I hold a neuroscience PhD and I am particularly interested in invertebrates sentience, welfare and pain systems. Have a low threshold for reaching out; I’m always happy to discuss anything!
Guillaume Reho
Karma: 289
You’re right—when I used duration-based claims, they were mostly paraphrases from other sources, such as from SWP, and implied research beyond this report. And yes, there is a distinction to make between looking for sentience vs looking for how much an animal could be able to suffer. This report—and Birch et al.’s criteria—only try to answer the question whether an animal would even be able to suffer. It is then another part of applied research that should look into how to actually improve the wellbeing of these animals, if there is any to improve, for example using WFI’s methodology.
Based on your interest in
“are we even improving their welfare at all if they are sentient through existing stunning practices?”
, it seems that you are already more or less convinced that they are sentient—and thus your reflection indeed goes beyond the scope of this report!
So you list Criterion 1 as low priority for establishing sentience which I would agree with, but it might not be a low priority criterion at all for comparing interventions.
Criterion 1 tells nothing about what types nociceptors are, whether they are myelinated, fast, specialized, etc. Criterion 1 only look for the presence of cells that have the same functions as what is currently considered under the definition of a nociceptor. Based on the definition of this criterion, we are already pretty sure shrimps have nociceptors, so the criterion probably does not need much more evidence. How these nociceptors are activated (i.e. what molecular receptors we can find on them) and where they send their signal is a different story.
I’ll try to complete Meghann’s comment on your post, if there is anything else to say! Thanks for engaging with shrimp research :)
This guide took roughly one month of full-time work (I worked on it for two months intermittently), with weekly feedbacks and discussions. It could maybe be quicker if it was simply adapted for nematodes, as most of what’s presented here is how we study sentience for almost any animal. Take an average hourly rate of $40 and it should be around $5k.
Now, would it be useful to actually pay someone a full month to do it: I don’t know, based on what? Counterfactual value over doing/funding something else? By itself, more research and discussions would always be appreciable. I think it would still be worth doing, but maybe we need someone to work on this on their free time. However, where I agree with Bob is that decapods are really closely related “higher” animals and we have high incentives to consider their abilites as very similar; whereas nematodes’ abilities might be below a certain sentience threshold, notably as they lack a highly centralized nervous system. Current evidence for nematodes is very similar to what I explored in planarians: they show good signs of criteria 1 to 4 and the most basics characteristics of criterion 7 (and as disucssed by Birch, not every type of associative learning would weigh the same); and thus much deeper questions should arise about how and if much simpler brains could experience sentience. That said, preliminary work on sentience criteria for nematodes does not seem out of place for me—but we would probably need to discuss way further than that, also since human impact on nematodes is highly different than on shrimps
I haven’t had the opportunity to read his book yet, but I’d love to. I don’t have strong opinions on this matter. Bob has studied this so much more than what I’ve been able to read so far. Same goes for your estimates. Here are some thoughts that you can take with a grain of salt:
I’d endorse the fact that sentience (which is necessary for welfare) is an emerging phenomenon, so there is some sort of limit under which an animal is simply not sentient at all, and above which we can consider sentience is present (eventhough the welfare range could be way smaller); and we cannot consider a “neuron” as a fixed parameter, especially for lower invertebrates (see for example this). I currently think that sentience is only possible in bilaterians (I thus exclude sponges and cnidarians, notably), though many are probably not. I think p(sentience) for soil animals is far from negligeable, but I have no idea how welfare compares, and I would not base my estimates on their number of neurons (although it might be a good enough proxy for larger animals).
At the end, the main idea that I wanted this report to portray is that research looking for welfare ranges will look almost exactly the same as research looking for sentience markers, as they are very closely linked (although sentience criteria are more pain-centric while welfare ranges might include more positively-valenced markers, as discussed in the report). So, whatever our current “place-holder” estimates are for sentience or welfare in shrimps, more research will most likely answer both :)
Thanks for suggesting other funds!
