WEBVTT - Do Animals Have Consciousness? 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.400 Hey, Please take a second and leave us a review 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.279 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:10.920 Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, the production 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.440 of iHeartRadio. I'm More Hey, chim and today we're answering 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.680 the question do animals have consciousness? Have you ever looked 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.960 into your dog's puppy eyes and wondered what's going on 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.919 in there? Can animals have thoughts, sense of self and 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.480 even dream What about chickens, or fishes or even bugs? 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:35.960 Can they have an inner world and feelings? To find out, 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.040 we're going to talk to a couple of experts on 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.159 animals sentience, and we're going to learn how to tell 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.320 if an animal has consciousness, which ones have it, and 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:46.760 we're going to ask the big question about what it 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.320 would mean for them to be conscious. So dream along 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:55.040 with us as we answer the question do animals have consciousness? 0:00:55.640 --> 0:01:03.080 Enjoy Hey everyone? Today on the episode, we're going to 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.920 find out if different animals have consciousness. We're going to 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.520 learn whether the monkeys have it, where their dogs have it. 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:14.280 We'll even talk about whether their chickens and crabs have consciousness. Now, 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.920 consciousness is a super tricky topic, so the first thing 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.080 we're going to do is define what consciousness is. And 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:24.959 to do that, I reached out to an animal philosopher. 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:26.920 Here's doctor Heather Browning. 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.679 So I'm doctor Heather Browning. I'm a philosopher who works 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.960 at the University of Southampton, and I'm most interested in 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.120 using the methods of philosophy to answer questions about the 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:42.959 minds of animals. So animal sentience and animal welfare incredible. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.600 First of all, can you tell us what is consciousness? 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.080 All right? So we start with the really big questions. 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.720 So consciousness is something that's proved notoriously difficult to define. 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.240 A lot of philosophers try to think really hard about this, 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.640 and essentially, when we want to talk about consciousness, I 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.760 think the best way is to think about it through 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.840 examples of the kinds of experiences that are familiar to us. 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.280 So you might think that, for instance, a rock doesn't 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.320 feel anything when water falls on it, but we do. 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:10.800 When a grain falls on our skin, it feels like something. 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:13.600 For that, when we're asleep, it doesn't feel like anything 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.600 to be us. When we're awake, we're seeing, we're smelling, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:21.200 we're tasting. All these experiences have this quality of feeling 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.919 that are associated with it, and that's what makes up consciousness. 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:29.000 Okay, so it's very tied to the idea of a feeling. 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:30.120 Yeah, that's right. 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.639 So one way to think about consciousness is that it's 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.960 the opposite of being a rock. Rock exists in the 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.880 world and things happen to it, but it doesn't feel anything. 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.800 It doesn't have thoughts about the things happening to it. Basically, 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.520 there's nothing going on inside of a rock. Another way 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.880 to think about consciousness is that it's also kind of 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.840 the opposite of being a robot. You can imagine making 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.720 a robot that looks like a person in this program 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.800 to act and respond like a person, but that robot 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.919 we don't have an inner life the same way you do. 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.800 But when I look at another person, the only information 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.400 I have about them really is the words that come 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.680 out of their mouth and the behaviors that they do, 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:15.520 and they all resemble mine in a lot of ways. 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:19.160 But technically that person, you know, they could be sort 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:21.640 of an android with nothing going on inside, or they 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.880 could be what philosopher's like to call philosophical zombies, which 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.760 is a person who essentially is like a robot. You know, 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:29.560 if there's no kind of light on, no spark. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.840 Now, there are other things that are part of being conscious. 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.080 For example, some people say having consciousness is having a 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.360 sense of self, you know, like a feeling that you're 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.640 a person in this world. Another part of consciousness is 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.920 having the power to make decisions that you don't do 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.800 things automatically, but that you think about them. There are 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:53.880 lots of definitions, but for now, just hang on to 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.640 the phrase. It means that you have an inner life. 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:00.720 And so the question now is do animals have this 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.720 inner life? Well, the problem is that we can't ask them. 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.760 Yeah, So, I mean this is something philosophers like to 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:09.200 debate a lot, and they call it the problem of 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:11.320 other minds. And we don't know when we look at 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:13.200 another person, we don't know for sure that they're not 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.240 a philosophicals on video, they're not an android. And I mean, 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:18.760 right now you're just seeing me on a screen. I 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.200 could just be an AI. You know, shot out. That's 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:22.120 from program. 