Very interesting about warm-weather diapause and metabolic rate for mosquitoes. I’ll agree that during deep cold-weather diapause insects are reducing metabolic rate (goodness, but maybe not when REALLY cold??). A quick lit search turned up seasonally variable brain size and cognitive abilities in shrews (Lázaro et al. 2018)!
No idea how this relates to lived experience tho. Extending this argument, would you also claim that species with slower metabolism have less lived experience than those with faster metabolism (e.g., “less sentience and less hedonic experience per day”), because then comparing between species with different metabolic rates is going to be quite difficult. In fact I think it quite likely that those species with faster metabolic rates have different lived experience rates than species such as humans, e.g., Healy et al. 2013.
Healy, K., McNally, L., Ruxton, G. D., Cooper, N., & Jackson, A. L. (2013). Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour, 86(4), 685-696. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018
Lázaro, J., Hertel, M., LaPoint, S., Wikelski, M., Stiehler, M., & Dechmann, D. K. (2018). Cognitive skills of common shrews (Sorex araneus) vary with seasonal changes in skull size and brain mass. Journal of Experimental Biology, 221(2), jeb166595. https://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/221/2/jeb166595.full.pdf
would you also claim that species with slower metabolism have less lived experience than those with faster metabolism
Yeah, as an initial hypothesis I would guess that faster brain metabolism often means that more total information processing is occurring, although this rule isn’t perfect because the amount of information processing per unit of energy used can vary. Also, the sentience or “amount of experience” of a brain needn’t be strictly proportional to information processing.
In 2016 I wrote some amateur speculations on this idea, citing the Healy et al. (2013) paper.
Very interesting about warm-weather diapause and metabolic rate for mosquitoes. I’ll agree that during deep cold-weather diapause insects are reducing metabolic rate (goodness, but maybe not when REALLY cold??). A quick lit search turned up seasonally variable brain size and cognitive abilities in shrews (Lázaro et al. 2018)!
No idea how this relates to lived experience tho. Extending this argument, would you also claim that species with slower metabolism have less lived experience than those with faster metabolism (e.g., “less sentience and less hedonic experience per day”), because then comparing between species with different metabolic rates is going to be quite difficult. In fact I think it quite likely that those species with faster metabolic rates have different lived experience rates than species such as humans, e.g., Healy et al. 2013.
Healy, K., McNally, L., Ruxton, G. D., Cooper, N., & Jackson, A. L. (2013). Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour, 86(4), 685-696. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018
Lázaro, J., Hertel, M., LaPoint, S., Wikelski, M., Stiehler, M., & Dechmann, D. K. (2018). Cognitive skills of common shrews (Sorex araneus) vary with seasonal changes in skull size and brain mass. Journal of Experimental Biology, 221(2), jeb166595. https://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/221/2/jeb166595.full.pdf
That shrew thing is fascinating!
Yeah, as an initial hypothesis I would guess that faster brain metabolism often means that more total information processing is occurring, although this rule isn’t perfect because the amount of information processing per unit of energy used can vary. Also, the sentience or “amount of experience” of a brain needn’t be strictly proportional to information processing.
In 2016 I wrote some amateur speculations on this idea, citing the Healy et al. (2013) paper.