{"id":30873,"date":"2022-05-05T18:44:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T18:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com"},"modified":"2025-03-18T17:44:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T17:44:23","slug":"the-surprisingly-sophisticated-mind-of-an-insect","status":"publish","type":"wpm-article","link":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-surprisingly-sophisticated-mind-of-an-insect","title":{"rendered":"The Surprisingly Sophisticated Mind Of An Insect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the age of 20, I committed my first mass murder. I didn\u2019t, of course, mean to. But my good intentions meant nothing to the small mound of deceased fruit flies in the bottom of the vial.<\/p><div>\n    <iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"noa-web-audio-player\"\n            style=\"border: none\"\n            src=\"https:\/\/embed-player.newsoveraudio.com\/v4?key=n0e13g&#038;id=https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-surprisingly-sophisticated-mind-of-an-insect\/&#038;bgColor=F3F3F3&#038;color=6D6D6D&#038;progressBgColor=F7F7F7&#038;progressBorderColor=6D6D6D&#038;playColor=F3F3F3&#038;titleColor=383D3D&#038;timeColor=6D6D6D&#038;speedColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkHighlightColor=039BE5\"\n            width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><p>My goal was simply to anesthetize them and then search their wrinkled, vellum wings and bulging eyes for mutations. It was a classic introductory genetics experiment, one taught to countless aspiring biologists for a century. I doused a cotton ball with ether, the fruity-smelling liquid that would render the flies temporarily unconscious (and easier to count). The instructor warned us to make sure the flies were completely knocked out, so they didn\u2019t wake up mid-experiment. So I left the ether-soaked cotton on the vial an extra minute or two. Just to be safe.<\/p><p>It wasn\u2019t the first time I killed an animal in the name of science. I dissected a fetal pig in a high school biology class. I massacred bacteria by the billions as a student research technician and budding microbiologist. The only twinge of guilt I felt when dissecting worms as a 12-year-old was when my mom served spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner, and the noodles on my plate looked all too similar to the slimy earthworms I had earlier dispatched to Valhalla with a scalpel.&nbsp;<\/p><p>And so I told myself that the flies had lived a good life, with plenty of overripe bananas and opportunities to swipe right on Drosophila Tinder. They died for a good cause.&nbsp;<\/p><p>I\u2019m not heartless. Had I accidentally gassed several dozen kittens, I would have yeeted myself off the nearest building, overcome with guilt. These were&nbsp;<em>flies<\/em>. It was no big deal.<\/p><p>Most biologists would agree with me. \u201cWhen I started studying bees in the late 1980s, the prevailing view was not just that they\u2019re not conscious, but that they are just incapable of any kind of emotion,\u201d Lars Chittka, a sensory and behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, told me recently. \u201cThe whole notion would have seemed just absurd.\u201d<\/p><p>However, a growing collection of new experiments is challenging the old consensus. Far from being six-legged automatons, they can experience feelings akin to pain and suffering, joy and desire. When Chittka gave bumblebees an extra jolt of sucrose, their favorite food, the bees&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aaf4454\">buzzed<\/a> with delight. Agitated, anxious honeybees, on the other hand,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0960982211005446\">responded<\/a> with pessimism&nbsp;when researchers shook them to simulate a predatory attack. Other researchers&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/10\/science\/bees-screaming-murder-hornets.html\">found<\/a>&nbsp;that they \u201cscream\u201d when under threat. Ants display rudimentary counting abilities, can understand the concept of zero and make tools. Fruit flies&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosgenetics\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pgen.1007430\">learn<\/a> from their peers.&nbsp;Cockroaches have&nbsp;complex <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1007\/s00040-012-0234-x\">social lives<\/a>. Fruit flies drown themselves in booze when deprived of mating opportunities.&nbsp;Some earwigs and other insects <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/jinsectscience\/article\/10\/1\/184\/887519?login=false\">play dead<\/a>&nbsp;when threatened by a predator.<\/p><p>In other words, insects have thoughts and feelings. The next question for philosophers and scientists alike is: Do they have consciousness?<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>Nearly 400 years ago, the French philosopher and polymath Ren\u00e9 Descartes formulated a devastatingly simple answer to the question, \u201cWhat is consciousness?\u201d Cogito, ergo sum \u2014I think, therefore I am. Hidden in that three-word Latin phrase is the assumption that humans are the only thinking animals. No matter how emphatically you ask a monkey or a snail whether they are alive and conscious, they will never answer. As the only species endowed by God with a soul and rational mind, humans, Descartes believed, sat at the summit of all life on Earth.<\/p><p>Cutting-edge research over the last few years has begun to shift this view.