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:25.680 I Am an AI. By the way, you're being interviewed 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.200 by an artificial interviewer. 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:30.720 We're very sophisticated on us. 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.359 Thank you. We worked on it a lot. What doctor 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.720 Browning is saying is that it's hard enough to know 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.520 if another person has consciousness, much less an animal we 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.920 can't even communicate with, So how can we know if 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:47.800 an animal has consciousness? Well, it turns out scientists have 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.960 come up with sort of an animal consciousness test to 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.720 tell us about it. Reached out to doctor Alex Schnell. 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.839 You might remember her from a few episodes ago. He's 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:02.200 a comparative psychologist who is all so in National Geographic Explorer, 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.560 and she talked to us about how smart octopuses are. 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:12.760 It turns out she's also a researcher on animal consciousness. Well, 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:14.400 thank you, doc, there's not for joining. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:15.680 Us again, thank you for having me. 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:17.680 Are you conscious right now? 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.720 Slightly? It's about thirty two degrees celsius. I don't know 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.440 what that is fahrenheit, it's very very high. 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.839 Scientists like her study consciousness and animals have come up 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.400 with a set of indicators or tests that can tell 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:38.839 you whether an animal potentially has consciousness. What does that mean? 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:40.480 What are the indicators? I guess? 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.880 So the indicators are We've got four that are neural 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.240 that really look at the presence of nose receptors, so 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.960 receptors that can respond to stimuli like a prick or 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.799 heat or an electric shop whether they have integrative brain 0:05:55.880 --> 0:06:00.600 regions where that information can be combined and integrated. 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:03.840 So the first indicator scientists used to tell if an 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.919 animal has consciousness is whether the animal can feel pain. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.000 And really the scientists are interested in whether the animal 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.359 can feel anything, but they pick pain because there's a 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.400 lot more data out there on it. Then see whether 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:22.240 an animal feels happy or sad. Okay, that's step number one. Now, 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.680 if an animal does feel pain, the sign of consciousness 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.320 is what the animal does about it. 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:35.000 Yeah, And then behavior indicators include protective behaviors. So you've 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.720 brought octopus, so I'll tell you for an example, if 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.840 it octopus is inflicted in with something that might cause 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:46.839 pain or harm, they generally show protective behaviors that you 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.679 might see in your pet dog or cat at home. 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.760 You know, they'll stroke their arm or rub their arm, 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.440 or wrap their injured arm really close to their body 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.560 and protect it with their other arms, and they won't 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:00.719 use that as often. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:06.000 Interesting, So a sign of consciousness is if an animal 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:09.960 feels pain and then acts to protect where they feel 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.200 the pain, because that means they have a feeling and 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.120 they're conscious of it. It affects how they behave The 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.120 next step is whether they learn from their experiences. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.160 Another indicator is learning from experience, just learning that doing 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:29.160 a particular activity, if you're getting a negative emotion from that, 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:30.240 to stop doing that. 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:35.000 So if an animal feels something like pain and they 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:37.440 stop doing it, that's a sign that they're in a 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.840 way thinking about that feeling and that they have learned 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.840 what caused that feeling. That's another sign of consciousness. And 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.640 the last test of whether an animal has consciousness is 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.720 whether they can make choices that trade off different feelings. 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.080 And then also the last one is showing a preference 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.600 or an aversion to an experience that is going to 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.200 have a particular vailance. So if you keep getting stung 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.160 or prodded in one particular room, then you might avoid 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:08.080 that room in the future. 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:10.800 Okay, these are going to make more sense a little 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.920 later when we apply these tests to different animals, and 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.280 I think you're going to be surprised how some animals, 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.320 even bees, respond to these tests. So this is a 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.080 list of indicators that let's say an animal checks all 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.720 of the boxes, then it's a very clear candidate that 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:31.440 it may be has sentients and maybe consciousness is how 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:32.160 you would phrase it. 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:36.600 So definitely like Marx that there's strong evidence that they 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:37.280 are sentient. 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.440 Okay, when we come back, we're going to apply this 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:46.080 set of tests to a wide range of animals, including dogs, chickens, hermit, crabs, 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:50.359 and even bees to find out which of them have consciousness. 0:08:50.480 --> 0:09:04.280 So stay with us. We'll be right back, and we're back. 