#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects

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Aug 26, 2024

Meghan Barrett, an insect neurobiologist and the founding director of the Insect Welfare Research Society, dives into the fascinating world of insect sentience and welfare. She discusses the surprising cognitive abilities of insects, the scale of potential suffering in both wild and farmed environments, and the ethical implications of farming practices. Barrett also introduces groundbreaking research on emotional states in fruit flies and advocates for a deeper understanding of insect consciousness, challenging conventional views about their capabilities and experiences.

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INSIGHT

Insect Diversity and Relations

Insects are the most diverse group of extant animals, with an estimated 5.5 million species.
They are more closely related to crustaceans than to spiders or millipedes.

INSIGHT

Challenging Insect Assumptions

Common assumptions about insects, like small body size, short lifespans, and limited cognition, are often wrong.
Some beetle larvae are bigger than mice, challenging size-based assumptions about sentience.

INSIGHT

Insect Brain Size and Complexity

Brain size in insects may not directly correlate with sentience, as small brains can exhibit complex behaviors.
Insects demonstrate numerical cognition, social learning, and even facial recognition.

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"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pets that are vertebrates that they take care of across the taxonomic groups, and people get familiar with those from going to zoos and watching their behaviours there, and watching nature documentaries and more. But I think the insects are still really underappreciated, and that means that our intuitions are probably more likely to be wrong than with those other groups." —Meghan Barrett

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Meghan Barrett — insect neurobiologist and physiologist at Indiana University Indianapolis and founding director of the Insect Welfare Research Society — about her work to understand insects’ potential capacity for suffering, and what that might mean for how humans currently farm and use insects. If you're interested in getting involved with this work, check out Meghan's recent blog post: I’m into insect welfare! What’s next?

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

The scale of potential insect suffering in the wild, on farms, and in labs.
Examples from cutting-edge insect research, like how depression- and anxiety-like states can be induced in fruit flies and successfully treated with human antidepressants.
How size bias might help explain why many people assume insects can’t feel pain.
Practical solutions that Meghan’s team is working on to improve farmed insect welfare, such as standard operating procedures for more humane slaughter methods.
Challenges facing the nascent field of insect welfare research, and where the main research gaps are.
Meghan’s personal story of how she went from being sceptical of insect pain to working as an insect welfare scientist, and her advice for others who want to improve the lives of insects.
And much more.

Chapters:

Cold open (00:00:00)
Luisa's intro (00:01:02)
The interview begins (00:03:06)
What is an insect? (00:03:22)
Size diversity (00:07:24)
How important is brain size for sentience? (00:11:27)
Offspring, parental investment, and lifespan (00:19:00)
Cognition and behaviour (00:23:23)
The scale of insect suffering (00:27:01)
Capacity to suffer (00:35:56)
The empirical evidence for whether insects can feel pain (00:47:18)
Nociceptors (01:00:02)
Integrated nociception (01:08:39)
Response to analgesia (01:16:17)
Analgesia preference (01:25:57)
Flexible self-protective behaviour (01:31:19)
Motivational tradeoffs and associative learning (01:38:45)
Results (01:43:31)
Reasons to be sceptical (01:47:18)
Meghan’s probability of sentience in insects (02:10:20)
Views of the broader entomologist community (02:18:18)
Insect farming (02:26:52)
How much to worry about insect farming (02:40:56)
Inhumane slaughter and disease in insect farms (02:44:45)
Inadequate nutrition, density, and photophobia (02:53:50)
Most humane ways to kill insects at home (03:01:33)
Challenges in researching this (03:07:53)
Most promising reforms (03:18:44)
Why Meghan is hopeful about working with the industry (03:22:17)
Careers (03:34:08)
Insect Welfare Research Society (03:37:16)
Luisa's outro (03:47:01)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore