Research on Insect Consciousness

An old blog post on the blog "Intelligent Life is All Around Us" drew my attention to a fascinating Discover Magazine article, "Consciousness in a Cockroach." I've included some quotations from that piece below. I wonder: What are the best ways to support further research like this?

"Many people would pooh-pooh the notion of insects having brains that are in any way comparable to those of primates," Strausfeld adds. "But one has to think of the principles underlying how you put a brain together, and those principles are likely to be universal."

The findings are controversial. "The evidence that I've seen so far has not convinced me," says Gilles Laurent, a neuroscientist at Caltech. But some researchers are considering possibilities that would shock most lay observers. "We have literally no idea at what level of brain complexity consciousness stops," says Christof Koch, another Caltech neuroscientist. "Most people say, 'For heaven's sake, a bug isn't conscious.' But how do we know? We're not sure anymore. I don't kill bugs needlessly anymore."

Heinrich Reichert of the University of Basel in Switzerland has become more and more interested in "the relatedness of all brains."

[...]

"Attention," says van Swinderen, "is a whole-brain phenomenon. A thing is not purely visual, not purely olfactory. It's a binding together of different parts that for us signify one thing. Why couldn't the fly's mechanism [of attention] be directed to a succession of its memories?" he asks. "That, to me, is just a short hop, skip, and a jump away from what might be consciousness." The difference between the memories of a fly and a human might be a matter of degree. The human can store a lot more memories and can therefore maintain a more sophisticated personal narrative of his past and present. But van Swinderen believes "it could be exactly the same mechanism in a fly and a human." Although there is still no evidence to decide either way, the result could be consciousness.

"Probably what consciousness requires," says Koch of Caltech, "is a sufficiently complicated system with massive feedback. Insects have that. If you look at the mushroom bodies, they're massively parallel and have feedback."

Chemical clues confirm that at least some fundamental brain processes are the same in humans and insects. Van Swinderen and Rozi Andretic, a neuroscientist at NSI, have found that mutant flies producing too little of the neurotransmitter dopamine have impaired salience responses. Feeding the mutant flies methamphetamine—a chemical related to drugs used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—relieves the dopamine shortage and normalizes the flies' attention. But give meth to a normal fly and it cannot attend as well. "Similar mechanisms are present in vertebrates and flies," Andretic told me.

When you consider that neurons themselves are strikingly similar across the animal kingdom, it all begins to make sense. "You have the same basic building blocks for vertebrates and invertebrates," says Strausfeld, "and there are certain ways you can put these building blocks together [into brains]." So when it came to building a brain center like the hippocampus that can recognize places, there might have been only one way to wire those quirky neurons together to do the job—and evolution arrived at that same solution multiple times independently, just as the genetic instructions for wings evolved multiple times in distinct lineages.

Pain-free Animals?

The current Vegan Outreach newsletter contains a link to a New Scientist piece (as well as an unfortunate editorial) based on a fascinating article: "Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?" by Adam Shriver. The moral urgency of such a proposal seems to me obvious, so I was most interested in the discussion of its scientific plausibility.

Shriver presents two example proposals for what might be done. First, we might

create knockouts of other mammals (cows and pigs for starters) lacking the AC1 and AC8 enzymes. Interfering with the cAMP cycle in the brain reduces the affective dimension of chronic or persistent pain, rather than pain full stop, but this would still be an improvement over current circumstances. If we could eliminate the sensitization that occurs as a result of painful or traumatic experiences, the animals would still be better off than they are now.

Secondly,

Zhou-Feng Chen and colleagues searched the Allen Brain Atlas to find genes that were highly expressed in the ACC but not other areas of the brain [29]. One strong candidate was the peptide P311. The researchers created knockout mice lacking the expression of P311 and found that heat and mechanical sensitivity were normal in the animals. However, they then performed a conditioned place aversion test on the animals and found that the knockouts no longer demonstrated the conditioned place aversion caused by formalin injections, in stark contrast to control rats. Thus, at first glance, it appears that knocking out P311 in mice strongly diminishes the affective dimension of pain while keeping acute responses intact.

Furthermore, P311 is likely to play a similar role in all mammals (Chen, personal communication), so one presumably could engineer other mammals that have a reduced affective dimension of pain while maintaining the sensory dimension of pain.

