Animal Consciousness Research Articles

Learning With Donkeys – A “More-Than-Human” Approach to Animal-Assisted Activities

Abstract The last twenty years have seen increased interest in animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and animal-assisted activity (AAA). However, there has been little research exploring these interactions as experienced by the animals themselves. In this paper, we bring a “more-than-human” lens to concepts and practices within AAA/T, synthesizing ideas about animal sentience and subjectivity that have emerged within animal geography scholarship and animal welfare science. We draw from empirical work with practitioners involved in donkey-facilitated learning (DFL) to examine the knowledge base of equine facilitators, including their beliefs, opinions, and assumptions about donkeys, their understanding of animal welfare, and their role in DFL. We discuss how knowledge of donkeys is mobilized to ensure more-than-human welfare during DFL; how animals’ “choice” to participate is encouraged and centered; how ideas of nonhuman labor create opportunities for considering more-than-human welfare; and how practitioners advocate for animals and embed practices of care for humans and nonhumans.

Assessing tests of animal consciousness

Which animals have conscious experiences? Many different, diverse and unrelated behaviors and cognitive capacities have been proposed as tests of the presence of consciousness in an animal. It is unclear which of these tests, if any, are valid. To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on theories of consciousness or on methods from human consciousness science. If a test or set of tests satisfies more of these desiderata, passing it provides stronger evidence of consciousness. Moreover, one can design future tests of animal consciousness with the intention of satisfying these desiderata to ensure their evidential strength.

Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals.

Changing minds about minds: Evidence that people are too sceptical about animal sentience

Our relationships with other animals are governed by how we view their capacity for sentience and suffering. However, there is currently little agreement as to whether people's beliefs about animal minds are largely accurate or inaccurate. We used an innovative task to examine how people update their beliefs in response to noisy but informative clues about animal minds. This allowed us to compare participants' posterior beliefs to what a normative participant ought to believe if they conform to Bayes' theorem. Five studies (four pre-registered; n = 2417) found that participants shifted their beliefs too far in response to clues that suggested animals do not have minds (i.e., overshooting what a normative participant ought to believe), but not far enough in response to clues that suggested animals have minds (i.e., falling short of what a normative participant ought to believe). A final study demonstrated that this effect was attenuated when humans were the targets of belief. The findings demonstrate that people underestimate animal minds in a way that can be said to be inaccurate and highlight the role of belief updating in downplaying evidence of animal minds. The findings are discussed in relation to speciesist beliefs about the supremacy of humans over animals.

Towards a Comparative Study of Animal Consciousness

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. By comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments.

“IF WE DIDN’T EAT THEM, THEY WOULDN’T EXIST” The Nonidentity Problem’s Implications for Animals (Including Humans)

“IF WE DIDN’T EAT THEM, THEY WOULDN’T EXIST” The Nonidentity Problem’s Implications for Animals (Including Humans)

Caution is required when considering sentience in animals: a response to the commentary by Briffa (2022) on "Hermit crabs, shells, and sentience" (Elwood 2022).

My recent review examined the complex and intimate relationship between hermit crabs and the empty gastropod shells upon which they depend for survival. Because shells come with costs as well as benefits, the crabs are highly selective about which ones they prefer to occupy. Thus, a new shell is investigated and the information that is gathered appears to be compared with their existing shell before a decision is made. This is often prolonged and complex. Crabs also fight for shells and again the information that is gathered and used to inform fight decisions is complex. In my review, I consider these and other situations with reference to the possibility of sentience (including awareness). The excellent commentary from Mark Briffa expands on aspects of sentience and invokes the use of Lloyd Morgan's Canon to avoid suggesting complex abilities when simpler explanations would suffice. I agree with this approach. However, I also suggest that when simpler explanations appear not to explain the data, then it is reasonable to consider if more complex mental abilities might be used. I also like Briffa's suggestion that the use of an apparently higher mental faculty might result in a mechanism that is simpler than a large number of apparently simple decisions used to make complex decisions.

Case for Animal Spirituality—Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part article presenting the theoretical and empirical case for nonhuman animal (hereafter, ‘animal’) spirituality. Part 1 discussed the relevance of evolutionary theory and species differences for understanding animals’ capacity to have spiritual experience, conceptual issues related to defining animal spirituality, and methodological considerations regarding analogical reasoning and animal-centered anthropomorphism as heuristic strategies in the study of animal spirituality. Issues related to the question of animal consciousness and the use of evolutionary panentheism as a philosophical/theological frame for theorizing about animal spirituality were discussed. Part 2 examines six biopsychosocial capabilities of animals that are building blocks of human spirituality—cognition, imagination, emotion, moral sense, personality, and value-life (Maslow’s phrase)—and proposes an ontic pluralism of animal spiritualities. Part 2 concludes with a discussion of the wideranging implications for human society of consciously accepting the possibility of animal spirituality and capacity to have spiritual experience.

