The elusive science of animal sentience

[@diogocarvalho2934]

This channel has become one of my favorites in all of youtube in very very little time

[@ropro9817]

Yeah, but how did the researchers know that a shot of acetic acid would only feel like lemon juice on an open cut? 🤔

[@InkNSap]

I thought exactly the same!

[@gunneone]

This channel came out of nowhere and is already one of my favorite channels. Amazing.

[@ZeeshanAli-kl1cl]

It's mid ngl

[@AnkitaDharKarmakar]

I loved this episode. I think it's just our anthropomorphic bias that regulates how certain animals are treated. It raises questions about who has the right to life.

[@feyindecay912]

Though our anthropomorphic bias could just aswell make us believe that those animals we do judge to suffer may not actually suffer either.

[@ross-carlson]

Given you can't even prove I exist yes, this is an extremely difficult topic. That said I'm so happy to see research like this as it doesn't matter what we think we know or believe, it matters what we can DEMONSTRATE. That's why this is so important and fascinating.

[@CephBirk]

As a cephalopod researcher, I really appreciate the careful, nuanced explanations provided here!

[@originstory-earth]

Such an interesting topic, Joss. I'm no scientist but I've been thinking for a long time that maybe we can't measure everything in relation to how humans do it. Maybe (probably) there's more to this Universe.

[@elsadiora_]

Yes. I agree to this 100% .

[@patrickcollins8048]

“Nature never draws a line without smudging it” - Winston Churchill, A Roving Commission This quote tells you everything you need to know about consciousness: it’s not a matter of yes or no… it’s a matter of degrees on a broad spectrum

[@Howtown]

That makes sense to me too but we don't know enough yet about how neurons produce consciousness to characterize it one way or another!

[@patrickcollins8048]

@@Howtown thanks for the response! I get what you’re saying. It’s true, the science behind neurons and consciousness is super complex, and my comment was a bit oversimplified. Appreciate your insight!

[@momentenhancer]

@@Howtownwhat do you mean by neurons producing consciousness?

[@isaidromerogavino8902]

So, Churchill was a biologist?

[@Fr00stee]

​@@HowtownI would assume the baseline for consciousness is the ability of the brain to be able to directly monitor what is happening in different parts of the brain

[@fangjiunnewe3634]

Shoutout to An Immense World by Ed Yong and Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith for stunning deep dives into the minds of animals

[@Historiceducation-hv4ud]

Video Summary for those on a time crunch: An experiment was conducted in octopus arms were removed from the octopus then the severed arms had pain inflicted apon them. The octopus arms, despite bit being attacked to a body, still withdrew from the pain, indicating they felt something despite not being connected to a brain. This is a proccess called "nociception". Its like when you put your hand a on a hot stove, you'll pull it away immediately. Your brain didn't make the decision to pull away, your reflexes did. All aninals have some variation of this. As a dead octopus arm cant feel pain, ctopuses seem to have this function even without the existence if pain. Humans on the other hand, will always feel pain when this happens. Another octopus related experiment, occured when they put an octopus in a tank, wuth one side of the tank decorated in a certain way, and another side of the tank decorated in a different way. They measure how much time the octopus spent in each side of the tank. Once they had identified which side of the tank the octopus preferred, they gave it an injection that they knew would cause it pain, and put it back in it's favorite side of the tank, and locked it in that half of the tank for twenty minutes. After that, they allowed the octopus to roam free in whatever part of the tank it liked, and it chose to go to the side of the tank it had initially not spent much time in. This implies that the octopus associated that side of tabk with pain, causing it to dislike that side of the tank. Similar experiments have been done on crabs, where they learn to avoid a side of the tank where they recieved an electric shock, and held on totheir severed limb, gaurding it with their 1 remaining hand. Nobody agrees on the definition of consiousness, or what causes or what is required to create consiousness. I cant technically prove anyone but myself is conscious, and that goes for everyone. I feel so sorry for all the poor octopuses who were unlucky enough to be selected for the experiments.

[@Homer-OJ-Simpson]

You mean all this time as an American i have been using or thinking the correct way to pronounce “sentient” is the British way?