I agree! There’s one thing that I maybe did not stress enough is that academic labs usually don’t rely on a single funding for a project, they often have some basal amount from the university, or from other projects. $100k does not cover everything, nor does it assures that we will have enough evidence at the end to have high confidence, but it’s a fair amount that a single lab could ask to work on one criterion and significantly improve our knowledge and confidence on it. PS: It’s also a very US-centered value, this amount would be more valuable for research labs in many other countries.
I get your point—but which behaviors do you consider “complex enough” to be best explained by sentience? Which criterions do they fall into, or rather, where do you cross the line between a very complex system of reflexes and sentience?
On evolutionary incentives, it is true that nociception is particularly well conserved throughout the animal kingdom for this reason, but sentience might be “too expensive” for somes species to get or keep. Directors of Welfare Footprint Institute described this idea as the “sentience bargain” in this post if that’s of interest for readersThanks for your input :)
The report does not state explicitely why Penaeidae are given such a low rating compared to other taxons. From my understanding of their explanation, it would mainly be because brain regions highly involved with learning and memory (hemiellipsoid bodies) are especially reduced in Penaeidae. While Astacidea also display relatively small hemiellipsoid bodies, other brain regions (accessory lobes) have shown to compensate these integrative processes in this taxon, which has not yet been demonstrated for Penaeidae. It’s thus still a low rating for lack of data, not for proof of failing this criterion. It would be reasonable to expect that Penaeidae validate this criteria as well, until showed otherwise
Thanks for your input!
Here are a few ideas that come to my mind:
Like most biological processes, pain systems act like sigmoid curves. They have sensitive tipping points (activation of nociceptors, activation of a matrix of cortical regions, etc) and plateaus. There probably is a maximum plateau that one system can achieve: excruciating pain may feel like “infinitely” painful (as we might want to trade anything to make it stop), but it’s mostly just a powerful enough activation of specific brain regions that completely overtake other regions. These plateau are probably comparable to WFI’s pain intensities
10-point scales are so, so biased, yes. Having cluster headaches or fibromyalgia can make you question your own scale and revise how much a broken leg really feels like. However, they still give indication on the current state of the person’s welfare. If someone says 10 for a bruise, it probably means that the person is in extreme distress and need imediate help—not a lecture on how there probably are worse pains. The question is rather how this person can achieve lower levels of pain (actual painkillers, reassurance, other types of care...). Imagine two persons with broken legs saying they are currently feeling a 9⁄10 pain, one of them having already experienced cluster headaches and the other one having never experienced severe types of injuries. Would you treat them differently ?
We kind of have the same issues for animals. We can observe behavioral changes to infere internal welfare states, but it is completely inaccessible to us. And we know animals prone to chronic pain or depression can show less behavioral cues, just like humans. I think the Moral Weights estimates only look for the potential maximum plateau of pain that one species can achieve (the bucket analogy). This depends on genetics, morphology, physiology; not on welfare at one point in time. Its like comparing the “real” 10⁄10 for every species. Then we can try to deduce where one point in time situates. Compared with humans, where a 10⁄10 would be torture, a broken leg could be a 6⁄10; but if the person says 9⁄10, is their experience less morally relevant ?
I don’t think we can have a definite answer without better understanding sentience and negative internal states. Comparing Moral Weights this way can give us a sense of what to do in worst case scenarios. Shrimps may weight less than humans because their welfare range may be smaller, but if their life conditions put them continuously at their maximum limit while most humans live with reasonable levels of pain, it actually suggests prioritizing ressources to reduce shrimp suffering; plus calculating how much an intervention can avert negative welfare can give us a sense of how much it should cost for it to be effective
Thanks for sharing your draft!
Hi Vasco, thank you for linkposting this article and for summoning me, I appreciate the thought! Also thanks to Rob for engaging with this matter.
I’ve had some issues understanding the aim of this article throughout my read. It feels like it raises some issues, but then shows that they actually are not issues but rather opinions, bets or trade-offs.
