A more complete view of environmental justice includes not only human financial loss, but harms to individual sentient animals.

LSE South Asia Centre@lsesouthasia.bsky.social · 2d ago

#Animal #justice is rarely discussed despite global conventions, laws & regulations. Asma Mahmud (Rajshahi University) examines current #laws & #rights of animals in Bangladesh & considers how truer justice may be sought for them. blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/20... @lseanimalsentience.bsky.social

AI could potentially improve the lives of billions of farm animals worldwide. But critics worry it risks further expanding factory farms while avoiding animal welfare problems inherent to the industrial farming system. My latest on @sentientmedia.org: sentientmedia.org/ai-is-coming...

AI Is Coming to Factory Farms. Will It Help the Animals or Just the Industry?

New technology can detect pain in farm animals, but critics say it may do more to bolster the system than improve it.

sentientmedia.org

Pleased to see this outcome - following the sustained efforts of many advocating for these amazing creatures 🐙

Tony Johansson@tonyjohansson75.bsky.social · 2w ago

Plans to build the world’s first commercial octopus farm in Gran Canaria, Spain, have been scrapped, in a major victory for octopuses and the global animal welfare movement. Octopuses are highly intelligent, curious and solitary animals, making them fundamentally unsuited to intensive farming. 🐙

Recent contributions to wildlife law emphasise that wild animals should be recognised as sentient individuals, not just components of ecosystems www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Do birds enjoy flying? Cool new research shows evidence of positive affect associated with flying in galahs (an Australian parrot species) doi.org/10.1163/1568...

Bees continue to capture public interest - this time their casual puzzle‑solving 🐝 www.ecoportal.net/en/americans...

While Americans spend their Saturdays mowing, the bumblebee in that same grass was quietly cracking a century old intelligence test, rolling a ball beneath a flower and climbing on top, and 3 in 4 of ...

Scientists just confirmed bumblebees can solve problems the way chimps do. The surprise is where these tiny geniuses are hiding: your backyard lawn.

ecoportal.net

In Argentina, two goldfish have recently been recognised as legal ‘subjects of rights’ - a new case highlighting legal attention to animal sentience www.i24news.tv/en/news/inte...

Two goldfish just won a court case - and it could change how we think about animals forever - i24NEWS

An Argentine court just ruled that two fish in a sushi restaurant window are "sentient beings" with legal rights. Here's what that actually means, and why it matters far beyond the fish tank

i24news.tv

Slow-motion videos suggest that the insects display distinct behaviors when they like or dislike a snack. The findings might offer a new way to study their emotion-like states. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/b... via @smithsonianmag.bsky.social #entomology #science #biology #SciChat

Bumblebees Seem to 'Lick Their Lips' After Sweet Treats and Shake Their Heads at Bad Tastes, Hinting at the Insects' Inner Lives

Slow-motion videos suggest that the insects display distinct behaviors when they like or dislike a snack. The findings might offer a new way to study their emotion-like states

smithsonianmag.com

New research! 📚 We built the largest database to date of cephalopod species - octopuses, squids and cuttlefish - and their brains, habitats and behaviors 🐙🧠📈 What did we find?👇 Press release: www.lse.ac.uk/news/ecologi... Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“An early framework: look carefully at behaviour, compare species, distrust easy human exceptionalism and take animal expression seriously.” www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026...

The horse, the hippo and the sulky chimp – Darwin’s contribution to animal sentience

Today we debate in law whether animals feel fear, pleasure, pain and distress. In 1872, Darwin was already there – reading emotion in a pawing horse, an affectionate dog, a bristling cat and a chimpan...

dailymaverick.co.za

2026. Pragmatism bias in farmed animal welfare science. pureportal.ilvo.be/en/publicati...

Pragmatism bias in farmed animal welfare science

pureportal.ilvo.be

How might animals perceive time? Ishan Singhal describes how illusions might hold the key, in today's @theguardian.com (based on our recent @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social which he led) @singhal.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why would we show an optical illusion to a monkey or a sparrow? To learn how they experience time, of course | Ishan Singhal

Animals may inhabit the same world as us, but new research shows how their perceptions of what is around them differs, says research fellow Ishan Singhal

theguardian.com

Veterinary associations hold significant influence across food systems and animal welfare regulations, yet their positions don’t always align with the profession’s ethical commitments or recognition of animal sentience. boldreasoningwithpetersinger.substack.com/p/when-veter...

When veterinarians fail animals

Why is America’s leading veterinary association supporting farmed animal suffering?

boldreasoningwithpetersinger.substack.com

Congratulations to Dr Julie Elie for working out the 11 core calls in the zebra finch vocabulary and their meanings; awarded the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for two-way interspecies communication! www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

A little bird told her: scientist wins $100,000 prize for decoding birdsong

Julie Elie worked out how zebra finches announce who they are, what they are doing and use individual signatures

theguardian.com

On Friday 26 June @birchlse.bsky.social will be in a cross-cultural dialogue exploring insights into animal consciousness, food choices and the environment. Free and open to everyone - details and registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #LCAW2026

Animal Consciousness & The Environment: Insights From Science & Vedanta.

