The suffering of invertebrates: An approach from animal ethics

Abstract

Invertebrate animals are usually seen as a kind of "aliens" which do not deserve any moral consideration. However, there is a growing amount of evidence indicating that many of them do have the capacity to experience pain. The same criteria that are usually applied in order to infer that vertebrates are sentient beings (behavioral response, learning capacity, memory, a certain specific neurophysiological structure...) lead to the idea that many invertebrates are sentient as well. Therefore, under the skeptical premise that we have no direct evidence of the experience of pain in vertebrates, we are forced to hold that it exists in both vertebrates and invertebrates.