For the future of all life, the Code of Ethics is the key

Staring through the lens of the ANZASW Code of Ethics, it is our opinion that one ethical principle, the last clause under Manaakitanga regarding animal sentience, is starting to become more meaningful than others when one is discussing the aforementioned notions. We go further and suggest that animal rights, the natural environment, climate change, and humanities permanency have intersected and are now a united single strand and that social work, through its own Code of Ethics, may be a leading force to achieve positive outcomes on all interconnected pathways

Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals - neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective.

Awareness or consciousness in the context of stimulus perception can directly be assessed in well controlled test situations with humans via the persons’ reports about their subjective experiences with the stimuli. Since we have no direct access to subjective experiences in animals, their possible awareness or consciousness in stimulus perception tasks has often been inferred from behavior and cognitive abilities previously observed in aware and conscious humans. Here, we analyze published human data primarily on event-related potentials and brain-wave generation during perception and responding to sensory stimuli and extract neural markers (mainly latencies of evoked-potential peaks and of gamma-wave occurrence) indicating that a person became aware or conscious of the perceived stimulus. These neural correlates of consciousness were then applied to sets of corresponding data from various animals including several species of mammals, and one species each of birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects. We found that the neural markers from studies in humans could also successfully be applied to the mammal and bird data suggesting that species in these animal groups can become subjectively aware of and conscious about perceived stimuli. Fish, cephalopod and insect data remained inconclusive. In an evolutionary perspective we have to consider that both awareness of and consciousness about perceived stimuli appear as evolved, attention-dependent options added to the ongoing neural activities of stimulus processing and action generation. Since gamma-wave generation for functional coupling of brain areas in aware/conscious states is energetically highly cost-intensive, it remains to be shown which animal species under which conditions of lifestyle and ecological niche may achieve significant advantages in reproductive fitness by drawing upon these options. Hence, we started our discussion about awareness and consciousness in animals with the question in how far these expressions of brain activity are necessary attributes for perceiving stimuli and responding in an adaptive way.

“Interspecies Empathy and Canine Captivity in Karen Russell’s Short Fiction”

ABSTRACT This essay examines the contributions of American short story writer Karen Russell to debates in Critical Animal Studies and philosophy about the ethics of animal domestication. Russell’s fabulist stories have often been interpreted through a speciesist lens, ignoring her representation of nonhuman animal consciousness. Although humanist critics have interpreted Russell’s animal subjects as allegories for systems of human oppression, I read her work as a critique of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. I analyze “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” and “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound,” two stories that focus on the oldest domesticated animal species and the one that remains the most entangled with humanity – the domesticated dog, a descendent of the wild wolf. Featuring female protagonists who are dogs or wolf/human hybrids, these stories engage with ecofeminist and posthumanist arguments about the intersectionality of animal subjugation and the exploitation of women and disempowered racial groups. Echoing recent scientific studies of canine cognition and behavior, Karen Russell’s stories represent dogs as a domesticated species whose animal instincts have been routinely thwarted. While most people consider dogs to be a fortunate species, Russell’s canine stories defamiliarize the relationship between humans and dogs to invite cross-species empathy and ethical reflection about pet-keeping practices.

Opinions and knowledge of veterinary students relating to exotic non-mammal pet animals and their welfare

This study aimed to identify the opinions and knowledge of Croatian veterinarians-to-be relating to exotic pet birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, and their welfare. A total of 589 (87%) veterinary students from all six years of the integrated undergraduate and graduate study programme were surveyed in the 2019-2020 academic year. Student opinions and knowledge were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale and the following statements: the level of cognition, sentience and welfare compromise in pet animals observed; the importance of biological functioning, emotional states and natural living for their welfare; their acceptability as pets and owner awareness; the level of risk posed by these pet animals to other animals, public health and safety, and the environment; and the level of knowledge students considered themselves to have about their feeding, housing, health and behaviour. Students provided neutral responses to or disagreement with most of the statements, in particular for animals other than birds, with no significant differences between study years. Accordingly, the study results point to the need for additional student education on exotic non-mammal pets, and can serve for the upgrading of the veterinary curriculum in the field, having implications not only for the welfare of these animals but also for other animals, public health and safety, and environmental protection.