[@adeasanders2711]

Same lol as born and raised USA, I've never heard the pronunciation they said is our version. It's always been the British version (apparently)

[@kbkb117]

Same! I've never even heard someone say 'senchent' lol it sounds ridiculous I'm from the midwest

[@matthewb3113]

I must be British, as I have always said sentient the "British way" (I am a Gen Xer), and I have heard most people say it the British way.

[@aliengeo]

I think this is one of those times when the dictionary fails to reflect how people actually talk. It's probably more likely that in modern American English, "sen-ti-ent" / "sen-chent" / probably even "sen-chi-ent" are in free variation, but "sen-chent" is the historical prestige pronunciation.

[@madhavdhilip]

Octopus are sentient. Source: The boys.

[@myboatforacar]

To be fair, IIRC octopi have a brain-like structure at the end of each arm. So a severed octopus arm might well be sentient, if it's still alive.

[@OakenTome]

They're called cephalopods because their heads are a derived form of the mollusc foot.

[@myboatforacar]

@@OakenTome ...oops. Thanks for the catch.

[@agapitoliria]

I always thought this was the wrong question, one that stems from trying to differentiate humans and animals as separated things, different in their essence. From what I've seen from studies on consciousness and awareness, sentience may even just arise in the microtubules that are present in all living cells, we just don't know. I don't think the sentient categorization has any real meaning that can be actually applied. To me it feels more like a moral judgment of "this looks human" or not.

[@Infinitesimal-ho7it]

Maybe a warning about the butchering scenes (from 11:02 to 11:16) should be at the beginning of this video, and then again right before. I would tend to think of octopi as nearly all brain. I think they do some complex processing in their arms. It's like they are muscle and brain. I would err on the side of any creature that has to navigate their environment and be able to quickly adapt to a cause of pain and danger should be seen as sentient. Even a nematode. Where there is symbiosis involved, that might be considered an overall complex processing. A fungus might not feel pain nor care, but somewhere along the web someone is going to feel the pinch in their life. No one should consider hurting someone else satisfying.

[@DanikaLeighEllis]

I was going to say the same thing. I recoiled when I saw the octopus getting torn apart immediately after discussing them as sentient.

[@PhoebeFayRuthLouise]

I totally agree with you!

[@ellie8272]

​@@DanikaLeighEllisAbsolutely horrifying cognitive dissonance from them for sure

[@jadioj]

Wussies

[@TheLikerofPie]

Maybe a good approach would be to leave animals alone unless we are absolutely confident that they don't feel pain and suffer? Otherwise we would risk causing immense suffering on unfathomable scales...

[@ellie8272]

Considering we cause immense suffering on unfathomable scales to human beings pretty regularly I think this argument is gonna fall on pretty deaf ears

[@tadeob_]

no thanks. im not me when im hungry

[@adamtheburke]

Love what you both are doing with this channel. Keep up the good work. This is the internet, after all, so I also love Adam's cat in the background just doing their cat thing.

[@DanielSolis]

This piece is fun to see after just reading "Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, featuring some fun speculation about octopus perception and communication.

[@andl3625]

Who’s here just for Joss Fong?

[@Omel0701]

If Joss is explaining something to me, I won’t contest her. I’ll just agree to everything she says

[@nicksamek12]

You’re telling me a shrimp felt this pain?

[@themusicroombyharris]

Lovely vid, Joss and Adam are such a good team.

[@TarlanMustafayev1]

It's interesting that we're kind of studying this to sort out which animals should we hurt. It's like we are trying to put animals into two categories: feel free to hurt and try not hurt

[@danmel3978]

Just because an animal doesnt have a spine it doesnt it doesnt have a nervous system.

[@charlieyuncken7674]

I love this channel. A much needed wholesome-smart-honest pocket of the internet.

[@wawawoo114]

I just hope more people can know this channel - love how howtown provided a new way to see all the “hows” in this world 🌎

[@uufruity]

Loved this insightful video, saw it in the Hank letter and decided that I should give it a watch. Really enjoyed this video :))

[@arielvillanueva1127]

We need this channel to have twice the videos ASAP

[@dandyphotobrother]

I see Joss Fong, I click subscribe

[@YamiChip]

It turns out this channel is everything I've ever wanted.