Join us for an evening with Professor Jonathan Birch, Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Acharya Prashant, Philosopher and Author. Date: Friday, June 26, 2026 Doors: 6:20 p...

docs.google.com

Did the evolution of consciousness begin with smell? I have a piece arguing it might well have done (in response to @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's recent vision-centric picture). Free to read here: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZhrI...

Recognition of animal sentience appears to be increasing in the UK, according to the RSPCA's 2026 Kindness Index (an annual survey of public attitudes towards animals): www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/lat...

Kindness Index 2026 | Report & Key Findings - RSPCA - rspca.org.uk

Take a closer look at the animal welfare and sentience issues facing the public in 2026. See where we've taken positive steps, and where more needs to be done.

rspca.org.uk

The science of sentience - Mark Briffa and I discuss why we need a precise definition of sentience so we can empirically test hypotheses of animal sentience. This allows us to provide evidence to legislators and other stakeholders #sentience www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol...

🌱🌍 The video of the "Food future" panel is now available online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j4w... The panel of experts discussed the ethical, logistical, and technical challenges of transitioning to a more planet-friendly food system. @birchlse.bsky.social @lseanimalsentience.bsky.social

Food futures | LSE Festival

YouTube video by LSE

youtube.com

Sperm whales have accents. Scientists studying sperm whales in the Mediterranean have discovered distinct regional dialects. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... 📷 Image: Amanda Cotton/Ocean Image Bank (photographed in Caribbean) @unbiodiversity.bsky.social #whales #oceanscience

Wow, hot isn't it. Animal agriculture contributes somewhere in the region of 15-20% of greenhouse gases and is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. We cannot save our planet without drastically reducing consumption of animal products.

Do animals perceive time differently from humans? Science covers our new paper on 'timescapes of animal experience', led by Ishan Singhal @singhal.bsky.social 🦇🐈🦋🕷️🐟🐒🐍🪰🦜⏰ www.science.org/content/arti...

Do animals perceive time differently from humans?

Science chats with a researcher whose team is using “timescapes” to understand how nonhumans experience the world

science.org

Anil Seth@anilseth.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Timescapes of Animal Experience: new paper in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, led by @singhal.bsky.social, w/ @birchlse.bsky.social and me. Open access link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1nHo74sIRv...

Excited to share our contribution to the #LSEFestival exhibition on holding powerful veterinary institutions to account. One of many LSE Research contributions on display in the Marshall Building Great Hall, free and open to everyone to browse until 2 July. www.lse.ac.uk/events/lse-f...

Our review on #speciesism is now out in Nature Reviews Psychology. rdcu.be/foTDx We synthesise research on how people think about animals, morally rank species, and justify animal exploitation and consumption. A pleasure to work on this with @gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social @springernature.com

How do other animals experience time? It's been a pleasure to work with @singhal.bsky.social and @anilseth.bsky.social on a paper exploring how temporal illusions and other experimental strategies can shed light on this. It's our today! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

This @noemamag.com article by Ryan Huling, author of Hidden Nations, beautifully covers our Nature Sustainability paper with @merikatariina.bsky.social and @birchlse.bsky.social! If you can’t access it, let me know 😉 doi.org/10.1038/s418...

Protecting animal cultures as World Heritage - Nature Sustainability

It is becoming increasingly clear that animal cultures have intrinsic, irreplaceable value, and yet they are not adequately protected by preserving habitat. The time has come for UNESCO to explicitly ...

doi.org

Noema Magazine@noemamag.com · 2mo ago

From architectural traditions to ancient courtship rituals, evidence of animal cultures is overwhelming but underacknowledged, Ryan Huling writes. #animals #biology #unesco

Coverage in the Guardian of our latest publication in Royal Society Open Science, with fantastic collaborators Alan McElligott (@amcell.bsky.social), Christian Nawroth (@goatswhostare.bsky.social), Federico Rossano and Simon Townsend. Paper threaded below! www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Goats can find food by following a human voice, study finds

Experiments show 29 animals moved towards a treat-filled bucket 60% of the time when guided by a researcher

theguardian.com

Can an octopus use a mirror as a tool? 🐙🪞 Researchers found octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate food hidden from view, a skill previously documented only in vertebrates. Every time we think we've reached the limit of octopus intelligence, they casually move the goalposts. #Science

Octopuses use mirrors to find food they cannot see

Octopuses may be even smarter than we thought. Researchers at Dartmouth found that octopuses can learn to use mirrors to locate food hidden behind them—a skill previously seen only in vertebrates like...

sciencedaily.com