send chemical signals
Speaker 2: to one another, They can respond to different kinds of
Speaker 2: environmental stimuli. But I think none of that passes the
Speaker 2: thresholds for what we would take in animals to be
Speaker 2: required for a conscious experience, okay, and particularly the speed
Speaker 2: of processing. So a lot of people think that in
Speaker 2: part what consciousness might be for is to help us
Speaker 2: respond relatively quickly to changes in the environment, to update
Speaker 2: what's happening to us, to be able to make decisions
Speaker 2: between competing motivations that we might have and plants they
Speaker 2: don't move that kind of spilled. So one of the
Speaker 2: big things that differentiates an animal from a plant is
Speaker 2: that one part of the animal, right we're wanting to feed,
Speaker 2: an other part might be wanting to reproduce, and they
Speaker 2: can't do both those things at once. It has to
Speaker 2: pick one or the other. Whereas a plant is able
Speaker 2: to actually do multiple things at once. They don't have
Speaker 2: to physically move themselves around, and.
Speaker 1: I see they don't have a sense of its whole
Speaker 1: being all at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's your right.
Speaker 1: Okay. The last question we're going to ask about animal
Speaker 1: consciousness is what does it all mean? What does it
Speaker 1: mean that a dog has conscious thoughts, or that than
Speaker 1: octopus dreams, or that bees like to play. I asked
Speaker 1: both our experts this question. Okay, the last question, what
Speaker 1: are the implications of animals or certain animals having or
Speaker 1: not having consciousness or sentience?
Speaker 3: So one sentience is recognized. I think humans are faced
Speaker 3: with ethical legal obligations.
Speaker 2: When we think about how we act towards other animals.
Speaker 2: In my mind, whether or not they're sentient is the
Speaker 2: key feature that tells us whether or not we should
Speaker 2: be concerned about the harms that we're doing to them.
Speaker 3: And I think that is profound because even if an animal,
Speaker 3: let's say a crab or an octopus, doesn't have an
Speaker 3: inner monologue, or they can't communimicate feelings or reason, it
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that they can't suffer, and so the ethical
Speaker 3: considerations of that remain critical. It means that their suffering counts.
Speaker 1: I guess to get a little bit deeper, you said,
Speaker 1: it makes this these certain questions and responsibilities. What does
Speaker 1: that mean or why is that?
Speaker 3: What it is? Is it? So being able to recognize
Speaker 3: that an animal has the capacity to feel negative and
Speaker 3: positive emotions, it removes this barrier of arpness, and so
Speaker 3: we could recognize that like us, like humans, they have
Speaker 3: this capacity, and so it bridges I guess, our world
Speaker 3: with theirs.
Speaker 1: So studying consciousness and animals should make us think about
Speaker 1: how we treat them, and it can also tell us
Speaker 1: something about our own consciousness. What does that mean about
Speaker 1: our consciousness that animals are conscious?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that a lot of research in the
Speaker 3: past has been like, well, this is unique to humans,
Speaker 3: and human intelligence and consciousness is highly complex, and we
Speaker 3: are able to obtain knowledge and understand concepts and thing
Speaker 3: can reflect in ways that we haven't been able to
Speaker 3: see in other animals. But these things that pop up
Speaker 3: in our mind are not evolutionarily isolated, and so by
Speaker 3: recognizing and researching other animal minds, then forming a more
Speaker 3: comprehensive view of how the mind evolved in our evolutionary trade.
Speaker 3: Because each mind is one piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: I see, we can trace where our consciousness came from,
Speaker 1: and that's a huge part of understanding what it is
Speaker 1: and how it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, all right.
Speaker 1: We hope that made you a little more conscious of
Speaker 1: animal consciousness, so the next time you look at an
Speaker 1: animal eyes, you wonder what's going on in there. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, See you next time you've been listening
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