[@whazee]

As a Brit, I'm very happy we passed that law. I also couldn't care less how people pronounce a word that sounds and means the same thing! 😅 Same for aluminium... it doesn't matter. 😊

[@Homer-OJ-Simpson]

I got ADHD. This channel is like gold for someone like me. I’m always curious and always asking “how does…”. Looking forward to more and more vids

[@starberst79]

Please please consider having Ann Jones from ABC Science as a guest! Really enjoying the channel⭐️

[@tkhachi]

Running to Google after this to ask, "What states or regions say sentient as 'senchent'" because I'm an American and have only heard it said that way rarely online.

[@claasdev]

The timing with today’s the boys episode

[@cantaloupekitty3439]

I do think we need to remember that we thought babies experienced no pain and regularly preformed surgeries on them. We need to be able to treat living things with kindness, whether we think they experience pain or not.

[@JustTayo]

We gotta do what we gotta do.

[@polarvortex3294]

I'd say that, if a life form moves away from any stimulus, or moves an affected body part away, or reacts angrily or violently, it can feel pain on some level. How it truly experiences that pain is another question.

[@akaroth7542]

Howie the crab: look her up ... Crabs are way more intelligent than we expect

[@karlacorral2806]

I just LOVEEE your channel!

[@112ctr]

These are such incredibly done videos, awesome job!

[@MertSerim]

How come did i miss your long form videos while vibing with you two on ig smh. Instantly subscribed!

[@CarrotFarmer]

Adam's skunk bear on NPR were some of my favourite vids on youtube!! Glad this is happening!

[@FloydTaylor]

Composition on point throughout but that top-down printer shot takes the cake!

[@RaphaelMattos_atCW]

I responded this in a thread, but clicked in my brain just as I was typing, so I think its worth it to share directly: As you pointed out, other branches of life might have found completely different ways of achieving the same things. For example, It is estimated that eyesight has evolved independently at least a dozen times in different species on Earth. We can't rule out a similar situation for sentience just because we can't communicate with other species. That kind of thing is always going to be hard, because people are not willing to admit ehen they do horrible things. I remember vividly the first time I saw how they cook crabs.... I could not understand why no one else tought it was cruel.

[@nebulan]

Even humans we don't have a good way to compare to the point that conception arises that men can handle more pain or women can handle more pain or [ethnicity] can handle more pain, leading to human pain being disregarded 😢

[@Rulerofwax24]

I absolutely love this channel. I will say, though, something about the voice over and in particular the sound effects sounded particularly harsh and high pitched - it was honestly a little uncomfortable to listen to with headphones on. I hope this is just a one-off and will be back for the next video!

[@vartikasingh7]

You should do a video about some of the well liked offended comments to your video- why humans quickly, and decidedly apply their moral judgements, persecute and move on, and why a few reflect instead. I was curious and saw your whole video (it took three taps on the phone!). P.s : No, the video is not propagating the idea that octopuses don’t feel pain like we do, in fact if anything it’s deeply empathetic towards it. Loved the way you ended the video with your trip to the aquarium.

[@vikranttyagiRN]

Please more content with joss gong. We need more of her

[@anthonyhotspot7890]

The American pronounciation of "sentient" hurts my brain. Just like Aluminum instead of Aluminium...

[@TimSheehan]

I don't understand why they'd choose to say senchent

[@LeoDas688]

As someone who prefers US spelling and Pronunciation, I agree

[@jossfong2798]

Fair

[@ethanjensen6847]

As a Canadian, I was even surprised the Americans pronounced it that way, never heard that pronunciation in my life

[@rad6626]

I’m American and I’ve never heard anyone say it that way, I say it the ‘British’ way

[@a.m.1409]

one of my new favourite channels.

[@brianmacdougall5261]

But what about the yesciceptor? I need to know more about them.

[@jmacd8817]

I'm an American, and i say it the British way. I also hate pronunciation of species as "speeshees".

