Dr. Eliza Middleton

The diptera, the flies, and the bladder day, which are the cockroaches, they satisfy six of the eight criteria of pain.

Bees and wasps and also ants satisfy four.

What about orthoptera, which includes crickets?

They also satisfy four.

So I think it's clear that we're just getting more and more evidence that

maybe we were wrong.

Maybe they do feel things.

Maybe they do have a subjective experience.

Yeah, well, I think this is also a really interesting and worthwhile thing to talk about because I think it's very clear that the history of animal welfare and animal welfare law is really a history of a line being drawn and then moved and then another boundary and then we move it again.

And so with the octopuses and the squids, the research around them to support that decision was less systematic evidence than what we have now for insects.

So there was less evidence of them being sentient in terms of meeting strict criteria than what there is for insects now.

Oh, so how did they manage it?

Well, they made it on precautionary grounds, you know, the precautionary principle that if something might be hurt, maybe we just don't hurt it, like...

You don't withhold protections until certainty is achieved.

You act when evidence crosses a reasonable threshold.