Medial Septum Modulates Consciousness and Psychosis-Related Behaviors Through Hippocampal Gamma Activity.

Abnormally high-amplitude hippocampal gamma activity (30–100 Hz) in behaving animals is seen after a hippocampal seizure, following injection of phencyclidine (PCP) or ketamine, and transiently in a delirium stage during induction of general anesthesia. High-amplitude hippocampal gamma activity in behaving rats is associated with hyperactive behavior and impairment in sensorimotor gating and sensory gating. The medial septum is necessary for the high-amplitude gamma activity and abnormal behaviors observed following a hippocampal seizure or injection of PCP/ketamine. Glutamatergic projection of the hippocampus to the nucleus accumbens (NAC) and dopaminergic transmission in NAC is necessary for abnormal behaviors. Large hippocampal gamma waves are suggested to contribute to seizure-induced automatism following temporal lobe seizures, and the schizophrenia-like symptoms induced by PCP/ketamine. Low-amplitude gamma activity is found during general anesthesia, associated with loss of consciousness in humans and loss of righting reflex in animals. Local inactivation or lesion of the medial septum, NAC, and brain areas connected to the septohippocampal-NAC system attenuates the increase in hippocampal gamma and associated behavioral disruptions induced by hippocampal seizure or PCP/ketamine. Inactivation or lesion of the septohippocampal-NAC system decreases the dose of anesthetic necessary for gamma decrease and loss of consciousness in animals. Thus, it is proposed that the septohippocampal-NAC system serves to control consciousness and the behavioral hyperactivity and neural dysfunctions during psychosis.

Exploring attitudes to biodiversity conservation and Half-Earth vision in Nigeria: A preliminary study of community attitudes to conservation in Yankari Game Reserve

In the Half-Earth vision, conservationists, scientists, and policymakers work together with local communities without compromising the interests of wildlife and ecosystems. The vision requires decolonizing nonhuman species through marshaling ecocentric philosophy, animal sentience science, and, crucially, local communities' support. While the studies of community attitudes to wildlife are accumulating, in the context of human-wildlife conflicts, there is a shortage of data on attitudes to the Half-Earth vision in countries with growing human populations and rapidly declining biodiversity, such as Nigeria. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring community attitudes to the Half-Earth vision through a pilot study of Yalwan Bongo and Kafi, the local communities living around Yankari Game Reserve, Bauchi State in Nigeria. This paper is a review of the main issues surrounding Half-Earth, with a preliminary case study that addresses some of these issues. This case study found that community representatives stand open to dialogue with local conservationists based on the mutual benefit of wildlife protection. The surveyed villagers had a greater understanding of particular species than of contributing factors in biodiversity declines, such as growing human populations, climate change, and bushmeat hunting. Educational programs that we recommend are targeted at the empowerment of individual community members to speak against poaching, but also at the development of basic literacy, numeracy, and professional skills to counter poverty and promote family planning.

Laboratory animal strain mobilities: handling with care for animal sentience and biosecurity

The global distribution of laboratory mouse strains is valued for ensuring the continuity, validity and accessibility of model organisms. Mouse strains are therefore assumed mobile and able to travel. We draw on the concept of ‘animal mobilities’ (Hodgetts and Lorimer 2019) to explain how attending to laboratory mice as living animal, commodity and scientific tool is shaping how they are transported through contemporary scientific infrastructures and communities. Our paper is framed around exploring how animal strains travel, rather than animals, as we show that it is only through understanding strain mobility that we can explain how and why live animal movement can be replaced by germinal products. The research is based on qualitative fieldwork in 2018 and 2019 that included 2 weeks ethnography and interviews with key informants involved in the movement of laboratory animals. The empirical analysis discusses practices that relate to managing biosecurity and animal welfare concerns when moving laboratory animal strains. In closing we reflect more broadly on the contemporary ‘ethico-onto-epistemological’ (Barad, 2014) entanglement that shapes who or what travels to support laboratory science data-making practices, and the intensity of care ‘tinkering’ practices (Mol and Law 2010) that facilitate the movement. We explain how a laboratory animal strain exceeds its value solely as a mobile and thus exchangeable commodity, illustrated in how values that relate to animal sentience and infection-risk supports its material transformation. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly common for non-sentient germinal products – embryos and gametes - to replace live sentient animals when being moved.

