Soil animals are terrestrial invertebrates that spend most of their life in soil or litter. They influence nutrient cycling, plant growth, and carbon dynamics. Examples of soil animals include soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes. Each of these groups is much more numerous, and has many more neurons in total than wild vertebrates and farmed animals. Vasco Grilo argued overall changes in welfare may be determined by effects on soil animals, even accounting for soil ants and termites only, instead of effects on the beneficiaries targeted by interventions. However, there is large uncertainty about the expected intensity of the subjective experiences of soil animals, whether they have positive or negative, and what increases or decreases their population. So Vasco advocated for more research on informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.

Related entries

animal welfare | artificial sentience | invertebrate welfare | moral circle expansion | moral weight | nematode welfare | wild animal welfare