Lady Parts and Baby Parts: What Is a Fetus? A common-sense view of mammalian pregnancy treats the fetus as (a) an organism and (b) co-extensive with the approximately baby-shaped entity developing in the uterus. In this paper, I draw on metabo...

More than five years in the making, my paper about the metaphysics of pregnancy is out today, open-access in PPR 🧵1/7

doi.org/10.1111/phpr...

Congratulations @birchlse.bsky.social on winning the 2025 Royal Institute of Philosophy Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize! 👏

Can you see circles or rectangles? And does the answer depend on where you grew up? | Anil Seth We may believe we see the world exactly as it is – but as studies of optical illusions show, it’s far more complex than that, says cognitive and computational neuroscience professor Anil Seth

Do we see things as we are? @anilseth.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Looking forward to talking to UFAW about one of my main preoccupations, defining animal welfare

📽️ The recording of the Sir Karl Popper Memorial Lecture 2025 by @petergs.bsky.social on freedom and tolerance is now available online!

Watch it here: www.youtube.com/live/1TWy0xa...

LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.

An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...

Department for Education confirms launch of natural history GCSE Campaigners have been calling for the qualification for years but plan stalled despite a curriculum being drawn up

Brilliant news! At last, confirmation that the Govt *will* go ahead with the #NaturalHistoryGCSE 🎉 We have to get to know our fellow travellers on this planet again. Young people who know & love nature are far more likely to protect & restore it - as well as enjoying better physical & mental health

This is an excellent article

cartoon weighing scales, surrounded by photos of a goldfish, a trout, a hermit crab, a C. Elegans, a shore crab, a rat, and a bumblebee

When and why are motivational trade-offs evidence of sentience? New paper with @birchlse.bsky.social forthcoming at Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B and available to download for free here: philpapers.org/rec/BROWAW-10 (1/11)

Common octopus

I've written a free and accessible guide to Cephalopod Sentience with Alex Schnell, Piero Amodio and Peter Morse, stunningly illustrated by Roksolana Tkach. Please download and share! It's worth it for the illustrations alone! 🐙 thebrooksinstitute.org/sites/defaul...

I'm working on a project about the life of a dairy cow and - wow - the things we do to gentle, maternal animals for no good reason at all shocks the conscience. Mostly all things I already knew, but there's knowing and then there's knowing

Nominate your invertebrate species of the year We’re asking readers from around the world to nominate their favourite spineless species for our second Invertebrate of the Year competition

This is made for us let's go www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Slaughterhouse Work Is Still Some of the Most Exploited Labor in the World We need to talk about the humans most affected by factory farming.

Many factors contribute to slaughterhouse workers’ poor mental health, and the subsequent violence that permeates surrounding communities — but the systematic killing and objectification of animals appears to play a specific role.

Do Insects Feel Pain? Insects make up about forty per cent of living species, and we tend to kill them without pause. New research explores the possibility that they are sentient.

The latest issue of the New Yorker has a profile of the insect sentience squad - featuring Tilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka, Meghan Barrett, Sarah Skeels and me. www.newyorker.com/culture/anna...