[@besmart]

Call me a bad American but it's hard T for life over here

[@guest_informant]

"I think that I usually distinguish between sentience and consciousness. Sentience is the ability of a system to make sense of its relationship to the world. So, basically understands what it is and what it’s doing. And in this sense, I would say that a corporation like Intel is sentient, because Intel has a good model of what it is, a legal model, the model of its actions, of its values, of its direction and the necessary cognition is largely facilitated by people. But this doesn’t really matter, because these people have to submit to the roles that they implemented in principle at some point. We can implement these tasks with other information processing systems that are able to make coherent enough models. And consciousness is slightly different from sentience in that it is a real-time model of self-reflexive attention and the content that we attend to. And this gives rise to a fundamental experience usually. And I don’t think that Intel is conscious in this sense. It doesn’t have self-reflexive attention. And the purpose of consciousness in our own mind is to create coherence in the world in which we are and create a sense of now to establish what is the fact right now." Any guesses who said that. No googling :-)

[@jkrincon]

Me encantó. Gracias, very interesting.

[@BikramAgarwal]

OMG... I LOOOVE those glasses! Darn cute. 😻

[@lukeloegering1029]

I do wonder if a meaningful difference in sorting out which organisms are sentient is the difference between pain and suffering. Organisms that learn from a noxious stimulus and avoid it in the future aren't necessarily suffering while they are in pain. The experience of pain has been evaluated behaviorally but I don't think suffering can really be evaluated without a way to communicate subjective experiences with evaluators. If we're defining sentience based on pain, is there a different word we should use to label organisms who can suffer? Should we base decisions or policy on sentience or this other label?

[@briannad2010]

Great video! Humbly asking that you get an audio engineer to help you reduce the mouth sounds from your mic. 🙏 Misophonia sucks.

[@Zavorio]

Another banger.

[@slimshadychristopher]

Hot damm. What a great video. How do you guys start a new channel and immediately make great content. Love it.

[@atomic_stories]

thank you for making this video :)

[@wlgeiger]

Up until 1980ish the scientific and medical community thought that HUMAN BABIES were not developed enough to feel pain like children and adults do. They gave less if any pain medication to babies until the 1980's. In the late 1990's the American Association of Pediatricians formally acknowledged that babies can / do feel pain. I am sure that animals all are aware that they are feeling pain.

[@scottmichaelharris]

But octopus have brain cells in their arms….

[@VoidLantadd]

Sentient, not intelligent -> Most animals Sentient, intelligent -> humans Not sentient, intelligent -> ChatGPT

[@vinetree8582]

post more videos your contents are very nice

[@rickseiden1]

I've always wondered if animals feel phantom pain. When a dog is hit by a car and its leg is messed up and in pain, then has it amputated, will it experience phantom pain like a human would?

[@Pr0toPoTaT0]

Have you seen those amputee dogs just wheeling around? They're happy af like all the time. Idk dude. Phantom pain probably comes from thinking about the leg not being there

[@susanne5803]

Animals can feel phantom limb pain. "Development of a Phantom Limb Pain Model in Rats: Behavioral and Histochemical Evaluation" (Published 21.06.2021) (Just copy the title into your search engine. Unfortunately KZbin deletes links not leading to KZbin ...)

[@rickseiden1]

@@susanne5803 thank you!

[@miro.georgiev97]

​@@susanne5803 KZbin deletes links, period.

[@vinayakpatil3642]

thanks make a video on this , I actually asking the same question since i watched your dogs video.

[@jadioj]

Are those glasses without lenses?

[@WonkyStickman]

sentience: says ouch in some way

[@feyindecay912]

I have trouble accepting that pain receptors equal sentience - because I think it requires consciousness. A sense of self - something I think comes about by social interaction. More and more depending on how defined you are as an individual within a social context. There can't be an experience of pain without a self to experience it. I don't think our empathy judges correctly either, because we are instinctively Anthropomorphisising. (Did I write that right?)

[@miro.georgiev97]

* anthropomorphising

[@heyedddie]

6:07 am I the only one who sees a Hermit crab wearing a shower cap or maybe a chef's hat?

