Are Animals Conscious?

Research indicates that pets and other animals have conscious experiences similar to us.

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Researchers have found that looking at a picture of a pet can reduce stress (Ein et al., 2019) and trigger a strong neural and physiological response (Hayama et al., 2016; Nagasawa et al., 2009), highlighting our affection for them. Do pets feel the same way towards us? Do they experience emotions the way we do? Do they experience anything at all?

Mere Machines?

Although we are sentient beings, many of our actions seem to occur automatically: We have reflexes, can walk or drive along a familiar route without much thought, or complete parts of our daily routine—like brushing our teeth—without actively paying attention.

One of the most influential early modern philosophers, René Descartes, believed that all animal behaviour is merely automatic. He described them as automata, like machines without minds (Thomas, 2020). Some subsequent thinkers even suggested that animals have neither desires nor fears, know nothing, and experience nothing—neither pleasure nor pain (Harrison, 1992).

These ideas may seem absurd to anyone who has spent sufficient time around animals. At the same time, it is unclear to what extent animals experience the world and whether this differs by species.

From Philosophy to Science

These questions are extremely difficult to answer, largely because our understanding of consciousness is still in its infancy. Every experience we ever had, every memory, every thought, and every feeling is and has been mediated by our own consciousness (see Pang, 2023a, 2023b). Even though consciousness is at the centre of what makes us human, we still do not fully know what consciousness is or what its underlying mechanisms are.

That is why these questions have been in the domain of philosophy for centuries. However, science is slowly catching up and has made dramatic strides in recent decades (see Pang, 2023c). We have linked distinct brain functions to experiences (so-called neural correlates of consciousness; Koch et al., 2016; Nani et al., 2019) and have found many new ways to investigate this elusive phenomenon (Dehaene, 2014).

Despite these advances, there is still a lot we do not yet know. Some have suggested we may never know—at least not with our current approaches to neuroscience (Chalmers, 1995). Although we do not have definitive answers (yet), we can draw some informed preliminary conclusions that point towards animals being far more than mere mindless machines.

There is evidence that many animals, including invertebrates like ants, have a sense of self-awareness.

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There is evidence that many animals recognise themselves in a mirror, including elephants (Plotnik et al., 2016), magpies (Prior et al., 2008), and even ants (Lei, 2022). While such mirror tests have been controversial as measures of self-awareness, there are indications that this method underestimates levels of self-awareness (Koerth-Baker, 2010). This sense of self may be different in animals than in humans. One researcher, for example, has suggested that only humans have a true sense of an "I-ness" while animals merely have a sense of "body-ness" or "mine-ness" (Bekoff, 2002), but this is difficult to establish.

Other lines of research have given strong reasons to believe that animals can ascribe mental states to other beings, such as being aware of other animals' desires or intentions (Krupenye & Call, 2019). One remarkable example is the finding that ravens guard hidden food stores against discovery when hearing sounds of other birds through a peephole, which gives them visual access, but not if the sound comes from a closed peephole (Bugnyar et al., 2016). In other words, ravens understand whether other birds in the vicinity have an opportunity to observe them or not.

Researchers have also found that bees roll balls simply for fun (Dona et al., 2022), and some primates even have a sense of humour and joke among themselves (Laumer et al., 2024).

Ravens can infer whether other birds can see them hiding food, indicating that they have a theory of mind.

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Animal Consciousness

Although there is no definitive proof, these findings all point at least towards some form of awareness in animals.

All these behaviours could occur without awareness, just like a video game character can show human-like behaviour based on coding algorithms without requiring any consciousness. However, animal behaviour often closely resembles our own behaviour mediated by consciousness. Given the lack of evidence that they do not have a mind or experiences but show forms of awareness and mental functions, the current evidence favours the notion that animals have conscious experiences.

While the level of consciousness may differ between species, there is a growing consensus among scientists that animals are indeed conscious (Birch et al., 2020). In 2012, a group of leading researchers signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low, 2012), declaring that many non-human animals—even those without a neocortex—have all the biologically necessary substrates to generate conscious states. More recently, another group went even further in the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, suggesting that there is strong scientific support for consciousness in mammals and birds and that there is at least a realistic possibility of conscious experiences in all vertebrates and even in many invertebrates, like molluscs, crustaceans, and insects (Andrews et al., 2024).

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Conclusion

Are animals conscious? We cannot tell for sure, but there is converging evidence that many animals are aware of themselves, others, and even others' mental states. There is an emerging consensus among scientists that our pets and possibly even reptiles and insects may have some form of conscious awareness.

So, when your puppy seems excited to see you, there is a very high chance that this is not just an outward behavioural pattern but a true sense of affection felt within.

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