First, shrimps’ welfare is depicted as “default priority” and as the “ultimate” cost-efficient intervention, but I don’t know where this comes from. It definitely is considered as one of the most pressing welfare issues considering scale and tractability, but I don’t see why it would cast shadow on other topics. As far as I know, the SWP and other shrimp-enthousiasts are pretty aware that sentience in this specific species definitely lacks more evidence and that insects welfare is as major of a topic. It seems like the author is saying “if these are your arguments for working on shrimp, stay consistent and work on insects instead!” while ultimately throwing all of his arguments away at the end to judge that its actually more important to help chickens. There’s no wrong in questioning if injecting millions into electrical stunners is a good idea if we’re not sure it’s actually helping any form of sentience; but I did not feel like the format of this article was solely meant to do this.
I won’t dive into the neuroscience literature: see Bob’s comment for more insights. There is just one more point that I would bring up: I believe Rob underestimates how conserved nociceptive and pain systems are within the animal kingdom. He does aknowledge that nociception is a sort of baseline for noxious stimuli detection, and it does seem like L. vannamei lacks integrative regions found in other taxons, but the fact that they are so closely linked with species on which we do have high confidence on sentience criterias can legitimately bias us towards high precautionnary decisions rather than a status quo situation. Rob even explains how Birch further researched the specific L. vannamei situation and that the SWP is actively putting money to study this matter more thouroughly. So why bringing all this evidence up, if the people concerned are already aware of it, working on it, and already announced their stances on it ?
It is true that prioritizing shrimp welfare is a bet because many areas of uncertainty remain. We may disagree, both sides being valid. However, the way this article is constructed (and its title) suggests that shrimp welfare is overrated/overfunded, while aknowledging at the end that we can definitely keep an eye on this subject, but that it just should not be the golden standard or “default priority”. Again, I do not know why the author thinks that shrimps are considered the pinnacle of welfare interventions, because they definitely are not: much, much more grants are directed towards mammals, birds and fish (definitely more sentient!). Rob also argues that more evidence could convince him to better consider shrimps: who is going to fund the science then?
Aside of the fact that the article also implies that shrimp people should focus on insects, the fact that the SWP exists does not prevent insect-focused non profits to exist. Also, as I believe the heart of this article relies on the two last paragraphs, I do not understand why it mainly compares shrimps and insects. We may have more insights into insects sentience, yes, but its also a field of research with many areas of uncertainties: so why not argue “way more individuals + lower sentience probability” VS “less individuals but still a lot + high sentience” ? Here’s a RP article that talk exactly about that, with humans vs chickens vs shrimps as the exact example, and it does indeed highly favor chicken interventions, with an emphasis on funding invertebrate sentience research.
So, what I understand is that Rob argues shrimp welfare and sentience should be studied, but only marginally, and way more funds should be directed towards chickens. However, that’s already the case. And, instead of arguing the trade-off between shrimps and chickens, Rob argues that L. vinnamei sentience is “overrated”, which the literature already aknowledges. It seems like a convoluted way to downplay shrimps welfare to focus the attention on chickens, while actually sounding like a pro-insect argumentation. It is a bit confusing. And I insist: if shrimp sentience is overstudied, overfunded, overrepresented, we can argue on the matter; but the problem this article seem to bring up just does not seem to exist. Plus, the switch to chickens at the very end of the article seems out of place and shows that the arguments brought up do not reflect the goal this post seemed to have.
PS: I’ve re-read myself and may sound harsh on the article—it’s definitely not my intention to be rude. These are definitely necessary conversations.
I’d personnaly bet more on shrimps than Rob, but I also donate to help chickens :)
Thanks Vasco! As per my conclusion that planarians show “substantial evidence”, I would estimate the probability of sentience to be on the lower side, especially since I would weight the first four physiological criteria lower than the last four behavioral ones, and we lack research on at least three of them. Maybe 15-20% ? I don’t really know how I would estimate this properly. Instinctively, I would rank planarians lower than insects but higher than nematodes (their behaviors seem less chaotic, but I’m no nematode expert). I would be more interested in finding out if these animals somehow have a “lighter” form of sentience, as I’m not fully convinced sentience (as for current definitions) is either absent or present. Planarians can move around without a head, but they definitely do better with one. So, is there some sort of cognitive emergence only possible in the brain ? I have no idea. I looked at the estimates from the book and it checks out as slightly lower probablity than insects. I would be interested to have the estimates from those that read this post too!