[@iLLadelph267]

wait i say sen-chee-int. where does that fall? 😂

[@karanbania2785]

reflex response ❌ Ultra Instinct ✅

[@oakalquine5484]

this may be my psychosis speaking, but personally, i think it's best to avoid causing anything that even resembles pain, if you're capable. i don't know where the spectrum of sentience stretches, but i do know that everything that can react to stimuli can _appear_ to suffer. organic compounds flinch, and squirm when you cut them. ai chatbots mimic malaise when mistreated. even something as simple as a roomba bears the appearance of suffering when it's trapped under a table. obviously, we can't babysit every last particle in the universe, but when this sort of negativity can be avoided without causing problems, it should be. research should still be done, of course, if it is ethical. there's no other way to learn how to better treat things, and ourselves. but in general, nothing good comes from participating in harm, even if the harm is later proven to be an illusion. through our morality, merely _believing_ we've caused suffering is poisonous to us.

[@MagicHasArrived]

Does intelligence arise from the comprehension of sentience?

[@davidclark314]

Just spend 5 min with an octopus and it's obvious the thing is very smart and sentient. Now a crab, that's harder

[@AnkitaDharKarmakar]

Also I spot Adam's cat! Here for it.

[@solderbuff]

I am listening to an audiobook called "Super Fly" about flies, and the author seems to be convinced that flies are sentient. Though his evidence is rather anecdotal.

[@bluecombats]

I like the vegan philosophy to reduce harm, and so far it is agreed that plants don't experience pain in the same way as animals so it's ok

[@nikolovesfood]

I feel like the burden of proof should lie in the other side. It seems incredibly arrogant of humanity to assume that a lobster does NOT feel anything and ask for proof hat it does. Which is not to say that science towards demonstrating sentience should not be undertaken.

[@KeeperOfSecrets-42069]

I say the British version

[@davidmichelson671]

Appreciate the video (and the channel more generally), but I recoiled hearing "benefit of the doubt" around 11:15. To me it frames "stunning" pigs before slaughter as some benevolent act. If we really treated them as sentient, the benevolent act would be to not slaughter them in the first place. I know this goes outside the scope of the video, I just feel sad seeing the taking of someone's life portrayed so casually, especially in the context of a video explicitly about the existence of an animal's inner lived experience.

[@bobzavon]

as an american, i've never heard sentient pronounced "senshent" and i don't like it lol

[@lemperdYt]

No offence but this is better then Cleo Abram...

[@VasilyZaitsev08]

I am a layman, so i could be way off in this opinion...but it seems like using pain as an investigatory probe isn't the best way to go about a sentience test. Many things will react to stimuli such as pain, i think we need to zoom out and broaden the tests. I think one of the unique things humans can do is not only be aware of our existence, but we can learn very high level abstract ideas, then react to/use these ideas dynamically. For example, the concept of time. if i was to communicate to another human "24 hours from now, there will be an adverse weather event in your area." The other human is able to understand what to expect, when to expect it, why this event occurs, and how to prepare for it...or make a decision that it doesn't seem to be a big enough threat to prepare for. I don't think any other animals have the ability to actually understand these higher level abstract concepts, let alone be able to dynamically react to them.

[@jmanfiji]

Only if you know the right language, the other person can communicate with you, you both have the SAME concept of time and the way it 'flows', and have the same expectation of that adverse event. Not to mention that this perspective is entirely too human-centric to be universally acceptable. In the same way that if a dog used the smell of a meaty treat hidden in some boxes to see if humans could smell - and then concluded that humans couldn't smell because we couldn't find the treat.

[@VasilyZaitsev08]

@@jmanfiji i dont think language is relevant to this. While humans may have different languages to refer to objects or concepts, we all intuitively can agree and understand on some fundamental underlying fact of the matter. For example, when we say the word "water". In spanish the word is "agua", in french it's "eau"...etc. While the words for water may be different, they are all pointing to the same compound(H2O) and invoke a web of different qualities associated with H2O in peoples brains. While humans sense things better/worse/different than animals, animals seemingly do not understand the underlying fact of the matter. For example, they do not hypothesize, test, or, seek to learn. Using the dog smelling example, although humans cannot smell as well as dogs, we can understand the underlying science behind smelling. We can test how it works, why dogs smell better, and it gives us the ability to learn/apply these higher level abstractions instead of just operating as a giant nested "if/then" program.

