The science of animal sentience
Animalsentience.com brings together the latest research findings about animal sentience and offers guest articles with leaders in the field. We also look at the implications of our modern scientific knowledge of animal sentience for policy and culture.
Sentient animals may be aware of a range of sensations and emotions, of feeling pain and suffering, and of experiencing a state of well being. Sentient animals may be aware of their surroundings and of what happens to them.
The lives of animals are much more complex than we previously understood
Research is showing us that the lives of animals, including farm animals, are much more complex than we previously understood. Research suggests that their social groupings, communication, feelings of pain, fear and anxiety, and the positive feelings of pleasure and play are vitally important to them.
What do animals feel?
The sensations and emotions that animals and humans feel include pleasure, pain, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, fear, anger, like and dislike. But it is not always obvious what an animal feels, and we may often underestimate the strength of their feelings (or even occasionally overestimate it). If an animal does not react to some event in the same way as a human would do, we may assume wrongly that it feels nothing.
An animal that hardly reacts may be feeling much more pain and fear than is obvious from its behaviour. On the other hand, the fact that an animal responds to stimuli such as injury or threat does not necessary mean that it has a subjective experience of pain or fear. But in spite of these difficulties of assessment, in the case of farm animals there is abundant evidence that they experience pain, discomfort, fear and other emotions.
Characteristics that it was thought only humans possessed, are also possessed by animals
In recent years there has been a striking increase in interest and awareness of the complexity of animals' lives, their mental and emotional abilities and their social lives. Scientists are showing that characteristics that we thought only humans possessed, are also possessed by animals.
Apes and crows make and use tools. Research indicates that apes and parrots can understand simple human language and appear to be able to use it to communicate both facts and emotions. Alex, an African grey parrot, understood the categories of colour, shape and material and appeared to be able to count. Apes and monkeys show social learning that scientists interpret as transmission of culture.
The social lives of apes, elephants and other animals may involve empathy, altruism, and ways of behaving that scientists classify as morality. Apes and dolphins, among other animals, learn skills from each other in ways that scientists classify as culture.
Much less attention has been paid so far to the sentience of the animals we farm for our own use. Considering the astonishing number of animals that are farmed all over the world, this is a cause for great concern. Over 60 billion animals are used for meat, milk and eggs each year according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
However, some scientists are in the forefront of demonstrating the need for animal sentience to be fully recognised in farming practice, and explaining the mental complexity of farm animals to the public.