Animal Consciousness: Behavioral Flexibility is Ubiquitous |
Ample comparative research shows that the biodiversity of consciousness is large and expanding.
Nonhumans exhibit intentional behavioral flexibility.
Humans are neither exceptional nor the only truly conscious beings.
Being conscious basically means being awake, aware, and able to perceive one's thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. It represents what is called a "first-person" subjective experience. Behavioral flexibility—the ability to change your response when things inside of you and around you change—is a sign of awareness, or what scientists call a mark of consciousness. This shows that you're thinking and acting with intention, not instinct.
Behavior flexibility means an individual is evaluating their situation, considering past experiences, and deciding what to do based on the present moment and imagined future interactions. It is closely aligned with being sentient which means being aware of and feeling what is happening to them and around them and changing their behavior.
A large body of scientific evidence stemming from studies of diverse species clearly shows that many nonhuman animals (animals) are conscious sentient beings.1 Some have gone as far as to argue that consciousness is coterminous with life. In his book The First Minds: Caterpillars, Karyotes, and Consciousness, Dr. Arthur Reber argues "sentience emerged with life itself."2
These studies also show that the biodiversity of consciousness and sentience is large and expanding, and insects are finding themselves living well within these arenas as members of the consciousness/sentience club. Research shows that the cognitive lives of insects are richer than many of us have ever imagined—not just in bees, but also in flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and termites.3,4
A growing number of people, academics and non-academics, are very interested in what animals think and feel. Two recent posts—"The Eclectic Father of Cognitive Ethology" about Donald Griffin's seminal work in which he emphasized the importance of behavioral flexibility for........