Zoology Commons^™

Universal Modes Of Awareness? A “Pre-Reflective” Premise, Uta M. Jürgens

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands holds that creatures endowed with pre-reflective awareness may qualify as persons: In pre-reflective awareness, the self and the unity of mental life are implicit in the stream of experience. Rowlands generalizes from an introspective analysis of pre-reflective consciousness in humans to pre-reflective awareness in general. I describe three examples of empirical findings that corroborate the assumption that animal minds have some of the same basic modes of pre-reflective awareness as human minds.

What If Klein & Barron Are Right About Insect Sentience?, Bob Fischer

Animal Sentience

If Klein & Barron are right, then insects may well be able to feel pain. If they can, then the standard approach to animal ethics generates some implausible results. Philosophers need to develop alternatives to this framework to avoid them.

Subjective Experience And Moral Standing, Andy Lamey

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s analysis focuses on the capacity for any subjective experience at all. It does not seek to demonstrate that insects can experience pleasure and pain in particular. This would be something of which insects have not traditionally been thought capable. If further research were to demonstrate that one or more insect species turn out to be conscious, yet incapable of experiencing pleasure and pain, it would give rise to a philosophical question that ethicists have yet to answer: Would a creature that is conscious, but lacks the capacity to feel pain, have moral standing?

Is Cortex Necessary?, Sean Allen-Hermanson

Animal Sentience

A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical structures. A critical appraisal suggests they have overestimated the strength of their evidence.

Who Is A Person? Whoever You Want It To Be, Gwen J. Broude

Animal Sentience

Rowlands provides an expanded definition of personhood that preserves the requirement of unity of mental life from the orthodox definition but argues that implicit unity of mind is sufficient for conferring personhood. This allows more or all animals to be considered persons. Implicit unity of mind may be a bridge too far for those who endorse the orthodox account of personhood, and for good reasons. More fundamentally, who gets to decide what personhood entails or that personhood per se matters to such other issues as who receives legal or moral status and consideration? Perhaps we should worry less about definitions …

Are Insects Sentient?, Michael Tye

Animal Sentience

I comment on the methodology used by Klein & Barron for dealing with the question of insect sentience and I briefly make a proposal of my own. Once it is granted that insects are sentient, a further question arises: which insects are subject to which states of sentience? Do insects feel pain, for example? If so, which ones? On the further question, I note, Klein & Barron have nothing to say.

Animal Grieving And Human Mourning, Matteo Colombo

Animal Sentience

King’s How animals grieve beautifully describes several ways in which animals and humans show a similar capacity for grief. Yet this book does not sufficiently emphasise the language-empowered capacity to objectify thinking and sentiments about death, which makes human mourning unique. Here I put this capacity into focus and relate it to the social-normative aspect of human mourning that seems to be missing in other animals.

Insects Join The Consciousness Fray, Bjorn H. Merker

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron's review of recent insect neurobiology helps correct the impression that insect behavior is orchestrated without the benefit of central integrative mechanisms. Given their existence, the authors go on to ask whether these central mechanisms also feature the kind of integrative operations that support sentience, and propose that they do. Along the way they raise a number of conceptual and evidentiary issues of fundamental importance for the neuroscience of consciousness, allowing me to comment favorably on a number of them. I conclude by pointing to ways in which the conception of insect sentience they outline might be tested …

Insects Have Agency But Probably Not Sentience Because They Lack Social Bonding, J. H. Van Hateren

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) argue that insects have sentience because of functional similarities between the insect brain and vertebrate midbrain. Based on a recent theory of agency and consciousness, I argue that the functional similarities merely point to an advanced form of agency. Insects presumably lack the capacity for social bonding that may be required for subjective experiencing.

