Are animals, including invertebrates like cephalopods, crustaceans and insects, sentient beings? Do they have distinct feelings and emotional responses, such as happiness, pleasure, fear, or pain? The topic has been greatly debated for decades across the fields of biology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Despite this, however, there is a growing consensus that emotions and felt experiences are not limited to humans or human-like animals. If so, how does recognizing emotions in animals affect our own moral and ethical frameworks? “When the medical community recognized infant pain in the 1980s, it was because the evidence was so overwhelming that physicians could no longer act as if infants are immune to pain,” write Frans de Waal and Kristin Andrews. “A similar point is being reached where invertebrates can no longer be treated as if they only have a nociceptive response to harmful stimuli.” In a Perspective, de Waal and Andrews discuss the scientific evidence suggesting that animals experience positive and negative emotions and highlight the scientific debate surrounding what constitutes animal sentience and how it can be measured, if at all. According to de Waal and Andrews, recognizing the sentience and emotions of animals raises a number of moral and ethical concerns, many of which have been conveniently denied throughout human’s long history of animal exploitation. “Although we are used to thinking about how our actions affect other humans, recognizing widespread animal sentience requires us to also notice – and consider – our impact on other species,” write the authors. “This way, animal sentience is bound to complicate an already complex moral world.”
Science
The question of animal emotions
25-Mar-2022