Since I'm even more interested in wild-animal suffering than farm-animal suffering, in view of the vast difference in numbers of animals involved, my immediate question was whether similar techniques might one day be applicable there. Doing so is a lot trickier, because evolution produced the badness of pain for a reason. Shriver mentions this concern:

Since it seems likely that the affective dimension of pain played some role in determining the evolutionary fitness of organisms, we might question whether knockout livestock could really survive up through the point where they are normally slaughtered. However, it appears that the experimental rats were able to survive without complication at least in their cages (Chen, personal communication). This would be a good model for sows or veal calves who spend most of their lives confined in small pens where they can’t do much of anything that would injure or otherwise harm themselves.

Producing genetically fit wildlife without pain might require not just knocking out pain but replacing the "pain" - "pleasure" axis with a "less pleasure" - "more pleasure" axis, which could be much more difficult.

I mentioned that Shriver's proposal seems obviously valuable from my perspective, but unfortunately this isn't necessarily the case among the general public. As the New Scientist article notes:

[Alan] Goldberg also contends that public attitudes may make pain-free livestock a non-starter. He and colleague Renee Gardner conducted an online survey on the use of pain-free animals in research and found little public support, even among researchers who experiment on animals (Alternatives to Animal Testing and Experimentation, vol 14, p 145).

This underscores the importance of public outreach to change hearts and minds about wild-animal suffering and how it could be prevented.

Ham and Eggonomics, Part 1

Bailey Norwood is a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University. Much of his recent research on food preferences and farm-animal care is of interest to the animal-welfare community. For instance, one of his papers examines economic impacts of switching to vegetarian diets, giving consideration to the supply-and-demand interrelationships of the chicken, pork, beef, and corn markets.

One of Norwood's recent projects is a website called Ham and Eggonomics, which includes an associated blog. In the page's own words:

This website is intended to be an information source for consumers about the food they eat, with specific emphasis on the welfare of farm animals. Finding good, useful information is difficult. Scientists are objective but often to timid to make general statements. Food industries have their obvious bias. Even authors who write books about food generally distort and sensationalize the truth to scare consumers.

Ham and Eggonomics states the facts plainly and is not scared to tackle an issue head-on. The website only desires to provide you with the information you require for your food choices, and has no desire to tilt your political leanings or recruit you into a specific cause.

The page features the a book with the same name as the site. The book is in draft form, and "comments are welcome," so I'll make a few remarks on Chapters 1 and 6 below. In Part 2, I comment on Chapter 8.

Chapter 1 lays out the slant from which the authors approach animal welfare: Namely, the economics of revealed preferences, rather than philosophical prescription.

Whereas ethicists and philosophers will argue about the morality of treating animals in certain ways, the economic approaches assumes that each person is entitled to their own view of animal welfare. (Ch. 1, p. 11)

The economic approach is to instead treat peoples’ views on animal welfare as preferences. That is, instead of arguing with you about what is right or wrong, or trying to persuade you to adopt a particular system of moral beliefs, we simply ask you, and your fellow citizens, what you think is right and wrong and make that the goal of society. For example, if instead of animal welfare we were dealing with the contentious issue of abortion, we would not try to persuade you to be for or against abortion. Instead, we would poll the public, and if a majority of Americans was against abortion, we might would conclude that public policy should outlaw abortion. That is just an example, an example to illustrate that we seek to determine how animals should be raised, based on the moral and ethical beliefs of you and your fellow citizens. (Ch. 1, p. 3)

Needless to say, I don't agree with this approach, because it conflates prescription about what should be done with description of the desires held by an arbitrary group of agents (adult Americans, in rough proportion to their voting / purchasing power). I demur at the suggestion that "animals matter because people care about them" (Ch. 1, p. 5). But my objection here is no different from my disagreement with the standard economic approach in general, and I'm glad the authors make their bias explicit. In addition, I appreciate the authors' aim to make reasoned decisions based on academic research into the costs and benefits of particular actions, without being afraid to upset standard ideological positions. (We merely differ on what to measure when assessing costs and benefits.)

