This is my cat, Otis.
I spend much of my days staring at him, wondering exactly what he's thinking and feeling.
Who are you, Otis?
What do you want?
Welcome back to a new season of LSEIQ.
This is the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question.
I'm James Reti from the IQ team.
We work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas.
Inspired by Otis, in this episode I'll be asking, what is it like to be an animal?
We'll travel to the local park to find out how smart dogs are.
We'll hear about a campaign arguing that chimpanzees should be classed as people with their own rights.
And finally, we'll ask whether insects and other invertebrates have feelings.
Associate Professor Jonathan Birch leads the foundations of Animal Sentience Project, which is based at LSEI.
While research into animal sentience is relatively new,
Jonathan told me that interest in animals' subjective experience has a long history.
Even in ancient Greece, Aristotle had this notion of a sensitive soul.
Plants have merely nutritive souls.
They merely grow.
But animals have sensitive souls.
They're sentient.