Planarians can definitely be considered numerous as we can find some almost anywhere.I could not find any estimates for total numbers of individuals or colonies. Here again, instinctively, I would assume that they are still way less numerous than nematodes or even insects. Because
they are very small (usually around 1-2 cm depending on the species)they move very slowly and feed on detritus or other very small invertebrates (and thus they don’t proliferate so much), and although they are very small, are known for regenerating and being able to multiply exponentially, they do not seem to form large colonies in the wild. You can find a few under some rocks or dead leaves if you search for them in most river, but I would not consider this “abundant”.
edit: I corrected my mixed up train of thought.
Thanks, Bob! From experience and footnote n°19, mucus seems to be relatively homogeneously produced but it’s actually difficult to tell the production apart from different areas of their ventral side. We usually stain the glass they were gliding on so we can see that they produced more mucus when in noxious environments, but since mucus is spread along the path of the animal, it’s not clear if any part produces more than the other. When cut, we can usually see an accumulation of mucus at the site of the wound, as it has a protective role, but to me it would be better explained as some sort of inflammatory response to cell death and exposure to the environment rather than a regulatory process from the nervous system.
We have some evidence that they can react region-specifically to UV lasers where only the exposed body portion contracts/shrinks on itself, but here also we could argue that muscle contraction can be the consequence of local nerve activation (in this case: by ROS produced from UV exposition) rather than from central regulatory processes.
Maybe the best bet to search for self-representation would be in the way they extrude their pharynx to search their surroundings for food; but current evidence shows that these mechanisms are almost entirely based on chemotaxis, especially since their pharynx can basically keep searching for food and munching while cut from its host (yes, it’s weird). However, there is still definitely some sort of communication between the pharynx and the brain to decide when to stop and when to continue moving.
I never tried drawing a white spot on their head and placing them in front of a mirror—maybe we should try!
Hi Vasco. I am new on this forum, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the specifics of your work over the years. I see that you produce high quantities of seemingly high quality work on undervalued topics such as this one. I myself am very much interested in the sentience and welfare of such “primitive” organisms. Here are a few of my impressions on this post:
Although you take care of summarizing your research and clearly displaying your methodology, your work is still very enigmatic at first glance. Because your conclusion feels counter-intuitive and may spark defensiveness from animal advocates readers, not being able to understand clearly how you came to these conclusions make them feel untrustworthy.
The reasoning that links your work with your conclusion feels… odd. I’m feeling like there are parts missing. For example, from what I understand of this post, you recommend increasing land use to reduce soil animals lifespan because you estimate they have negative lives. However, you thus recommend changes in food consumption towards diets that include more animal-based foods like beef, because they require more agricultural land than any other foods. Why do you consider eating beef to be the most cost-effective option to increase land use ? As I believe most vegans (or vegetarians) developed a strong deontological reasoning for not eating animal-based products, implying that eating beef might be the best utilitarian way to reduce suffering does not feel right: increasing land use is, so why should they tolerate factory farming, or even extensive farming at all ? Are there not any other opportunities to increase land use ? For example, instead of arguing for changes in food consumption, we could argue in favor of considerably increasing the space allocated to farmed animals so that more of the land would be used, farmed animals’ welfare would be increased; and because land is limited, the actual consumption of animal-based products by humans could actually decrease; human health would thus be improved as well. You even considered the possibility of “paving all the Earth’s land”, but nothing in-between. Here’s another scenario: increasing the consumption of beef and land use implies huge greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, etc → climate change increases the probability of huge natural disasters and reduces the yield of agricultural production → billions are spent in damages and health issues that could have been best invested in climate-resilient agricultural practices and wild animals welfare issues. I feel like your conclusion lacks a more systematic view on these issues; and I understand that this work is about utilitarianism, but caring about the welfare of a few species (even in way higher numbers) while recommending more consumption of other poorly-treated species (even in way smaller numbers) feels odd, to me atleast.
