- seCtIon FoUR: eVoLUtIon
they cannot have the specific cortical areas associated with pain in humans.
So some researchers conclude that they cannot feel any pain at all (an ana-
tomical criterion). Others have shown that when crabs and lobsters are lifted
out of water (and so become oxygen-deprived), or are subjected to infection
with a parasite, or have a claw twisted off, they release a stress hormone sim-
ilar to cortisone and corticosterone. This kind of stress response suggests a
basis for suffering comparable to that of humans (a physiological criterion). It
has also been established that when acid is brushed onto prawns’ antennae
they quickly rub it off, that they avoid situations where they have been given
electric shocks in the past, and that they show protective behaviours such as
rubbing and limping when hurt. These behaviours are also reduced when they
are given painkillers. So they must be capable of feeling pain (behavioural cri-
teria). How can we weigh up these different indicators (Elwood, Barr, and Pat-
terson, 2009) and make sense of what prawns and lobsters might be feeling,
if anything?
Dawkins (2008) suggests two questions we can ask to decide whether an animal
is suffering: is the animal healthy, and does it have what it wants? For example,
working with broiler chickens, she was surprised to find that although the birds’
walking ability was worse in the highest-density farms, space
was much less relevant to other health measures like mortality
and the state of their legs and feet than environmental factors
such as air and litter quality. The chickens also did not seem
to try to avoid each other, but seemed to positively like being
close to others. She argues that animal welfare matters greatly
but in trying to understand it, we should stick to the evidence
and not be distracted by anthropomorphism, empathy, or
arguments about animal consciousness.
Lurking here is the question, does it really hurt? This may
seem impossible to answer, but we should not despair. In
studying human consciousness, we have made progress by
learning about perception, memory, attention, and other
relevant abilities. Perhaps we can do the same for animal
consciousness.
In what follows, we will survey a range of other behavioural
routes to trying to pinpoint consciousness in other animals –
asking where their forms of consciousness may be similar to
ours, where they may differ, and what that may mean.
SELF-RECOGNITION
You are aware not only of the world around you, but of yourself
as an observer. You are self-conscious. It is hard to determine
when young children first become self-conscious, but by 5–6
months, infants shown a video of another same-age infant are
more captivated by it than by a video of themselves wearing the
same clothes. This does not yet mean that they recognise them-
selves; just that they have learned to pick up the invariant fea-
tures of their own faces and bodies, presumably via exposure to‘The scientific study of
animal suffering [. . .]
requires the testing of
the untestable’
(M. Dawkins, 2008, p. 1)
‘we do not have to
solve the problem of
consciousness to have
a science of animal
welfare’
(M. Dawkins, 2008, p. 4)
PRoFILe 10.2
Temple Grandin (b. 1947)
Temple Grandin is
Professor of Animal
Science at Colorado
State University, but
she is no ordinary pro-
fessor. Diagnosed with
brain damage at the age of two, she is autistic, acts as a
spokesperson for those with autism, and invented a ‘hug
box’ or ‘squeeze machine’ to calm others. After a difficult
and miserable time at school, she not only researched
and wrote about autism but did a PhD on environmental
enrichment for pigs. She believes that the autistic per-
son’s sense of being feared, dismissed, and threatened
by everything gives her special insight into animals’ ex-
periences, noting that cattle are often disturbed by things
most people don’t even notice. Although redesigning
slaughterhouses may not sound like a compassionate job,
this is one way she has used her understanding of animal
minds to improve their welfare. Her life was the subject of
a 2010 biographical film, and a documentary about her
was entitled ‘The woman who thinks like a cow’.