Those Bees and some Insects may have elements of consciousness we need to rethink

Do insects have conscious lives?

Could insects actually feel something? This could particularly sound like a simple question to some, but for some, when they hear the word consciousness, they usually think mostly of mammals.

Your dog and cat can relate and interact with you on a deeper more advanced level than the mosquito you're about to kill to avoid the bites and Malaria. That difference makes some overlook the possibilities of consciousness in insects.

Human beings often connect consciousness in animals with how similar they behave like us. Signs of emotions and memories are usually what we look out for.

For a really long time, the scope of science followed that intuition, focusing almost exclusively on vertebrates whenever we ask questions about awareness in animals.

However, now we have a growing number of researchers that are urging us to widen that lens.

A little over a year ago, in April 2024 to be precise, a formal declaration was signed by dozens of philosophers, neuroscientists and biologists, stating that there is a realistic possibility that even insects and other invertebrates have some form of subjective experience.

A shift needs to be made in our knowledge base in rethinking where exactly does consciousness begin?

There's an old narrative that small, short lived animals are nothing more than reflex machines but we could be a bit wrong on that.

There's a number of evidence backing this new perspective. Take the fruit fly for example, a long time laboratory subject. Researchers found out that flies show patterns of sleep that resemble the patterns seen in mammals. Not just the sleep, but they actually enter active phases that may parallel REM sleep, the stage of sleep where we people dream most vividly.

The very fact that an insect could literally be experiencing similar dream like states like mammals do, forces us to at least consider the possibility that its nervous system is capable of more than automatic reaction or response to it's environment.

A couple of neuroscientists including Bruno van Swinderen, involved in studies of the fly's brain put forth an argument that these active sleep phases the insects experience could be a hint at possible forms of awareness. This form of awareness might be simple compared to our complex form of awareness but that could be enough for the insect to process and perhaps even simulate experiences.

Besides sleep, there are other evidences like some insects' ability to learn and evidence of having memory that further complicates the whole picture.

Typical Bees do not just fly around by simple instincts. They are actually capable of solving problems, remembering specific flowers and adjusting their own strategies when conditions change or become unfavorable to them.

Screenshot of Bees from YouTube

When they encounter an aversive experience, scientists have observed that those Bees tend to avoid the place where the aversive experience occured. We could actually call it maturity, to learn from a bad experience and make wise decisions that'll avoid it in the future. Mammals learn from pain, and Bees are showing similar traits.

Such flexibility in these Bees suggests that at least some insects may be capable of something closer to subjective evaluation than we used to believe.

However there are valid points that make others skeptic about this new philosophy or findings.

One of the strongest objections to this philosophy is that complex behavior does not necessarily equal consciousness. The argument they put forth is that, maybe, just maybe, the insects are merely executing sophisticated algorithms without any inner life, just like what your Chatgpt is doing right now for you. It behaves like it's alive and responding to you, but it has no awareness, it's merely codes. Perhaps for the insects, it could be biological coding.

Infact to double down on this objection, even us human beings can process information unconsciously. Our brains perform so many tasks, from regulating balance to interpreting subliminal cues, without those tasks ever rising into conscious awareness. Perhaps that's the same concept we're seeing in the insects and calling, actual consciousness.

So the biggest challenge facing this field of study is being able to tell the difference between conscious and unconscious processing happening in any species that cannot verbally report their experiences.

It is undoubtedly a strong argument against the possibility of consciousness in insects but totally dismissing the possibility outright has its own consequences.

What if we wrongly assume that invertebrates are unaware. Then there's a chance we'll keep ignoring forms of suffering or well being that matter ethically or that matter to the insects.

We could be right or we could be wrong, both arguments are strong and that is precisely why the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness emphasizes probability rather than certainty.

Even if we're not fully aware of the exact nature of the experiences of consciousness that these insects have, if enough indirect evidence is found, it's only fair that we take the matter more seriously.

Why take it seriously though? We already know that insects and other invertebrates make up the vast majority of animal life on our home planet. We farm them, study them and control them(pest control). So even if the reality is that a fraction of them are capable of feeling pain, pleasure or anything that suggests some level of awareness, then our moral responsibilities toward them may need to be revisited.

We try to treat dogs and cats and other pet mammals with some level of ethics primarily because of their level of awareness, so we might as well with the insects if these findings come out more accurate in the near future.

This new philosophy doesn't mean that science has drawn a conclusion that we know what it is like to be a fly or a bee, but it does mean that we're now dabbling in possibilities and questions that seemed to not be regarded a few decades ago.

The conclusion this research has drawn is not that insects definitely dream or feel happiness and joy in the way that we do. The conclusion is about recognition. Recognition that consciousness may come in many forms, distributed more widely than we once assumed.