I do not get why you consider “targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives” to be one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing animal welfare in the same way you consider increasing animal-based consumption is, because the latest suggestion implies that the former one already has been made. If research shows that soil animals have positive lives, then your recommendation for more animal-based foods consumption is actually counter-productive, which you acknowledge. I understand that you estimated around 55% probability that they have negative lives, which may be sufficient to consider the horrific possibility that such sheer numbers of animals live horrible lives and work on this question—but it also feels way too close to a 50% chance to actually recommend anything to me. It feels wrong to consider as cost-effective two recommendations that could potentially invalidate each-other: more research would already answer if we should increase land use or not, so recommending eating more beef does not belong here yet.
Your research is very interesting, but I feel like strongly endorsing such concrete and disruptive recommendations (i.e. increasing the consumption of beef) under such uncertainties and hypotheses feels odd. You even argue that eating cheaper plant-based foods allows for more donations, increasing cost-effectiveness even more; which seems to contradict your recommendation. Plus, you mention the “at a margin” problem, as most of the world already eats huge quantities of beef, way above healthy recommendations, so I don’t get why you would recommend eating more beef at all. I feel like such a recommendation would need way more arguments, especially in a systemic analysis of the whole food production chain. That increasing land use could increase global animal welfare is an interesting point—but that we should eat more beef is not a conclusion that I would endorse with this post’s arguments.
Thank you for sharing your work here. I do not expect you to answer thoroughly to every point I made if you do not think your time is worth it—I just felt like sharing a few thoughts on an interesting topic and participating in the forum—but I will gladly read your responses (or anyone’s) if you have some.
That’s an interesting and important question (especially rebouncing on the evidence problem discussions), but I also believe that a few concepts were mixed up in this train of thought. Meghann’s comment went above and beyond to answer all of it already, so I’ll just share what I think are the most important take-home messages and what is most convincing (to me):
- Shrimp nociceptors, if categorized by analogy as C- or A- type receptors, most likely ressemble C-types neurons (although, as said, there are no such classification yet). It would thus be more accurate to say that shrimps possess only C-type nociceptors rather than not at all (again, by analogy only).
- Stunning is supposed to cause an immediate loss of consciousness, ideally not causing any pain. As explained, it should cause a huge burst of neuron activation in the entire nervous system, not just active nociceptive / pain pathways. Its goal is to make subsequent cold shock death insensibly. Pain could likely arise if animals are able to recover partially. Again, if it was shown that protocols are poorly done (poor stun, recovery, not cold enough water, etc), then yes, it’s possible that SWP interventions could produce more harm than good (or at least not less). However, if the intervention does reduce suffering in ideal-enough conditions (which seems to be the case when looking at the little early evidence that we have), then it is part of the intervention to make sure that the ideal-enough conditions are met to ensure that the protocol stands true to its promises; which SWP does, as far as I know.
-> Thus, if asphyxiation does produce suffering the way you describe it (I know nothing about this stuff), then it would probably induce way more suffering than stunning followed by asphyxiation (or cold shock).
Also, by analogy again, I think we have pretty good evidence that stunning mammals before slaughter allows to reduce suffering. I don’t know the literature, but since so much pigs are slaughtered in CO2 gas chambers suffocating, as well as so many lab mice, I guess we have some insights into how they live through asphyxiation (?). Either way, there is indeed a lack of evidence in shrimps (and invertebrates generally) on the exact way their nervous system works, but the evidence that we have suggests that its not that different than mammals to a point where these kind of experiences may be completely opposites; especially regarding nociception, which is quite relatively well conserved across the entire animal kingdom. Again, I may be completely wrong, and should be told if I am—but I share Meghann’s views on the literature.