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.
IS veganism the real solution here, or is the real solution the all-artificial, all-synthetic diet? Me personally, I’m going to down this jug of red 40, and then I think I’ll get back to you
Veganism is the solution, yes.
Future generations will look back on us like we were crazy and barbaric for eating meat.
I agree that veganism is/could be a good solution moving forward. I strongly disagree that eating meat can be considered barbaric, as it is completely natural and present in every corner of the animal kingdom. Now, how we treat the animals we get that meat from is absolutely barbaric and should be considered so, but I don’t think meat eating itself should be villainized, at least in a retrospective sense.
Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it isn’t barbaric. Male lions will regularly kill cubs to make the mother ready for sex - that’s natural but we’d never accept (correctly) a human doing that.
If it ever comes out that plants are sentient and feel pain my moral compass is going to have a bad day.
I’m not even a vegetarian … but I have tried to eat less meat in recent years, in part because of the cruelty.
Welllllll… What if you found out that every time you cut into a plant, it let out a high pitched scream that humans can’t hear?
https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now
Yeah the fresh cut grass smell is actually a call to aid. They “think” the damage is caused by herbivorous insects, so they release chemicals to attract carnivorous insects to come and kill the other insects.
Plants probably qualify for a separate category of low sentience. If you’ve grown plants you know they’ll turn towards the sun, and you need to move them around a bit to make sure they don’t end up with a prominent lean. Some plants will use their tendrils to wrap around a trellis for extra support.
I don’t think we can qualify these actions on the same level of sentience as animals, but there is certainly something there. All living things probably have some degree of this, since they react to stimulus with chemical signaling. That’s not terribly different from what we do.
Plants are autotrophs in that they create their own energy from the sun with the help of microbes in soils to supply nutrients to enable plants to do so.
Imo, the closer we can descend on the food chain to autotrophic nutrition, the better for all.
Of course, all of this has to be taken in balance. There needs to be a healthy discussion between domesticated and wilded lands.
But much research has been published showing that if the world moved to primarily plant-based/vegan/herbivore/autotrophic diets, then we’d quickly move to living inside of our planet’s boundaries which we aren’t now. Think about rewilding corn fields or wheat fields or soy fields and still having enough food left over to feed the entire population.
#govegan
I’d say eating plants would still be the lesser of two evils in that case. Animals we kill for food also eat plants, so from a pure quantity of suffering, it’s better to not have the middleman there.
But some animals we eat are carnivores, like most wild-caught fish. In which case, killing them reduces the total amount of suffering. Same reasoning as the trolley problem.
We can always go the way of only eating fruits (and fruit-like growths), as they’re specifically meant for being eaten.
Considering how pain is a trigger for an animal’s fight or flight response, and considering plants can neither fight nor flee, it would seem like a cruel cosmic joke for plants to feel pain. What purpose would it serve, evolutionary speaking?