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.839 We're talking about whether animals have consciousness, and so far 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.319 we talked about what that means and how you might 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.400 tell even animal has it. Scientists who study this have 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:19.040 somewhat of a test for consciousness or sentience as some 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.360 people call it, which involves looking at how animals react 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.040 to pain. How they react to, for example, getting tricked 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.080 by a sharp object or getting a slight electric shock 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:31.760 can tell you a lot about whether they have feelings 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.760 and whether they have complex thoughts about those feelings. And again, 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:38.000 they use pain because a lot of the research out 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.800 there focuses on whether animals feel pain. Now, the question 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:47.439 is which animals pass this test to Monkeys, dogs, birds, crabs, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.320 or even insects show signs of consciousness well. According to 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.120 doctor Heather Browning, it's kind of hard to tell. 0:09:57.320 --> 0:09:59.480 Yeah, I think there's still a lot of uncertainty and 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.040 controversy about which animals are conscious or which animals are sentient, 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.760 because this is something that we're talking about that's happening 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.360 inside their heads, inside their minds, and we don't have, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.319 you know, a consciousness scope that we can just go 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.079 and look into the minds of animals and tell us 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:14.000 what they're thinking or feeling. We don't even have that 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:14.960 for other humans. 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.680 Now. The thing about consciousness is that most scientists don't 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.480 really see it as a kind of on or off thing, 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:24.760 meaning that you either have it or don't. The more 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.240 common view is that it's something that's on a scale. 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:32.800 So that is something that there's still debate about, and 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.840 I think people aren't sure because I think intuitively it 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:37.680 makes sense to us to think about it as being 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.080 on or off, but that doesn't trap very well with 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:42.080 how we think about a lot of the rest of biology. 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.360 When we think about the kinds of evolved traits that 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.200 other animals might have, often they do come in degrees. 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:49.840 You know, Yes, some animals can fly and some animals 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.440 can't fly, but there's all kinds of gradients in between 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.240 there where some animals can glide, some animals can fly 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.360 a little bit, and some animals can't do that at all, 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.079 And so it makes sense that almost all traits and 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:05.360 biology are actually on these kinds of gradual scales, and 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.320 consciousness is probably something. 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.240 Like that, Yeah, well, I feel like right now we're 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:12.440 in a very different time zone, and so I am 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:19.080 only partially conscious right now myself. Yes, okay. According to 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.120 this definition of consciousness, doctor Browning says most experts agree 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.680 that most mammals, down to about a dog or a mouse, 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.360 demonstrate signs that they have consciousness. It's clear that they 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.680 have feelings and that there is some kind of inner 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:34.920 life going on inside their brains. 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:37.800 So it's very very difficult, I think, for anyone who's 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:40.120 had a pet dog and spend any time with it 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.680 to really, you know, and not think that there's someone 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:44.720 there on the inside in the mind of that dog, 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.880 but they're really interacting with another being or another subject there. 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.880 So there isn't much debate about whether animals like dogs 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.560 or horses, or elephants, or pretty much any mammal has 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.360 some form of consciousness. Where it gets triggier is in 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.520 animals like birds, or even chickens. 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:05.959 Yeah, so I think what chickens get over looked quite 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:10.720 a lot. But yeah, they are actually quite cognitively complex animals. 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:15.240 You know, chickens can learn very well, they have good memories, 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.400 they make complex decisions, they have complex social lives. You know, 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.160 they're able to remember and interact with a lot of 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.720 different chickens as well, and thinking about what they feel. 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.240 Certainly we see chickens that have the kinds of injuries 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:30.000 that we would think would be painful when a human. 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.120 They will preferentially go and eat food that has a 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.280 painkiller in it. Even that food tastes worse and a 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.440 normal chicken that wasn't in pain wouldn't want to eat it, 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.240 which you know, is very strong evidence in my mind 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:44.480 that they are feeling pain, that there is something there 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.559 that they're trying to stop, just like we would. 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:48.959 I see, there are things they like and they things 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:50.000 that they don't like. 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.680 Yeah, that's right, And a lot of work in animal 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:54.280 welfare science is trying to look at, you know, what 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.000 animals like and don't like through doings that they call 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.680 preference testing, you know, giving them different situations and seeing 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:00.480 what they choose. 