WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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Plant sentience: Time scale matters
Get PDFSegundo-Ortin & Calvo (2023) have made a valuable effort in directing the discussion about plant sentience toward a strict scientific path. However, scientific endeavors must reconcile with common sense beliefs. Although nowadays people tend to accept the idea of animal sentience, this is not easily extended to plants. One reason is the difference in time scale in which phenomena occur in plants and animals; but this still does not preclude the possibility , in principle, of plant sentience in a form difficult for us to imagine
Dissociation between conscious and unconscious processes as a criterion for sentience
Get PDFBased on the literature on human consciousness, we suggest that to demonstrate sentience in a system, one needs to demonstrate both conscious and unconscious processing in the system. Major theories of consciousness require the existence of both conscious and unconscious processes. Contrasting effects of conscious and unconscious processes have been successfully used in human studies and have begun being applied in animal sentience research as well
What Do Pet Owners Believe About Dog and Cat Emotions?
Get PDFWhile some philosophers disagree, most dog and cat owners know their pets experience emotions. Researchers recently asked pet owners about the number and types of emotions they observed in their cats and dogs. There were significant individual differences in the degree to which owners thought their pets experienced emotions
COP 15 - Can We Meet Biodiversity Goals & Targets?
Get PDFThe 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was held in two parts (in Kunming, China, in October 2021 and in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022). One primary goal for COP15 was the development of a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) covering the coming decade (from 2023 through 2030). The GBF produced by the participating countries at COP15 included four long-term global goals for 2050 linked to the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, along with 23 global targets for immediate action and completed by 2030. One outcome of the negotiations was the identification of the need to increase public awareness of the global biodiversity crisis leading to sustained activities to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss
Coping with Captivity: The Tragic Journey of Willie B.
No full textThis tale is the first in a three-part series about Willie B., Atlanta’s iconic ape and one of the most famous gorillas in the world
Animal Rights Law
No full textThis volume by Raffael Fasel and Sean Butler is the first comprehensive text supporting a course on animal rights law
Multiple ways to implement and infer sentience
Get PDFSegundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (S&C’s) thorough review of “plant neurobiology” presents evidence supporting the possibility of plant sentience. They make a compelling case that plants anticipate, assess risk, cooperate, mimic, and pursue goals, as do their animal counterparts. S&C point out that there is a double standard: behavioural patterns associated with subjective experiences in humans are considered valid for inferring cognition in non-human animals but not in diverse other systems including plants. We argue that cognitive functions, including sentience, can potentially be achieved by very different systems and their disparate substrates. We offer some context from the basal cognition literature and suggest that the deep insights of neurobiology have relevance far beyond neurons
Forests and Memory
Get PDFBoria Sax, a folklore expert, explores what forests mean for humankind and himself
One Health: A Public Health Solution or Slogan?
Get PDFOne Medicine has now morphed into One Health, but the concept has yet to be wholeheartedly embraced by the medical profession. In 2008, a Commentary in the American Journal of Medicine noted that medical schools, unlike veterinary schools, typically do not emphasize the ecology of zoonotic pathogens despite the estimated 60% of human diseases (and 75% of emerging diseases) originating in animals. The situation may be changing
Plants lack the functional neurotransmitters and signaling pathways required for sentience in animals
Get PDFWe cannot agree with Segundo-Ortin and Calvo that plants are sentient organisms. We have critically examined several aspects of their target article, and find their claims are not supported by the published evidence. We address these claims in sections on whether plants have a ‘neurobiology’ analogous to that of animal nervous systems, including neurotransmitters and synaptic receptors that respond to anesthetics; and whether plant signaling resembles neural transmission. For the latter, we especially consider the unique way plants signal their responses to wounding. Although the plant vascular system has been compared to the animal nervous system, animal blood vessels would be a better point of comparison