June 9, 2025—A case for animal consciousness. Plus, exercise may improve gut health, and how the Musk-Trump squabble could hurt space exploration.
—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor |
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Elon Musk (left) speaking to reporters alongside U.S. President Donald Trump (right), in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images |
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This chihuahua may be having a joyful experience. Stuart Lark/Getty Images |
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Scientists are searching for ways to determine if other nonhuman species are conscious. Many animals display behaviors similar to those in humans that indicate a conscious experience, like play or excitement. Last year, a group of philosophers initiated the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which has since been signed by more than 500 scientists. The declaration states that, in light of early evidence of conscious experience in mammals and birds, and possibly all vertebrates, “We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks.”
Why this is interesting: Defining consciousness is notoriously difficult, even in humans. In lieu of direct evidence for consciousness in animals, scientists look for behavioral and anatomical markers that are consistent with a range of leading scientific theories of consciousness. For example, observing how animals respond to pain has long been a proxy for determining levels of consciousness. But many animals clearly experience joy as well, and this may be a better indicator of subjective experience, experts say.
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What the experts say: Assuming right off the bat that animals are conscious is probably the best route, says philosopher Jeff Sebo, director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, both at New York University, and one of the initiators of the declaration. He and colleagues argued in a recent paper that: “this assumption is good not only ethically, because it represents a kind of precautionary stance toward our interactions with animals, but also scientifically, because it leads to better and more rigorous hypotheses about the nature of consciousness and the dimensions of consciousness that we can then research.”
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How it works: Aerobic exercise seems to encourage activity in gut bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids. One such fatty acid, butyrate, may be especially important in the link between the gut and exercise: it supplies energy to a variety of gut tissues (like epithelial cells lining the gut), can reduce inflammation and can improve cells’ ability to take up insulin. Most butyrate is produced by microbes and aerobic exercise seems to boost that production.
What the experts say: “We know there’s a slight shunting of blood toward the muscles and away from the gastrointestinal tract during exercise,” says Jacob Allen, an exercise physiologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This causes a small decrease in oxygen in gut tissue. Changes in pH or temperature may also dictate which microbes are present.
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