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cHumans are no longer seen as at the pinnacle of creation,\u201d Catherine Wilson, a philosophy fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, told me. \u201cThere\u2019s a greater modesty and awareness in which we are just one species \u2014 and maybe not even the most important species.\u201d<\/p><p>To Wilson, the biological basis of consciousness arises from the separation of self from the world. \u201cAnimals need to know what their movements are and what is happening in the world,\u201d she said. That gives rise to an experience, which is the fundamental building block of consciousness. It\u2019s an idea that builds on a 1974 essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who tried to answer the question of consciousness by asking: \u201cWhat is it like to be a bat?\u201d Unlike most humans, who move through the world guided mostly by sight, many bats are nearly blind and navigate by sound. And while many of us may have imagined life as a bat, only bats can know what it\u2019s like to be a bat.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      \u201cCockroaches have complex social lives.\u201d    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/30873\"\n        data-a2a-title='\u201cCockroaches have complex social lives.\u201d'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>\u201cYet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task,\u201d Nagel wrote. \u201cI cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions and modifications.\u201d<\/p><p>If any creature has a sense of what it\u2019s like to be that creature, Nagel\u2019s argument goes, it\u2019s conscious. Whether we humans can understand what it\u2019s like is beside the point. As I was re-reading Nagel\u2019s essay recently, a group of cardinals alit on the bird feeder outside my office window. My cat perched on the sill, ears forward like furry satellite dishes, her tail swishing in preparation for a pounce. She even called out to them, a raspy chirp of <em>eckeckeckeckeck<\/em>.<\/p><p>My cat almost certainly has a sense of what it\u2019s like to be a cat, and a bat has that same sense for itself, but do flies and other insects? And if they do have this sense, where does it come from?&nbsp;<\/p><p>Whereas Descartes could claim that human consciousness was a gift of the divine, modern scientists and philosophers don\u2019t treat consciousness as if it were miraculously bestowed upon the world, all neatly tied up with a big red bow. Consciousness, then, is a natural phenomenon, not a religious one.&nbsp;<\/p><p>That meant consciousness had to have a biological explanation. That explanation immediately focused on the brain. To Descartes and like-minded philosophers, consciousness is inextricably linked to the human mind.&nbsp;\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n            \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Read Noema in print.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        <\/p><p>\u201cIt\u2019s all about the cortex,\u201d Christopher Hill, a philosopher at Brown University, told me. The cortex is the brain\u2019s folded, wrinkly cap \u2014 what science communicator Ze Frank calls \u201cthe thinky thinky parts.\u201d The swollen cortex of a person controls many of the features that we typically consider make us human: things like rational thought, awareness and language. If consciousness were a purely human phenomenon, then its origination in the cortex makes sense. The human cortex is so much bigger than other species\u2019 that it\u2019s part of what makes Homo sapiens neurologically special.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Despite their reputation as mindless automatons, insects have three blobs of neural tissue that, taken together, form a brain. What insects don\u2019t have is a cortex \u2014 nothing that even resembles one. To Hill, this means they can\u2019t have consciousness. Without this dense, gray lid of neurons, consciousness is just not possible.<\/p><p>Other researchers aren\u2019t so sure. They have begun to question whether consciousness originates from a place at all, spurring a rethinking of why it exists in the first place. However overgrown it might be in humans, the cerebral cortex didn\u2019t emerge fully formed out of nowhere. It evolved over time, as did other neural structures. And if consciousness also evolved, then maybe the cortex isn\u2019t the be-all, end-all of consciousness. Maybe consciousness is far more primitive.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Insects might lack the hardware called a cerebral cortex, but they have plenty of other neural real estate. Could their brains perhaps contain the basis of consciousness?&nbsp;<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>Like most good collaborations, it began over beer. Colin Klein, a philosopher, and Andy Barron, who studies the neural mechanisms of animals, then both working at Macquarie University in Sydney, met at a science pub night. They had a pint and struck up a conversation on what researchers call the neural correlates of consciousness.&nbsp;<\/p><p>In the beginning, they agreed that insects were not conscious. But as they talked, they started to punch holes in their assumptions. They remembered that, in 2007, the Swedish neuroscientist Bj\u00f6rn Merker argued that consciousness didn\u2019t originate in the highly advanced cortex, but in a more primitive section of the brain at the top of the brain stem. Klein and Barron honed in on one part of that area, the tongue-shaped segment of neurons about an inch long called the midbrain, which controls a variety of involuntary functions, such as vision and motor control, as well as processing some sensory input. It was this latter task that attracted Merker\u2019s attention for its potential role in consciousness.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Klein and Barron found Merker\u2019s argument compelling \u2014 and if it was true, insects might very well be conscious. In a 2016 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they argued that insects do have the functional equivalent of the human midbrain, which means they could very likely have some form of consciousness.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      \u201cConsciousness is a sense of yourself in the world. It\u2019s suffering. It\u2019s bliss.\u201d    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/30873\"\n        data-a2a-title='\u201cConsciousness is a sense of yourself in the world. It\u2019s suffering. It\u2019s bliss.\u201d'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Not many people believed the conclusion, Klein told me. A big mistake, he pointed out, is thinking that insect consciousness is like human consciousness. Humans tend to think of consciousness as the ability to worry ourselves into knots about future events that have an infinitesimal chance of happening \u2014 or to question whether other species have consciousness. But consciousness itself, Klein says, is much deeper and more primitive. It\u2019s a sense of yourself in the world. It\u2019s suffering. It\u2019s bliss.<\/p><p>It\u2019s hard to get more primitive than pain and pleasure. Even bacteria know kinds of pain and pleasure \u2014 they are hardwired to swim toward some signals but away from others. So do&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC1691351\/\">fish<\/a>. And&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aaw4099\">insects<\/a>.<\/p><p>But so what? If insects have consciousness, what does that even mean?<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>A moral philosopher who has pondered this question is Peter Singer. Singer stopped eating meat in the late 1960s as a student at Oxford University, after a friend told him about the abuse of animals in the meat industry. Singer\u2019s 1975 book \u201cAnimal Liberation\u201d \u2014 widely considered to be the founding philosophy of the animal rights movement \u2014 laid bare the problems of overlooking suffering in everything from scientific research to food.&nbsp;<\/p><p>But at first, insects weren\u2019t on his radar. \u201cI was always unsure about invertebrates, such as cephalopods and crustaceans,\u201d he told me. \u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking very much about it. I was just hoping that they weren\u2019t sentient and there wasn\u2019t an issue there.\u201d<\/p><p>Over the years, however, Singer has continued to ask himself about the nature of animal suffering and what enables it, biologically. He has come to the same conclusion as Klein and Chittka: that insects do have some sort of consciousness.&nbsp;<\/p><p>But Singer takes it one step further: If insects are conscious, how should humans treat them? Take agricultural pesticides. Anything that causes mass suffering and death in its intended victims is problematic, he said, because whether or not those victims are conscious, they can feel pain. Thus, farmers should use whichever one causes insects to immediately lose consciousness \u2014&nbsp;\u201cthe equivalent of a humane slaughter law.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>I asked Singer if there was some sort of suffering math that could be calculated. If, say, a cricket is one-tenth as conscious as a chicken and can thus only suffer one-tenth as much, but it requires 100 crickets to get the same protein as a chicken, would we then be increasing the suffering in the universe by an order of magnitude?&nbsp;<\/p><p>Singer paused for a minute, then nodded. \u201cMaybe,\u201d he said. It\u2019s not that simple, he went on, but it\u2019s something most governments should be thinking about, and they aren\u2019t.<\/p><p>Most, but not all. Last November, the British government recognized crustaceans and cephalopods (octopi and squid)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings\">as sentient<\/a>, and proposed legislation would make it illegal to boil lobsters alive. There are already laws barring the same cooking method in Switzerland and elsewhere.<\/p><p>In the end, I don\u2019t know whether insects have consciousness or not. Nobody else can say for sure, either. I do, however, think the question is worth asking: What&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;<\/em>it like to be a bee or an ant? We lose little by elbowing humans out of the center of every decision-making process, instead asking how our actions impact other animals, even small ones we think are dumb and gross. As Wilson put it: \u201cWe are living, suffering and enjoying beings in a whole world of other living, suffering and enjoying beings. And we should not be depriving them unnecessarily of their experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n          \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Enjoy the read? Subscribe to get the best of Noema.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3445,"featured_media":30867,"template":"","wpm-article-type":[4],"wpm-article-topic":[23],"wpm-article-tag":[],"class_list":["post-30873","wpm-article","type-wpm-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wpm-article-type-feature","wpm-article-topic-philosophy-culture"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.0 (Yoast SEO v25.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are Insects Conscious?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Insects appear to be more intelligent and emotionally complex than we give them credit for. 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