What is neurorepresentationalism? From neural activity and predictive processing to multi-level representations and consciousness

This review provides an update on Neurorepresentationalism, a theoretical framework that defines conscious experience as multimodal, situational survey and explains its neural basis from brain systems constructing best-guess representations of sensations originating in our environment and body (Pennartz, 2015). It posits that conscious experience is characterized by five essential hallmarks: (i) multimodal richness, (ii) situatedness and immersion, (iii) unity and integration, (iv) dynamics and stability, and (v) intentionality. Consciousness is furthermore proposed to have a biological function, framed by the contrast between reflexes and habits (not requiring consciousness) versus goal-directed, planned behavior (requiring multimodal, situational survey). Conscious experience is therefore understood as a sensorily rich, spatially encompassing representation of body and environment, while we nevertheless have the impression of experiencing external reality directly. Contributions to understanding neural mechanisms underlying consciousness are derived from models for predictive processing, which are trained in an unsupervised manner, do not necessarily require overt action, and have been extended to deep neural networks. Even with predictive processing in place, however, the question remains why this type of neural network activity would give rise to phenomenal experience. Here, I propose to tackle the Hard Problem with the concept of multi-level representations which emergently give rise to multimodal, spatially wide superinferences corresponding to phenomenal experiences. Finally, Neurorepresentationalism is compared to other neural theories of consciousness, and its implications for defining indicators of consciousness in animals, artificial intelligence devices and immobile or unresponsive patients with disorders of consciousness are discussed.

Ethical considerations regarding animal experimentation.

Animal experimentation is widely used around the world for the identification of the root causes of various diseases in humans and animals and for exploring treatment options. Among the several animal species, rats, mice and purpose-bred birds comprise almost 90% of the animals that are used for research purpose. However, growing awareness of the sentience of animals and their experience of pain and suffering has led to strong opposition to animal research among many scientists and the general public. In addition, the usefulness of extrapolating animal data to humans has been questioned. This has led to Ethical Committees' adoption of the 'four Rs' principles (Reduction, Refinement, Replacement and Responsibility) as a guide when making decisions regarding animal experimentation. Some of the essential considerations for humane animal experimentation are presented in this review along with the requirement for investigator training. Due to the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals in experimentation, their use is declining in those research areas where alternative in vitro or in silico methods are available. However, so far it has not been possible to dispense with experimental animals completely and further research is needed to provide a road map to robust alternatives before their use can be fully discontinued.

3R measures in facilities for the production of genetically modified rodents.

Sociocultural changes in the human-animal relationship have led to increasing demands for animal welfare in biomedical research. The 3R concept is the basis for bringing this demand into practice: Replace animal experiments with alternatives where possible, Reduce the number of animals used to a scientifically justified minimum and Refine the procedure to minimize animal harm. The generation of gene-modified sentient animals such as mice and rats involves many steps that include various forms of manipulation. So far, no coherent analysis of the application of the 3Rs to gene manipulation has been performed. Here we provide guidelines from the Committee on Genetics and Breeding of Laboratory Animals of the German Society for Laboratory Animal Science to implement the 3Rs in every step during the generation of genetically modified animals. We provide recommendations for applying the 3Rs as well as success/intervention parameters for each step of the process, from experiment planning to choice of technology, harm-benefit analysis, husbandry conditions, management of genetically modified lines and actual procedures. We also discuss future challenges for animal welfare in the context of developing technologies. Taken together, we expect that our comprehensive analysis and our recommendations for the appropriate implementation of the 3Rs to technologies for genetic modifications of rodents will benefit scientists from a wide range of disciplines and will help to improve the welfare of a large number of laboratory animals worldwide.

Does illusionism imply skepticism of animal consciousness?

Illusionism about consciousness entails that phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist. The distribution question concerns the distribution of consciousness in the animal kingdom. Skepticism of animal consciousness is the view that few or no kinds of animals possess consciousness. Thus, illusionism seems to imply a skeptical view on the distribution question. However, I argue that illusionism and skepticism of animal consciousness are actually orthogonal to each other. If illusionism is true, then phenomenal consciousness does not ground intrinsic value so that the non-existence of phenomenal consciousness would not have ethical implications. In this case, the adequate reaction is to reformulate the distribution question in terms of the quasi-phenomenal functional features associated with the illusion of phenomenal consciousness which do ground intrinsic value. Hence, either illusionism is false or the distribution question does not concern phenomenal consciousness. In any case, illusionism does not directly tell us anything about the distribution question. However, since illusionism forces us to revise our traditional conception of consciousness, it indirectly affects research on animal consciousness by questioning that consciousness is a unified and an all-or-nothing property.

The sentience shift in animal research

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use.