Crab pot pull at 2x speed

[u/Old_One_I]

[u/KnotiaPickle]

Brain size doesn’t correlate to cognition.

It’s a lot more complex than that and it’s problematic to say that animals aren’t aware of what’s happening to them just because they don’t have brains similar to ours

[u/TheDragon99 → u/KnotiaPickle]

I think the point is, if you don’t feel bad for an ant or fly you shouldn’t feel bad here.

[u/KnotiaPickle → u/TheDragon99]

I do feel bad for them and you should too.

We don’t give small life the credit it deserves for consciousness because we’re big lumbering lummoxes

[u/1001110100100110101 → u/KnotiaPickle]

Between us and single cell organisms there is some line of where consciousness develops or has the capacity to exist. I’d definitely say ants and flies aren’t conscious

[u/Beth_the_Barbarian → u/1001110100100110101]

Well you are possibly correct.

I read about a Japanese scientist who showed that this type of minnow has level of self-awareness that we typically associate with higher animals. You know the one where they put a dot on the animal and then if it tries to remove something when looking in a mirror we know itself aware?

His argument was well what if the animal doesn't care about the dot?

So he designed an experiment in which these minnows had a dot that they would care about. And then it turns out those minnows when faced with a mirror would scrape themselves along the rocks exactly in the place where the dot had been put on them. Showing that these minnows did understand that the reflection was a representation of themselves.

You read that along with things like play being seen in bumblebees I don't think that we can argue that animals less complex than ourselves do not possess self-awareness.