At the end of 2021, United Kingdom considered the invertebrates –Which cephalopod molluscs and the decapod crustaceans– sentient beingsable to experience emotional pain, after analyzing more than 300 scientific articles on the subject. The British government then decided to suggest its protection through your animal welfare bill to avoid your suffering.
The country would thus join a handful of nations that recognize the sentience of these invertebrates, banning, for example, certain customs such as cooking live lobsters, rather than ending their lives ethically. The decision is based on evidence that emotions and felt experiences – known as sentience– are not limited to humans and other mammals.
“A report by the London School of Economics, commissioned by the UK government, concluded that there is strong enough evidence to say that decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs are sentient,” says the professor and philosopher at the University of York. Kristin Andrewsholder of the York Research Chair in Animal Mind.
But how to define an emotion? What is the moral relevance of animal experiments? This issue has been the subject of debate for years, both in affective neuroscience as in philosophyand now a consensus seems to be emerging on the moral and ethical criteria and implications.
In an analysis published in the journal Sciencethe scientists Frans de Waaldirector of the Living Links Center at Emory University, and Kristin Andrewsfrom the University of York, collect the political and moral implications for the recognition of emotions in this group of animals.
Animal reflexes or emotions?
More than a decade ago, the same debate revolved around fish they felt pain. Until recently, it was thought that they only had nociception, that is, they unconsciously reacted to harmful stimuli, as when we take our hand off the hot stove before knowing that it will burn us. It was then believed that they responded to pain reflexesbut without any kind of associated feeling.
The scientific community deduced that, as nociception did not necessarily affect the central nervous system and consciousnessit was not equivalent to sentience, which in this case was equivalent to experiences with value, considered by the organism as attractive/positive or aversive/negative.
As de Waal and Andrews explain in their review, this debate was resolved when it was found that fish learn from encounters with negative stimuli, avoiding dangerous places. AN study showed that they remember these areas because they felt and neurally processed the harmful experiences.
“In the last century, it was said that animals are like machines that respond to stimuli, but then the exceptions came: first the primatesThe dolphinsThe elephantsThe dogs and other mammals after birds and the fish. We have now arrived at invertebrates and there are all kinds of new studies on drones, bees, etc.”, underlines de Waal to SINC.
The same thing happens with octopuses, squid and crabs. “The usual argument is that they react to negative events (such as blows or being caught by humans) but feel nothing,” details the ethologist.
However, the scientific literature shows that, like fish, these animals remember the places where negative things happened, “which means they must have experienced these events, therefore, they feel”, continues the expert for whom all animals with brain are sentient.
The usual argument is that octopuses and crustaceans react to negative events (like being hit or picked up by humans) but feel nothing.
Thanks to an experiment, a work in crabs that hide from the bright light in the laboratory by entering a hole, showed that these crustaceans remember the holes where they were hatched and avoid them. “They felt and remembered,” says de Waal.
Octopuses can solve complex puzzles and show a preference for different individuals. They are sentient beings, according to several studies. / Pixabay
Language as a sign of suffering
Before the 1980s, this same discussion stayed around the human babies who have undergone surgical procedures by physicians with little or no anesthesia. The reason is that only verbal statements of pain were accepted as evidence of these internal states, and the absence of language was equated with the absence of these. That is, by not talking, it was thought that babies did not feel anything.
“The importance of Tongue it’s overrated. People thought: no words, no feelings, no conscience,” recalls de Waal. Despite the overwhelming evidence scientific which showed that babies felt pain, this attitude did not change until the 1980s.
“Language is the way we communicate feelings, but these can occur without language. This was difficult for the scientific community to understand. To this were added the prejudices about what we consider animals to be, as if humans were not animals”, underlines the ethologist.
In their writings, the two scientists estimate that recognizing the sensitivity of invertebrates opens up a moral and ethical dilemma. Humans can say what they feel, but animals don’t have the same tools to describe their emotions. “However, the research done so far strongly suggests its existence,” says Andrews, who works on a research project called Animals and Moral Practice.
How then to treat octopuses and crabs?
For the researchers, the time may come when people accept that crabs, shrimp and other invertebrates feel pain and other emotions. “Actually, it’s about reeducate our way of seeing the world”, points out the scientist, for whom it is still an open question how we should treat certain species. “We need greater cooperation between scientists and ethicists,” he adds.
We cannot act as if these animals have no feelings, nor treat them as if they were stones.
According to the authors, this is a moral decision: “We cannot act as if these animals do not have feelings, nor treat them as if they were stones. But the question of how to keep or eat them is a moral question that we cannot decide,” says de Frans de Waal.
“We have to stop acting as if animals are insensitive. This applies to both agricultural industry like the laboratories. We tend to treat invertebrates differently from mammals such as mice and rats, but there are no strong scientific arguments for doing so.”
Reference:
Frans BM de Waal and Kristin Andrews. “The question of animal emotions” Science