Associations Of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms In The Bovine Prolactin, Melatonin Receptor 1a, And Dopamine Receptor D2 Genes With Hair Coat Shedding Scores And Productivity Traits In Beef Cattle, Laura R. Meyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Calving rate is a qualitative trait regulated by several genes and is strongly affected by the environment. With the development of biotechnology and gene identification, scientists are able to determine which genes affect these productivity traits to improve accurate selection decisions. Prolactin (PRL) has been associated with reproductive traits, melatonin receptor 1a (MTNR1A) has been associated with meat quality traits, and the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene has been associated with hair coat score (HCS) in cattle. Our objective was to determine associations between mutations in the PRL, MTNR1A, and DRD2 genes and cow-calf profitability traits. Genomic DNA was extracted …

Efficacy Of A Novel Intranasal Zinc Solution On The Microbiome, Health, And Growth Performance Of High-Risk, Newly Received Stocker Cattle, Makenzie Foster

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to determine if using an intranasal zinc (Zn) solution would impact health and growth performance of high-risk stocker cattle. Male beef calves (n = 239; 3 arrival dates [block]; initial BW = 276 ± 2.4 kg) were stratified by arrival gender and BW and assigned to 1 of 2 treatments: 1) treated with 3 ml of a Zn solution containing 36.24 mg of Zn administered intranasally, or 2) control, in which calves were not treated. Calves were observed daily and if exhibiting signs of morbidity and a rectal temperature ≥ 40° C they were …

Rare, Threatened And Endangered Species Of Oregon (2016), James S. Kagan, Sue Vrilakas, John A. Christy, Eleanor P. Gaines, Lindsey Wise, Cameron Pahl, Kathy Howell

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

Extinction is a natural process. Today, however, plant and animal species are disappearing world-wide at an accelerated pace. Based on current trends, half of the species on earth will be extinct within the next 100 years. The major reasons for this are human caused changes to the environment, which continue to increase - in Oregon and throughout the world.

Once lost, a species can never be recovered, and there is no way of knowing how useful it may have been. We do know that human beings and many of their industries depend on plant and animal products. About 50% of …

Evaluation Of Long-Acting Eprinomectin Compared To Conventional Anthelmintics In Cow/Calf Production, Elizabeth Ann Backes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Experiment 1, 83, newly weaned, fall-born crossbred heifer calves were allocated randomly to 1 of 3 anthelmintic treatments: 1) control (CON); 2) combination pour-on moxidectin and oxfendazole (MO); and 3) long-acting eprinomectin (LAE). Two preplanned orthogonal contrast statements were used: 1) to compare CON to treated cattle; and 2) to compare OXF to LAE. Heifer BW and BCS were greater (P≤0.02) from MO and LAE on d 112, 140, 154, 168, 182 compared to CON. Heifer cyclicity, estrous detection, natural service and overall pregnancy rates were greater (P≤0.02) for MO and LAE compared to CON. Cattle fecal egg counts (FEC) …

Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere

Animal Sentience

Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.

Caterpillars, Consciousness And The Origins Of Mind, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

A novel framework for the origins of consciousness and mind, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), is presented. The model is based on a simple, perhaps radical axiom: subjectivity is an inherent feature of particular kinds of organic form. Experiential states, including those denoted as "mind" and "consciousness," are present in the most primitive species. The model has several conceptual and empirical virtues, among them: (a) it (re)solves the problem of how minds are created by brains ─ also known as the "Hard Problem" (Chalmers 1995) ─ by revealing that the apparent difficulty results from a category error, (b) it …

Graemeloweus, A New Scorpion Genus From Northern California, Usa (Scorpiones: Vaejovidae), Michael E. Soleglad, Victor Fet, Matthew R. Graham, Richard F. Ayrey

Euscorpius

Genus Graemeloweus, gen. nov. (Scorpiones: Vaejovidae) is described from northern California, USA. The genus is composed of three species formerly placed in Pseudouroctonus: Graemeloweus iviei (Gertsch et Soleglad, 1972), comb. nov. (type species), G. glimmei (Hjelle, 1972), comb. nov., and G. maidu (Savary et Bryson, 2016), comb. nov. Major diagnostic characters of Graemeloweus include a non-bifurcated primary lamellar hook, the presence of a secondary lamellar hook, a complex mating plug with a two part base and an asymmetric crescent-shape barb, and the presence of a well-developed ventromedian (V2) carina on the pedipalp chela. Evidence is presented suggesting that …