The tone of the book is very "mainstream":

In this book, we offer no grand moral philosophy that makes your food choices straightforward. We do not believe ourselves so smart and knowledgeable that we can dictate to you the choices you can make. We can, however, help you understand the consequences of your choices, and help you better form your views on farm animal welfare. (Ch. 6, p. 20)

This may ultimately prove beneficial, because the message is not off-putting to majority of Americans in the way that much animal-rights literature is.

I largely agree with the authors that "the study of animal welfare is, for all practical purposes, the study of farm animal welfare" (Ch. 1, p. 4) because farm animals vastly outnumber those used in labs or for fur. Indeed, I would go further and say that the study of animal welfare is, for all practical purposes, the study of chicken welfare, because the number of pigs and cows slaughtered is tiny by comparison.

I do wish this point were recognized more by animal-welfare organizations, which -- even when they recognize the importance of farm animals -- often continue to focus resources on, say, welfare standards for veal calves and sows. Even the authors of Ham and Eggonomics fall into this, by giving roughly equal time to welfare questions about the raising of cows, pigs, and chickens. Really, the only animals people should think about when discussing land-based factory farms are broiler chickens and laying hens.

The above statement ignores fish and crustaceans, which may also suffer in huge numbers. And of course, it ignores wild animals. The book authors are not silent on this point, however:

It would also be foolish romanticism to believe that the lives of all domesticated animals are inferior to their ancestors or to modern animals that live in the wild. Domesticated animals live without the fear of predators and have ample supply of food and water; one need only turn their television to the Discovery channel to see that wild animals live in constant fear of being mauled and are no strangers to hunger and starvation. (Ch. 1, p. 9)

Some animal rights groups are even opposed to the owning of animals as pets. They only wish animals to exist in their wild state, which as any avid watcher of nature shows can attest, has its own distinct forms of cruelty. Wild animals, though adapted to their environment, face many obstacles to receiving adequate nutrition, and most face constant pursuit as prey. In our opinion, wild animals do not have a high level of well-being. (Ch. 6, p. 19)

The authors go on to cite my piece on wild-animal suffering on p. 19. (The blog mentions it as well.) They suggest an interesting conclusion, one that I probably agree with:

It is possible, and to us likely, that the only manner in which animals can enter this world and for their species as a whole to experience more happiness than suffering is for them to be under the stewardship of humans. Whether they are pigs destined for slaughter or dogs destined for doting, nature’s hand has no choice but to be cruel, while humans have the choice to become compassionate stewards. If an animal species is to exist, between [sic.: better] for them to exist under the care of humans, generally speaking. (Ch. 6, p. 19)

This is perhaps unsurprising: Evolution does not optimize an objective function of cumulative happiness minus pain. (Of course, neither do almost all breeders of farmed animals.) Human engineers with the specific goal of reducing suffering and promoting wellbeing ought to be able to do better, unless they are too incompetent to succeed at the task. In practice, incompetence may very well prevail with respect to wild animals at the moment (evolution, for all its "blind, pitiless indifference," may do a better job at currently evolved optima), but this needn't be the case indefinitely, as human technology and intelligence progress.

Vegans who (Sadly) Support Wilderness

The forum of the Vegane Gesellschaft Österreich or Vegan Society Austria features an interesting discussion of wild-animal suffering from September-October 2008. Here is the link to the first page in German. Below I've copied some comments that I thought were worth highlighting, converted to English using Google Translate.

The topic was raised by "mars mensch":

I'm vegan because I do not want the animals to suffer. I think veganism and animal rights, the idea is to spread a very effective way the suffering of farm animals (and perhaps humans) to be reduced.
But what about wild animals? I can hardly anything on the Internet can find. There are most probably suffering in wilderness. Wild animals suffer from all kinds - hunger, thirst, cold, disease, parasites, injuries, .. depending on the type and probably also fear, grief, stress, sexual frustration ..
Somehow, nobody seems to be wondering about it. I do not think of people suffering caused is worse than "natural", as some seem to perceive. Suffering is suffering.
So the question is: What can be done against the suffering in the wilderness do I have to honestly have no clue.

here are two interesting links on the topic, but also without any real answers:
http://utilitarian-essays.com/wild-animals.pdf
http://www.felicifia.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=161

Some respondents suggested that wild animals may not need help:

I think animals are in the wilderness pretty well. You can provide for themselves or a family, have an enormous amount of space to move and they die at some point. The fact that they are not always made great must simply accept, as people in affluent societies, which have sufficient food and shelter often beyond problems. (Heavy Heavy Low Low, p. 1)

but the few animals are still wild eg: on an island, does not need our help, because the suffering or death keeps everything in balance. (The Andi, p. 1)

I like the reply that mars mensch gave (p. 1):

I think some here have a rather romantic idea of the transformed nature or seem to think that nature is good and man is the source of the evil in the world. This is also anthropozentisch and is not true. Nature is cruel.
Animals are not perfectly adapted to the environment. Many survive the winter because they do not starve or freeze. Dry periods and droughts regularly delete almost complete populations. Diseases and parasites are widespread. There are predators, etc., etc.
We encourage vegans to get us to that calves are taken away from their mothers. But also in the freedom of pups lose their parents and vice versa.
I really do not know what one against the suffering of wild animals can do, but we should in any case, start thinking about it. Perhaps the best thing you can do at the moment, to disseminate that anything should do.

Some further posters expressed the view that humans should leave wildlife alone:

And I personally will not if I now beginning with a game to feel compassion, precisely because it is free in nature can live and also the natural circumstances is exposed!
For me, this is just nature and wilderness: The life enjoy, with all its vagaries and dangers [...] I've also someday read a quote from someone: A world without suffering is a dead world! So somehow related to the natural sorrow which is not vermeitbar has this quote already in my opinion. (leather, p. 2)

when Veganism is not yet a matter of principle, suffering-free world to create (yes this is absolutely not in the range of our options), but only a question of our behavior to be corrected, so that we are sentient beings do not expect further suffering and cruel treated, just because we are stronger than they are. in their nature but we have already sufficient interfered - I personally think that the wildlife rather want us to leave, instead of us even in their affairs. (spaghetti, p. 2)

I appreciated this sentiment from "Mercy" (p. 1):

Whenever I am on television reports about natural disasters can see, such as earthquakes, floods, forest fires, then I think to the animals as victims! Of course, I also find the fate of the people who are affected gaaanz awful, no question, but then I always think that anyone who cares for the animals?

Famine and disease are "natural" in humans, yet most people seem to care about preventing them. Why is there a difference when these occur in animals, apart from the difficulty of the task?

mars mensch offered a nice concluding thought (p. 4):

Human rights are sometimes divided into several generations:

"Rights of the first" generation "refer to the classic civil and political freedom and participation rights, as established by the French Revolution were formulated. They are inter alia in the UN civil pact, or even in the European Convention on Human Rights established. The pact includes a civil general prohibition of discrimination as well as basic defensive and rights (right to life, prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, prohibition of slavery and forced labor), the vital for the protection of human dignity are more then Civil freedom and political participation rights (personal freedom and security, thought, religion, expression, assembly, freedom of association, etc.) and justice-related rights (equality before the law, presumption of innocence, fair trial, etc.). The national and international protection for civil and political rights are still the most developed.

Rights of the second "generation" include Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in short: WSK-human rights or social rights), which since the 19th Century in the wake of the industrial revolution emerged. The central point of reference of these rights is the UN social pact, which includes rights and labor, social security, nutrition, housing, water, health and education anchored. Long time these rights were not "real" human rights, but rather as a political target views, which - in contrast to civil and political rights - legally not sufficiently identifiable and judicially reviewable hardly had. Since the 1990s, however, the content and the violation of human rights, social events significantly concretised. Social human rights are now widely deemed to be politically and are by their nature as enforceable (tangible justiciability). "Http://www.fes.de/handbuchmenschenrechte/03-menschenrechte-einstieg.html

Maybe it will be in the animal rights as well give something. Only defensive rights against the people, or the right not to be imprisoned and tortured, as response to factory farming, etc. And then to also claim rights to help those whose suffering is not caused by humans. If the species boundaries in ethics exceeded only once, it's just logical.

It's nice to get a sense of how people in the animal-rights movement respond to the idea of wild-animal suffering. Though some are uninterested, there are probably more sympathetic souls among this community than the general population. Raising the topic in forums like this does seem to be a good way of making people think about the issue.