[@RaphaelMattos_atCW]

Well, we can't really use those criteria, right? Human babies lack that understanding of time flow, of cause and consequence, or even object permanence. It doesn't make them not sentient, clearly. The fact that we understand each other at our level is a matter of having developed language, and then we are talking about intelligence and culture, not sentience. Like they say in the video, other branches of life might have found completely different ways of achieving the same things. For example, It is estimated that eyesight has evolved independently at least a dozen times in different species on Earth. We can't rule out a similar situation for sentience just because we can't communicate with other species.

[@VasilyZaitsev08]

@@RaphaelMattos_atCW i would argue that babies are not sentient. I think they do have all of the necessary parts to develope sentience though.

[@bearb1asting]

It's easy. Humans are. Pretty much just humans. The others would be in a category below us together. Also, great video. Just not quite right.

[@HowToNguyen]

Would the demons in Frieren be considered sentient? 🤔

[@redyankeerose]

I like your video, but disagree with having flora separated from fauna as not having consciousness. We’ll see where the science can get us over time on this point. ❤

[@miro.georgiev97]

If we start including plants as potentially conscious, how exactly are we supposed to justify our continued existence? At some point, we have to draw a definite line in the sand and make an exception, stating, "This conscious living thing is permitted for consumption while this conscious living thing is not." (Consumption should mean more than eating something, by the way. Cutting down a tree to build a house from it is also a form of consumption.) Otherwise, the only "solution" is starvation or death from exposure. Frankly, consciousness as observed in human beings is a curse more than it is a blessing, especially for ethically sensitive people. Most of us just aren't _that_ ethically sensitive, extending our empathy most intensely toward family, friends, coworkers, and pets, but not strangers and farmed animals and certainly not wild animals, domesticated and wild plants, or most other lifeforms.

[@DanielDogeanu]

I think linking sentience with the ability to feel pain is kinda dumb. I bet most living things can feel pain, even trees and plants. How they feel it, it's unimportant, what's important is that they feel it. And just because they don't feel pain, doesn't mean we can butcher them mercilessly. We should treat every living being with respect!

[@davianthule2035]

Even bees have shown strong evidence of knowing/understanding pain, and they are literally insects, i.e some of the simplest animals around, insects are generally seen as basically robots, because they tend to be pure programs etc unable to learn, their abilities like hunting, mating, etc being instinct, programming, not taught or developed, where as arachnids are the first very small animals, close to the neurological scale of insects that show signs of independent personality, 2 spiders of the exact same species, same environment and same sex etc May react very differently to interacting with you, one will be aggressive, the other skittish, a third spider might actually learn it's you and become neutral/indifferent to your presence, this is fun to observe with tarantula owners who's tarantulas with Giant fangs that can absolutely hurt you, will be completely fine with being picked up but other specimens won't tolerate the presence of the feeding tube that it knows provides food, the tarantula if it does bite also decides how much venom as a decision to inject, most of the time they want to avoid using much at all and the bite is to dissuade you as a perceived threat. Vs bees who sting on pure instinct etc

[@dreamland923]

0:58 Am I tripping or is this a grammatically incorrect sentence?

[@dreamland923]

am i not getting the joke

[@jadeeliss1370]

“how do you detect pain in animals who don’t have faces; and don’t have voices?” idk seems correct to me

[@jon4715]

Well, octopodes are more intelligent than most mammals.

[@nikgracanin6180]

Octopodes are alien species so they dont count

[@pyeitme508]

YES!

[@hypeesagee7895]

Why does this sound like a knockoff NYT channel/podcast

[@filiproch3653]

your houses look so pretty: pls make house tour video!!! (maybe show some quirky science things you own)

[@chowspecial]

Hownow howtown

[@garethde-witt6433]

All animals are sentient in some way

[@clown134]

octopi reaction mighjt not be nociception.. since octopi brains are in their arms arent they?

[@oblivious_waffle]

3:53 cat cat cat

[@LeoDas688]

I heard octopus entire body can be compared to a brain