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:03.439 Okay, this is part of that test that I mentioned 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.160 to you before. Here's what the experiment looked like. You 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.960 offer a chicken two balls of food. One are the 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.640 bulls is food that tastes great to a chicken, and 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.600 the other ball has food that doesn't taste that great 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.040 to chickens. Now, normally chickens will choose the food that 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.960 tastes better, But if the chicken is in pain for 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:23.839 some reason, and you put pain medicine in the food 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:27.040 that tastes worse, the chicken will choose the one with 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.880 the pain medicine. And this, scientists argue, is a sign 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:34.600 that chickens can feel and have a preference and make 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.640 a choice based on that preference, all of which are 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:39.520 signs of consciousness. 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.560 And chickens have been the subjects of a huge amount 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:45.280 of these tests. And you know, do they prefer to 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:46.840 stand on the floor, do they like to be on 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:48.520 a perch? Do they like to be in a nest box? 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:49.880 Or do they like to nest in a corner on 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:52.560 the ground. And yeah, they're very good at telling us that, 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:54.319 And it really does seem like they have those kind 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.520 of rich sets of preferences about what they want and 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:58.280 what they don't want what they like and what they 0:13:58.280 --> 0:13:58.680 don't like. 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.880 Okay, the next animal we're going to talk about are fish. 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:04.839 Do fish have consciousness? 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.120 So fish a roment of travelers. They ran into a 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.600 lot of skepticism because their brains are very different from ours, 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.719 and so the kinds of inferences that we make from 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:15.920 our types of brains and saying well, look, other animals 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:17.880 have brains that are similar, so they probably produce the 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.680 same kinds of experiences. You should have different kinds of brains, 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:22.360 And so people wanted to use that as a reason 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.360 to say, well, they can't have consciousness, And people who 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:27.640 worked with fishes and look at their behavior wanted to 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:29.720 push back on that and say, well, no, a fish 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:31.800 might have a different brain than ours, but we might 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:34.200 still be able to have consciousness. Fish do a lot 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:37.000 of these sort of complex things. They respond when they 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:39.560 receive I mean we would think would cause pain, or 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.640 if they get an injection in their lips of a 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.520 mild acid that should cause them pain, they will wrap 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:47.880 their face on the tanks, they will lose interest in 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:50.560 their food, They'll be less likely to respond to predators 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.360 because they're distracted. They will preferentially go to tanks. They 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.359 have painkillers in them. All those same kinds of responses 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:58.600 that if we saw them in a mammal or a 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:02.840 bird tho sort of experiences we see in fish. 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.920 So according to our definition of consciousness, fishes are conscious 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.040 beings too. They have feelings, they can feel things, and 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:14.320 they have complicated thought processes that guide how they behave. Okay, 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.960 now we get to even trick your animals. Invertebrates. These 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.920 are animals like crabs and shrimps and octopuses and insects. 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.680 Can we say that they have consciousness too. We'll start 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:31.480 with an easy one, which are octopuses. Here's doctor Alex Schnell. 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.320 So, for example, we looked at three hundred studies by 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.640 way a team of scientists led by Jonathan Birch to 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.960 find evidence of sentience in cephalopods and decapod crustaceans, and 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:49.000 octopus satisfied seven of the eight criteria, and the one 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.040 that it didn't satisfy studies in that criteria had not 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:52.800 been conducted. 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.840 So octopuses passed seven of the eight indicators that tell 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.240 you they might have consciousness, and some sodis even show 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.160 that octopuses might even dream. 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.040 There was some other research that's not my own, but 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:12.920 some researchers in Brazil had conducted on octopus looking at 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.680 different phases of sleep, and this was so cool. They 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.160 showed that octopuses have two phases, a quiet phase and 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.080 an active phase, and their active phase looked very similar 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:29.040 to the way that humans sleep during RAM, so the 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.600 rapid eye movement phase, and in humans that is a 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.040 phase when we dream. And so they had a lot 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.960 of behavior footage of an octopus clearly asleep because their 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.080 eyes are closed and they'd be prodden just to make 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:46.360 sure that they're asleep, but changing coloration and texture is 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:48.720 if they were having a dream. You know, sometimes they 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.080 look like they were outfeeding and hiding for a predator. 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:56.360 So wouldn't that octopus be dreaming? You know, there's still 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.160 a huge question mark, but it was pretty phenomenal. 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.960 To think that is fascinating. Well, I guess, first of all, 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.480 I didn't know octopuses slap, but that the dream is 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.800 amazing and that you can see it in their coloration. 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.879 They might dreap, sorry, that they might dream, yeah, and 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:13.239 that you might be able to see it in their 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:14.399 coloration and their movement. 