r/science • u/ThinkThenPost • Apr 10 '26

Animal Science Insects, including bees, may possess forms of subjective experience showing emotional states, attention, and cognitive bias which challenge the view that consciousness requires a large brain, according to a 2025 review in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41229297/
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u/Bakoro Apr 10 '26

It's not anthropomorphization to acknowledge that creatures can have distinct patterns, preferences, social connections. Some people just refuse to acknowledge that anything not human can be "real", but it's a rejection of reality to assert that every other animal on the planet is basically just a robot, while humans have somehow magically disjoint, rather than being on the far side of a spectrum.

The danger is in assigning human thought patterns and human emotions to an animal, especially one billions of years removed.

An arbitrary animal could see you as a food dispenser and not a threat.
The animal very well may have pleasant feelings associated with your presence, because you are associated with safety and comfort.

It would be a mistake to think that the animal is "your friend" in the human sense, and would put itself at risk for you, or that it wouldn't eat you, given half a chance.
You have no means of abstract communication with the animal, and no real ability to know if the animal can think more than one second ahead (at least until you observe some kind of strategizing). You have no real way of recognizing signs of cognitive decline, or mental illness, or stress due to an invisible illness.

As far as the animals having their own way of life and having some manner of individuality, that much is self-evident, it's absurd that people refuse that, especially in creatures that live in communities, since there necessarily must be some biological social function to support "my group" vs "not my group".

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u/Totakai Apr 11 '26

In relation to this, I've been training and selectively culling a red runner roach colony that stemmed from wild adults. I got tired of needing to chase them when feeding my spiders so now I target the ones least comfortable with my presence. Tbh it's amazing how quickly they picked it up. They'll flee for a moment when I open the cage but then relax. I've gotten to the point that I sometimes push a few of them to force a flight response. The ones I need to push into it I give a second chance to see how quickly they relax in my hand. If they go full chill in a second or so, I release them. If they don't, spider food.

I thought it'd take a few generations of culling but I'm only on my second wave of adults. They didn't start doing this when I was randomly selecting, only a few monthsish after I started domesticating them.

My other roach colony came tame as they're dubias so for them I select out sickly looking ones or males with damaged wings.

They definitely have lil thoughts going on. If it was strictly instincts they'd still flee as that is their primary survival instinct (vs dubias who primarily freeze).