Do bugs have a conscience?

“Insects may have subjective experience,” he says, “but not of a kind that has a lot of ethical consequences.” The researchers point out that if tiny insect brains do provide the rudiments of consciousness, studying them could be important for the development of artificial intelligence and things like drones that can make rudimentary decisions about what path to fly. read more

Insects with minuscule brains may be as intelligent as much bigger animals and may even have consciousness, it was claimed today. Having a brain the size of a pinhead does not necessarily make you less bright, say researchers. read more

But they do suggest that invertebrates could be motivated by subjective experience, which is the very beginning of consciousness. “We want to know something more: whether insects can feel and sense the environment from a first-person perspective,” the researchers write. read more