"Neuroscientist Christof Koch admits that even bugs may have some form of consciousness, since “We have no idea what the minimal complexity is of a brain necessary for there to be consciousness.”[233] Koch tells us that this realization led him to become a vegetarian, and it’s also the reason he no longer kills bugs. Some might suggest that one good reason for intentionally creating new conscious entities in the lab would be to reduce the need to experiment on animals. Even so, one would hope that any such experimentation involving consciousness would at least be done for medical science, and not for developing new game consoles, for example.

"Neuroscientist Christof Koch admits that even bugs may have some form of consciousness, since “We have no idea what the minimal complexity is of a brain necessary for there to be consciousness.”[233] Koch tells us that this realization led him to become a vegetarian, and it’s also the reason he no longer kills bugs. Some might suggest that one good reason for intentionally creating new conscious entities in the lab would be to reduce the need to experiment on animals. Even so, one would hope that any such experimentation involving consciousness would at least be done for medical science, and not for developing new game consoles, for example.


While the human midbrain and the insect brain may even be evolutionarily related, an insect’s inner life is obviously more basic than our own. Accordingly, bugs feel something like hunger and pain, and “perhaps very simple analogs of anger,” but no grief or jealousy. “They plan, but don’t imagine,” Klein says. Even so, insects’ highly distilled sense of self is a potential gift to the far-out study of consciousness. Probing the insect brain could help quantify questions of what it means to think that vexed the likes of Aristotle and Descartes, and could even aid the development of sentient robots.