What an interesting article. I learned a lot about things I was not expecting to even get interested in: scorpions. (This is why reading posts of others is interesting: we get information about subject we would not have searched for otherwise.)
I actually didn’t know a thing about them. As a side note, I mostly convinced myself that scorpions were sentient animals after reading the caption of the first picture of this post. The way they behave with their kids seems to be sometimes even better… than what humans do (not always, but sometimes). Of course this is by far not rational, and you demonstrated that we should not be that conclusive so quickly.
I would like to think as follows. The fact that they hunt demonstrates that they are intelligent beings (as you wrote). Then, what's next? I am tempted to conclude (without proofs) that they should also have emotions, as to hunt we need to be able to think about victims. But that's probably a completely wrong statement from the scorpionic standpoint (but it is interesting to consider it anyways).
In any case, thanks for the interesting reading. As I wrote, I learned a lot!
So happy to see you here @lemouth. I agree about the first picture. Throughout the blog I had to refrain from making subjective statements, because I wanted to be persuasive and I wanted science to be my instrument. But oh yes, of course animals are sentient. I remember Darwin wrote about the suffering inflicted by parasitic wasps on their victims. I mean, Darwin!! It is inconvenient to think these creatures have feelings. Then we have to be thoughtful in our treatment of them.
I'm glad you learned a lot. I learned a lot in writing. So many questions opened up. So many questions without answers.
Think of how hard it is for us to understand what goes on in the mind of an autistic person. Or a comatose person. Understanding eludes us, which means, I believe, we should err on the side of compassion.
Thanks for that great comment and for reading my long blog.
As an author, it is clear you need to restrain the speech. As a commenter, I have more freedom with this respect.
To come back to Darwin and the discussion, we must keep in mind that knowledge of that time is not today's knowledge. Something that may sound cruel and immoral today could have been "normal" hundreds of years ago (regardless whether we agree or disagree). This being said, even if there is no scientific proof (yet?) that animals are sentient, they may be (I guess this is clear and does not need to be proven). Therefore, we should behave as they are (better be sure than sorry).
PS: I am not afraid of long blogs as you can imagine ;)
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