Far more animals than previously thought likely have consciousness, top scientists say in a new declaration — including fish, lobsters and octopus.
Bees play by rolling wooden balls — apparently for fun. The cleaner wrasse fish appears to recognize its own visage in an underwater mirror. Octopuses seem to react to anesthetic drugs and will avoid settings where they likely experienced past pain.
All three of these discoveries came in the last five years — indications that the more scientists test animals, the more they find that many species may have inner lives and be sentient. A surprising range of creatures have shown evidence of conscious thought or experience, including insects, fish and some crustaceans.
That has prompted a group of top researchers on animal cognition to publish a new pronouncement that they hope will transform how scientists and society view — and care — for animals.
Nearly 40 researchers signed “The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness,” which was first presented at a conference at New York University on Friday morning. It marks a pivotal moment, as a flood of research on animal cognition collides with debates over how various species ought to be treated.
Considering that as sentient beings ourselves, we don’t really even understand sentience, it’s kinda bold to assume we’ve got a monopoly on it.
Similarly I wonder how much of the observation is projection. We don’t know what the bee thinks it’s getting out of rolling the ball around, we don’t know that the fish was actually reacting to seeing itself. At some level we’re assuming that’s what’s going on because it makes sense to us.
We are limited by our own understanding and imagination, but I don’t know any other explanation for silly little nonproductive activities other than “play”. Is it because it is play, or is it beyond our understanding? We can’t communicate with them, but we can draw parallels between their behaviors and our own natural behaviors.
Humans have a really, really hard time NOT assigning human attributes to every other living thing.
One thing that makes this hypothesis seem possible, is that some researchers are suggesting consciousness is external, and eternal. Meaning all living things are essentially antennae.
That really reeks of “scientists invent God.” And I question the actual motives of any researcher that would suggest such an idea.
Show me the data that suggest that. Describe a test that might prove it.
With a couple of perfect millennia of perfect human development and advances in all fields, we probably wouldn’t think of these versions of ourselves as more or less sentient than other thing populating Earth.
Sure, they paint caves & make 10s videos, but that’s just natural automation, a response to environment, simply not knowing better.
What was obvious to most of us as kids (and what was attempted to be beaten out of us as kids) is now being accepted by scientists. Love it.
Right, I had no idea scientists were trying to say these animals weren’t sentient. Stupid scientists.
I dunno about all that, but I used to have an African fish that would always get the zoomies when I’d come home from work. He’d spit water at me or gravel at the glass to get my attention, and loved playing hide and seek and always brushed up on my hands when I was working on his tank. He never reacted this way to visitors, just me.
Exactly this.
And to get to this you need experience, research, and knowledge.
And trying to explain this to humans in general would take several generations in best case scenario (much less actually doing/changing anything with that knowledge).
Usually anything attacking the doctrine of how extra super special & way more unique than other equally unique species are is meet with severe (auto-?)hostility.
Even without our status in question, just the “threat” of something being slightly less/differently inferior to us is immediately attacked by the vast majority.
And once we decide something is inferior to us it takes extra effort to change the popular belief (like racism between humans as well - just designate some human as non-human & they are considered about as much as billions of yeast bacteria as we are baking bread).
I think the auto-hostility is just hubris. Some people would like to pretend they know everything about everything. So when learning new things they get hostile because, oh no, we found them out.
Wasn’t this already obvious?
We don’t even know what sentience/sapience/whatever is. We have some thoughts, people argue about the definitions, and stuff; but really… it all comes down to… “are they like us”… but we don’t even really know what that means.
So no. It’s not obvious. (Particularly because humans are surprisingly stupid.)
To put it another way, humans just aren’t that special. We started from the assumption that we are somehow fundamentally different
We keep finding out that all sorts of animals have language and culture, and it blows my mind that apparently, just about everything seems to have something akin to a name
I mean people have been pushing for recognition of this for at least a few thousand years so I’d say yes.
The lengths people are willing to go in self delusion for a burger are astounding though.
Some people are just straight up fine eating beef because they don’t care. Like, we won the food chain, and that’s enough for them
You really said “we won the food chain” like you wouldn’t run screaming from a slightly pissed off badger haha.
What a fucking absurd stance, the school of “if I can do it: it must be fine to do” ethics.
It seems odd to me that this article is framing octopodes as a surprising inclusion. Aren’t they generally known to be some of the most intelligent animals of all?
Yes and no. It has long been known that they are surprisingly intelligent, but the structure of their nervous system is very strange and decentralized which makes it fairly surprising nonetheless.
We have fossil evidence otherwise. Their greatest barrier to developing higher intelligence is that they die after reproduction, so they’ll never have pressures to develop more symbolic thought or pass on knowledge.
