Thanks for the reply, Neil! I agree the priority is decreasing uncertainty about the individual welfare per animal-year (not sentience) of soil animals, and how to increase it. Have you considered actively working to get applications related to that? I think it would be worth it. As I commented above, I do not know about any interventions which robustly increase animal welfare due to dominant uncertain effects on soil animals.
Thanks, Neil. Relatedly, Mal Graham said the Arthropoda Foundation would be interested in funding research on soil animals if they had sufficient funding.
That said, our [of Bob Fischer and Mal Graham, who āmake most of the strategic and granting decisionsā] confidence in our own position is not high. So, weād be willing to fund things to challenge our own views: If we had sufficient funding from folks interested in the question, Arthropoda would fund a grant round specifically on soil invertebrate sentience and relevant natural history studies (especially in ways that attempt to capture the likely enormous range of differences between species in this group).
Thanks for the reply, Neil! I agree the priority is decreasing uncertainty about the individual welfare per animal-year (not sentience) of soil animals, and how to increase it. Have you considered actively working to get applications related to that? I think it would be worth it. As I commented above, I do not know about any interventions which robustly increase animal welfare due to dominant uncertain effects on soil animals.
Hi Vasco,
Please see the response to Faiās question on caged broiler farming, where the answer is the same in this case.
Thanks, Neil. Relatedly, Mal Graham said the Arthropoda Foundation would be interested in funding research on soil animals if they had sufficient funding.