• Question: What is consciousness and do you think it is unique to our species?

    Asked by anon-226697 to William, Thibaut "Tibo", Harry, Georgia, Emily, Aimee on 13 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Georgia Orton

      Georgia Orton answered on 13 Nov 2019:


      Ooh tough question – I must say that I’m not an expert in this at all.
      I think it’s hard to define self awareness and even harder to work out which animals might be self-aware.
      There seems to be evidence to suggest that some animals have levels of consciousness too ( https://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sentience.html ).
      Have you ever seen a dog look guilty when it knows its done something wrong? That must require quite a lot of intelligence.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75lVAq6Qsy4

    • Photo: William Wiseman

      William Wiseman answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      I am fairly sure there are some animals that understand they exist. Examples might be dogs or even monkeys. There are some videos of people doing a magic trick to a monkey and it laughing as a response.

    • Photo: Aimee Egglestone

      Aimee Egglestone answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      Oh wow! That’s really not my field. but I believe it is just an awareness of your existence. And I think it has been proved that a few other animals have that awareness!

    • Photo: Thibaut Deviese

      Thibaut Deviese answered on 16 Nov 2019:


      Hi Rozza! This is a difficult questions! Experimental research on consciousness presents special difficulties. In the majority of experiments that are specifically about consciousness, the subjects are human. They are asked to describe their experiences, and their descriptions are treated as observations of the contents of consciousness.
      The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. New techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences.

    • Photo: Emily Sparkes

      Emily Sparkes answered on 18 Nov 2019:


      Wow, this is a great question! I am by no means an expert (and the other have given wonderfully detailed answers) but I don’t think it is unique to our species

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