Scorpions Of The Horn Of Africa (Arachnida: Scorpiones). Part Vi. Compsobuthus Vachon, 1949 (Buthidae), With A Description Of C. Eritreaensis Sp. N., František Kovařík, Graeme Lowe, Jana Plíšková, František Šťáhlavský

Euscorpius

All four Compsobuthus species of the Horn of Africa were newly collected, C. werneri firstly collected in Eritrea and C. eritreaensis sp. n. discovered during scorpiological expeditions in 2011–2016. Information is provided about their taxonomy, distribution, and ecology, fully complemented with color photos of live and preserved specimens, as well as their habitat. The hemispermatophore of C. eritreaensis sp. n. is illustrated and described. In addition to morphological analysis, we also describe the karyotype of C. eritreaensis sp. n. (2n=22).

A New Species Of Diplocentrus (Scorpionidae: Diplocentrinae) From Western Izabal, Guatemala, Luis F. De Armas, Rony E. Trujillo

Euscorpius

Diplocentrus izabal sp. n. is herein described on basis to one male (holotype) and two females from El Estor municipality, Izabal department, eastern Guatemala. It seems to be a close relative of Diplocentrus lachua Armas, Trujillo & Agreda, 2012, from which it differs by having carapace almost smooth, with anteromedian notch V-shaped; pectines with 11 teeth in both sexes, and carapace clearly longer than pedipalp manus and metasomal segment V (D. lachua has carapace minutely granulate, with anteromedian notch U-shaped; pectines with 13 teeth in the males (female unknown), and carapace as long as both pedipalp manus and metasomal …

A Contribution To The Tardigrade Fauna Of Georgia, Usa, Juliana G. Hinton, Harry A. Meyer, Brad Peet

Georgia Journal of Science

Tardigrada (water bears) is a phylum of microscopic animals commonly found in mosses, lichens, leaf litter, and freshwater. There are no published records of marine tardigrades from Georgia. Twelve species have been reported from four counties in the state of Georgia, USA. Eighteen species of water bear were present in lichen, moss, and leaf litter samples from eight additional counties in northern and central Georgia. Ten species – Pseudechiniscus suillus, Milnesium bohleberi, Hypsibius convergens, Astatumen trinacriae, Macrobiotus anemone, Macrobiotus cf. echinogenitus, Macrobiotus cf. islandicus, Macrobiotus spectabilis, Paramacrobiotus cf. areolatus, and Paramacrobiotus …

Are Animals Persons?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

It is orthodox to suppose that very few, if any, nonhuman animals are persons. The category “person” is restricted to self-aware creatures: humans (above a certain age) and possibly some of the great apes and cetaceans. I argue that this orthodoxy should be rejected, because it rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. Replacing this with a sense of self-awareness that is relevant requires us to accept that personhood is much more widely distributed through the animal kingdom.

Utilitarianism Generalized To Include Animals, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

In response to the seventeen commentaries to date on my target article on reducing animal suffering, I propose that the term “welfarism” (when used pejoratively by animal advocates) should be qualified as “anthropocentric welfarism” so as to leave “welfarism” simpliciter to be used in its generic sense of efforts to improve conditions for those who need it. Welfarism in this benign sense — even in its specific utilitarian form (maximizing the sum total of net welfare) with long-term future effects and effects on others (including animals) appropriately taken into account — should be unobjectionable (even if not considered sufficient by …

Cross-Species Mind-Reading, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

We can never be sure anyone else is sentient. But we can be sure enough in the case of other people, nonhuman primates, mammals, birds, fish, lower vertebrates and invertebrates as to make scepticism academic and otiose (not to mention monumentally cruel). The only genuinely uncertain kinds of cases are jellyfish, microbes and plants. The rest is not about whether but what they are feeling.

My Orgasms Cannot Be Traded Off Against Others’ Agony, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

Only I can calculate my own welfare as net pleasure minus pain. No one else can do that calculation for me – nor for a population, and especially not averaging across some individuals’ pleasure and other individuals’ pain. Pain and pleasure are incommensurable and only pain matters morally. To maximize welfare is to minimize pain.

In Praise Of Fishes: Précis Of What A Fish Knows (Balcombe 2016), Jonathan Balcombe

Animal Sentience

Our relationship to fishes in the modern era is deeply problematic. We kill and consume more of them than any other group of vertebrates. At the same time, advances in our knowledge of fishes and their capabilities are gaining speed. Fish species diversity exceeds that of all other vertebrates combined, with a wide range of sensory adaptations, some of them (e.g., geomagnetism, water pressure and movement detection, and communication via electricity) alien to our own sensory experience. The evidence for pain in fishes (despite persistent detractors) is strongly supported by anatomical, physiological and behavioral studies. It is likely that fishes …

Sentience As Moral Consideration And Disvalue In Nature, Daniel Dorado

Animal Sentience

In recent work Ng assumes that it is good to engage in activities aimed at promoting ecosystem conservation. The only way Ng can derive this from the axiology he assumes (the view that wellbeing is the only intrinsically valuable or disvaluable thing) would be to assume that ecosystem conservation would benefit the individuals involved. This can be so as long as value prevails over disvalue in the target environments. Ng seems to assume this is indeed the case, but he does not explain why, and it is a claim that goes against the conclusions he has argued for previously (Ng …

Inalienable Rights And Pluralism In Animal Advocacy, Beril Sözmen

Animal Sentience

I comment on two of Ng’s suggestions. There is a lack of support for his suggestion that some experiments on individual animals will be useful for future success, so they should be permitted. I also question his recommendation that animal advocacy should focus on farmed animals first and wild animals later. The lack of solid support for why this would be a more effective strategy leads me to suggest a more pluralistic support of a variety of types of advocacy.

Changing Attitudes Towards Animals In The Wild And Speciesism, Oscar Horta

Animal Sentience

I argue that despite Ng’s claim that we should postpone the defense of those animals that live in the wild, we do have reasons to start spreading concern for them now. We can do it by (i) changing public attitude by heightening awareness of speciesism, by which we will also challenge animal exploitation; and (ii) by disseminating information about the situation of animals in the wild.

Oregon State Rank Assessment For A Caddisfly (Farula Constricta), Eleanor P. Gaines

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

Oregon state conservation status assessment for a caddisfly (Farula constricta) using NatureServe methodology, 2016.

Walking Behavior Of Zoo Elephants: Associations Between Gps-Measured Daily Walking Distances And Environmental Factors, Social Factors, And Welfare Indicators, Matthew Robert Holdgate, Cheryl L. Meehan, Jennifer N. Hogan, Lance J. Miller, Josesph Soltis, Jeff Andrews, David J. Shepherdson

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research with humans and other animals suggests that walking benefits physical health. Perhaps because these links have been demonstrated in other species, it has been suggested that walking is important to elephant welfare, and that zoo elephant exhibits should be designed to allow for more walking. Our study is the first to address this suggestion empirically by measuring the mean daily walking distance of elephants in North American zoos, determining the factors that are associated with variations in walking distance, and testing for associations between walking and welfare indicators. We used anklets equipped with GPS data loggers to measure outdoor …

Recumbence Behavior In Zoo Elephants: Determination Of Patterns And Frequency Of Recumbent Rest And Associated Environmental And Social Factors, Matthew Robert Holdgate, Cheryl L. Meehan, Jennifer N. Hogan, Lance J. Miller, Jeff Rushen, Anne-Marie De Passillé, Josesph Soltis, Jeff Andrews, David J. Shepherdson

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Resting behaviors are an essential component of animal welfare but have received little attention in zoological research. African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) rest includes recumbent postures, but no large-scale investigation of African and Asian zoo elephant recumbence has been previously conducted. We used anklets equipped with accelerometers to measure recumbence in 72 adult female African (n = 44) and Asian (n = 28)elephants housed in 40 North American zoos. We collected 344 days of data and determined associations between recumbence and social, housing, management, and demographic factors. African elephants were recumbent less (2.1 hours/day, S.D. …