All life is to some level – including your and me – but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions.
> a whale isn't necessarily smarter than a monkey just because it has a much bigger (physically) brain
I claimed that brain size is deterministic of intelligence, but it's not as if any brain of any size can do anything; there are real physical limits here. Ant brains are tiny, and ants are probably the smartest insects: others have even smaller brains.
Either way, I'm mostly interested in the emotional experience of insects and other animals, rather than intelligence. I think that's a more important factor in deciding whether inflicting harm is morally acceptable or not.
Mice, of course, are also not especially clever or have rich emotional lives in the same way that a dog or pig might have, but there does seem to be some of it, whereas I'm not seeing any in ants or other insects.
I keep an ant colony as a pet.
Ants are pretty much indestructible creatures from a physical point of view - they need infinitesimal amounts of food and water to survive, they don't get sick or hurt, but they're very succeptible to stress. They're nervous creatures and go nuts from stress, acting in illogical and even suicidal ways.
Is it because their primitive brains go haywire? Or is this just our mammalian prejudice speaking? Who knows.
Probably best not to anthropomorphize any animal, I think.
All life is to some level – including your and me – but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions.
> a whale isn't necessarily smarter than a monkey just because it has a much bigger (physically) brain
I claimed that brain size is deterministic of intelligence, but it's not as if any brain of any size can do anything; there are real physical limits here. Ant brains are tiny, and ants are probably the smartest insects: others have even smaller brains.
Either way, I'm mostly interested in the emotional experience of insects and other animals, rather than intelligence. I think that's a more important factor in deciding whether inflicting harm is morally acceptable or not.
Mice, of course, are also not especially clever or have rich emotional lives in the same way that a dog or pig might have, but there does seem to be some of it, whereas I'm not seeing any in ants or other insects.