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.480 That's incredible because there's not many other animals. I mean, 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.080 you can see a dog when they you know, they 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:22.159 might be dreaming and they're running in their sleep and 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.000 they're whimpering like they're trying to catch something. 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:25.639 You can see that in dogs. I don't know inn 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:25.920 a dog. 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:29.199 So oh, okay. I think there's a whole community of 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:34.040 YouTubers that share results and videos their dogs and cats dreaming. 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.880 It's very entertaining. But yeah, you can. But there aren't 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.520 many animals like an octopus where you can actually see 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.000 the color of their skin changing. And so I like 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.480 to think that they wear their emotions on their skin 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.359 and maybe that's a window into their mind. 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:50.800 It kind of makes you wonder what does an octopus 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:55.080 dreap about? Okay, So that covers octopuses and like extension, 0:17:55.200 --> 0:18:00.280 also curdlefish and probably squids as potentially having consciousness. Now 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.040 we get to even trickier animals like crabs and these 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.199 do insects have consciousness? We'll review the scientific evidence for 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:12.359 it after the break. Stay with us. You're listening to 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:27.200 sign stuff and we're back. Okay, we're talking about whether 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.840 animals have consciousness, and so far we talked about what 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.280 that means how to tell if an animal has it. 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.199 And we've gone down the evolutionary tree of life to 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.320 see which animals can be said to possibly have consciousness, 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.800 And now we're at animals that are very different from us, 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:48.680 the invertebrates, invertebrate animals, that is, animals without bones or 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.480 a spinal cord, separated from us, or we separated from 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:56.359 them over five hundred and ninety million years ago. And 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.800 yet invertebrates like octopuses clearly have intelligence and can be 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:05.600 said to have a consciousness too, even perhaps to have dreams. 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.720 But what about other invertebrates like crabs or shrimp or 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:15.800 even insects. We'll start with crabs. So crabs, what was 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:16.800 the evidence of crabs? 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.640 Yeah, so crabs action there was a surprisingly large amount. 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:22.160 We went into the project assuming that there'd be quite 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.560 a lot about octopuses, because we know people find octopuses 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.479 very interesting, but crabs. Actually there was almost as much 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.000 evidence in crabs as there was in octopuses. So hermit 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.400 crabs are crabs that don't have their own hard shells, 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.560 but they move into the shells that are left behind 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.480 by other sea creatures and they change those shells over 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:42.200 time as they grow, or if they find a better shell. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.240 Okay, here's the experiment that's been done with hermit crabs, 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.840 and it's pretty interesting. This was done by a biologists 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.399 named Bob Elwood. Elwood and his team gave hermit crabs 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:56.119 the choice of different shells to pick for their new home. 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.840 But all the shells were rigged. Each had a little 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:02.360 ho all drilled into them with the wire that went 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:05.239 inside the whole. Now, the hermit crab would try on 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:08.400 all the shells and eventually pick the one the crab liked. 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.919 But here's the twist. After they picked a shell, the 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:15.679 scientist would send a mild electric shock to the crab 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.399 through the wire place inside the shell. So now the 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.720 hermit crab had a problem. The shell they liked had 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.840 this annoying quality that it would shock them every once 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:27.879 in a while, and so they had to make a 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:32.160 choice should they stay or should they go and find 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.360 a different shell. The hermit crabs would get a variety 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.840 of different shells qualities, and some of them would give 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.000 them a shock, So they really had to think about, well, 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:42.920 which shell do I want? 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.639 Yeah? And can I sustain that shock? And just to 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.159 keep this great house that I'm in or I'm just 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:50.600 going to get rid of this house and go for 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:52.639 one that's of less equality to me. 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:54.840 Well, what they showed is that if they were in 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:57.280 the good shell, they'd be much less likely to leave it. 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.080 I'd be much slower to get out of it than 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.600 if they're in the badge. And so, you know, they 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:03.879 were showing that they valued these shells, that they really 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.000 did make this kind of decision based on the badness 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:08.760 of the shock versus the goodness of the shell. 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.919 And then the scientist made it even more complicated for 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:15.800 the crabs. They would sometimes put in the water the 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.600 smell of a predator that tries to eat the hermit crab, 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:21.960 And so now the hermit crab had to make an 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.280 even harder choice. Should I stay in my preferred home 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.320 even though I'm getting shocked, or should I take the 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:31.600 risk and go find another shell, even though it seems 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.280 there's something out there trying to eat me. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.239