I’m curious from your perspective, how much of our collective uncertainty over the sentience of small animals (e.g. shrimp, insects) is based on the comparative lack of basic research on these animals compared to e.g. cows, pigs, as compared to more fundamental uncertainties on how to interpret different animal behaviors or something else?
It’s possible that invertebrate sentience is harder to investigate given that their behaviors and nervous systems differ from ours more than those of cows and pigs do. Fortunately, there’s been a lot more work on sentience in invertebrates and other less-studied animals over the past few years, and I do think that this work has moved a lot of people toward taking invertebrate sentience seriously. If I’m right about that, then the lack of basic research might be responsible for quite a bit of our uncertainty.
Thanks Hayley, super cool!
I’m curious from your perspective, how much of our collective uncertainty over the sentience of small animals (e.g. shrimp, insects) is based on the comparative lack of basic research on these animals compared to e.g. cows, pigs, as compared to more fundamental uncertainties on how to interpret different animal behaviors or something else?
It’s possible that invertebrate sentience is harder to investigate given that their behaviors and nervous systems differ from ours more than those of cows and pigs do. Fortunately, there’s been a lot more work on sentience in invertebrates and other less-studied animals over the past few years, and I do think that this work has moved a lot of people toward taking invertebrate sentience seriously. If I’m right about that, then the lack of basic research might be responsible for quite a bit of our uncertainty.