Yeah, insects have brains. And pain. Many have some degree of personality differentiation, even if the space of possible variance is pretty narrow compared to humans. I certainly can’t prevent most of the insects of the world from experiencing what is, to them, a hideously painful death (and indeed, have sometimes hastened that process for crickets when feeding them to pet mantises), but when I see a little dermestid beetle crawling around where it’ll certainly be hit by a car, my impulse is to save it. To the extent I’m interested in justifying that, it’s that I can make a difference here and now for this organism, and want to do so.
Yeah, insects have brains. And pain. Many have some degree of personality differentiation, even if the space of possible variance is pretty narrow compared to humans. I certainly can’t prevent most of the insects of the world from experiencing what is, to them, a hideously painful death (and indeed, have sometimes hastened that process for crickets when feeding them to pet mantises), but when I see a little dermestid beetle crawling around where it’ll certainly be hit by a car, my impulse is to save it. To the extent I’m interested in justifying that, it’s that I can make a difference here and now for this organism, and want to do so.
Me, internally: No way that’s true. But, well, just in case...
(five minutes of googling)
I’m learning all sorts of new stuff today!
That sounds like a perfectly valid reason to me.