Charles Darwin occupies an almost sacred place among scientists for his theory of evolution. However, his idea that animals are conscious in the same way as humans has long been rejected. Until now.
“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their capacity to feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery,” Darwin wrote.
But his suggestion that animals think and feel was seen as scientific heresy among many, if not most, experts in animal behavior.
Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was considered a cardinal sin. The argument was that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviors onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way to test what happens in animals’ minds.
But if new evidence emerges of animals’ ability to sense and process what’s going on around them, could it mean they are conscious?
The example of the bees
We now know that bees can count, recognize human faces and learn to use tools.
Professor Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London has worked on many of the leading studies on bee intelligence.
“If bees are so intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something that is the basis of consciousness,” he says.
Professor Chittka’s experiments showed that bees modified their behavior after a traumatic incident and appeared able to play by rolling small wooden balls, an activity he said they seemed to enjoy.
These results have persuaded one of the most influential and respected scientists in animal research to make this strong, stark and controversial statement:
“Given all the evidence on the table, it is very likely that bees have consciousness,” he said.
It’s not just about the bees. Many agree that the time has come to reevaluate our thinking about animal consciousness, based on new evidence that marks a “radical change.”
That group of scientists includes Professor Jonathan Birch from the London School of Economics.
“We have researchers from different fields who are starting to dare to ask questions about animal consciousness and to think explicitly about how their research might be relevant to those questions,” says Birch.
However, anyone looking for a eureka moment will be disappointed.
Instead, the constant increase in evidence to rethink this paradigm has generated comments among the researchers involved. Now many are calling for a change in scientific thinking in this field.
What has been discovered may not be conclusive proof of animal consciousness, but taken together, it is enough to suggest that there is “a realistic possibility” that animals are capable of consciousness, Birch says.
This not only applies to so-called higher animals, such as apes and dolphins, which have reached a more advanced state of development than other animals. Also for simpler creatures, such as snakes, octopuses, crabs, bees and possibly even fruit flies.
This group of scientists is seeking funding to do new research to determine whether animals are conscious and, if so, to what extent.
How to define consciousness
If you are wondering what we mean by consciousness, you are not alone. It’s something scientists can’t even agree on.
One of the first efforts came in the 17th century, by French philosopher René Descartes, who said, “I think, therefore I am.”
“Language is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body,” he added.
But this reasoning has muddied the waters for too long, believes Professor Anil Seth of the University of Sussex, who has debated the definition of consciousness for much of his professional career.
“This unholy trinity of language, intelligence and consciousness goes back to Descartes,” he told the BBC with discomfort at the lack of questioning of this approach until recently.
The “unholy trinity” is at the center of a movement called behaviorism, which emerged in the early 20th century. It says that thoughts and feelings cannot be measured with scientific methods and therefore should be ignored when analyzing behavior.
Although many experts in animal behavior were trained in this school, a less human-centered approach is beginning to emerge, says Seth.
“Because we see things through a human lens, we tend to associate consciousness with language and intelligence,” he explains. “Just because they are together in us doesn’t mean they go together in general.”
Sensitivity instead of awareness
Some are very critical of certain uses of the word conscience.
“The field is full of ambiguous words and unfortunately one of them is consciousness,” warns Professor Stevan Harnad of the University of Quebec.
“It’s a word that a lot of people use with confidence, but it means something different to different people, so it’s not at all clear what it means.”
Harnad asserts that a better, less ambiguous word may be “sensitivity,” which is more strictly defined as the ability to feel.
“Feeling everything, a pinch, seeing the color red, feeling tired and hungry, are all the things you feel,” he says.
Others who have been instinctively skeptical of the idea of animals being conscious say the new, broader interpretation of what it means to be conscious makes a difference.
One of them is Dr. Monique Udell, from Oregon State University, who has a behavioral background.
“If we look at different behaviors, for example, which species can recognize themselves in a mirror, how many can plan ahead or remember things that happened in the past, we can test these questions with experimentation and observation and draw more accurate conclusions based on data.” “, it states.
“And if we are to define consciousness as a sum of measurable behaviors, then animals that have been successful at these particular tasks can be said to have something we choose to call consciousness.”
This is a much narrower definition of consciousness than the new group promotes, but according to Dr. Udell, science is about a respectful clash of ideas.
“Having people who take ideas with a grain of salt and have a critical eye is important, because if we don’t approach these questions in different ways, it will be more difficult to make progress.”
A declaration of animal consciousness
But what’s next? Some say many more species need to be studied to determine whether it is possible for animals to have consciousness.
“Right now, most of the science is done in humans and monkeys and we are making the job much harder than necessary because we are not learning about consciousness in its most basic form,” says Kristin Andrews, professor of philosophy. in animal minds at York University in Toronto.
Andrews and many others believe that research on humans and monkeys is the study of a higher level of consciousness (manifested in the ability to communicate and feel complex emotions), while an octopus or a snake may also have a higher level of consciousness. most basic thing that we are ignoring by not investigating it.
This researcher was one of the main promoters of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, signed earlier this year and which has so far been signed by 286 researchers.
The brief four-paragraph statement states that it is “irresponsible” to ignore the possibility of animal consciousness.
“We must consider the risks to well-being and use evidence to inform our responses to these risks,” he says.
Chris Magee is from Understanding Animal Research, a UK body supported by research organizations and companies that carry out experiments on animals.
He says animals are assumed to be conscious when experiments are carried out on them and warns that UK regulations require experiments to be carried out only if the benefits to medical research outweigh the suffering caused.
“There is enough evidence for us to take a precautionary approach,” he says.
“But there is also a lot we don’t know, including about decapod crustaceans like crabs, lobsters, crabs and shrimp.”
“We don’t know much about their lived experience, not even basic things like when they die. And this is important because we need to establish rules to protect them, whether in the laboratory or in the wild.”
A review led by Birch in 2021 evaluated 300 scientific studies on the sensitivity of decapods and cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid and cuttlefish.
Professor Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient, as they could experience sensations of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement.
The findings of this review led the British government to include these creatures in its Animal Welfare Act in 2022.
“Issues related to the welfare of octopuses and crabs have been neglected,” says Birch. “Emerging science should encourage society to take these issues a little more seriously.”
The heretics
There are millions of different types of animals and very little research has been done on how they experience the world.
We know a little about bees and other researchers have shown signs of conscious behavior in cockroaches and even fruit flies, but there are many more experiments to be done with many other animals.
It is a field of study that the heretics who signed the New York Declaration claim has been neglected, even ridiculed. Their approach, saying the unspeakable and risking punishment, is nothing new.
Around the same time that René Descartes said “I think, therefore I am,” the Catholic Church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei “vehemently suspected of heresy” for suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the Universe.
It was a shift in thinking that opened our eyes to a truer, richer picture of the Universe and our place in it.
Moving away from the center of the Universe for a second time can have the same effect on our understanding of ourselves and the other living beings with whom we share the planet.
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