4 years ago a declaration was signed by a prominent group of scientists known as The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness following their conclusion that animals have conscious understanding, just as we do and to the same degree.

This list includes all mammals and birds, along with many other creatures.

I know that some of you may be thinking this is self-evident - I mean, haven't we known this all along? - but the vast majority of people clearly haven't reached this understanding.

The way we are currently treating animals on a mass scale on this planet speaks to this ignorance. Even though it seems like an obvious acknowledgment for scientists to make, the implications of this statement could truly change the world.

The fact that animals are sentient beings can no longer be ignored.

The Declaration Stated The Following...

 

On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals.

 

While comparative research on this topic is naturally hampered by the inability of non-human animals, and often humans, to clearly and readily communicate about their internal states, the following observations can be stated unequivocally:

• The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving.

   

  Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field.

   

  Studies of non-human 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.

   

  Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness.

• The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures.

   

  In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals.

   

  Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing.

   

  Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound.

   

  Young human and non-human animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions.

   

  Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).

   

   

  

  
   

• Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuro-anatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness.

   

  Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive micro-circuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought.

   

  Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neuro-physiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex.

   

  Magpies in particular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.

   

   

  

   

  
  In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feed-forward and feedback processing.

   

  Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals.

   

  In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness.

   

  Evidence that human animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.

We declare the following,

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states.

 

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.

 

Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

 

Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

 

 

 

* The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch.

 

The Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, by Low, Edelman and Koch.

 

The Declaration was signed by the conference participants that very evening, in the presence of Stephen Hawking, in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge, UK. The signing ceremony was memorialized by CBS 60 Minutes.
Source

Other Evidence To Support This Reevaluation

There is a lot of information readily available to us that can fully support this declaration.

Take the hugely popular documentary Blackfish, which told the story of the psychological damage suffered by a whale who was kept in captivity for too long and the way he defied and rebelled his captors.

There's also the story of the pregnant pig that jumped off of a moving truck on her way to the slaughterhouse.

And then of course there are the countless animals that are held in captivity to be performers in the circus - their very intelligence makes them ideal for learning so many tricks - even though we all know that elephants and chimpanzees are some of the most sentient animals of all.

The infamous KoKo the gorilla, for example, has a vast vocabulary and communicates with us directly.

Other evidence has surfaced that shows how intelligent even ocean dwelling octopi are. In fact they were the only species of their type that were mentioned in this study.

If this declaration were to be taken seriously by government officials and the citizens of the world, we could have a world where no being had to suffer, be forced to do tricks, or held in captivity, all for the sake of human pleasure - the only reason we treat animals in this fashion in the first place.

What Can You Do?

If you agree with the scientists who signed this declaration then you do not need to wait until new laws are passed to help protect animals. You have the power to help change these things right away, and it couldn't be simpler.

Stop supporting these industries that are exploiting animals.

• Don't buy factory farmed meat and other animal products

• Reduce your overall consumption of animals products

• Don't go to the circus

• Don't go to the zoo

• Don't buy products that have been tested on animals

• Spread the word and help raise awareness about these important issues

It is important for us to recognize that we do have a say in what is going on in the world around us, and only until we believe it will we be able to effectively initiate positive change.