Are animals other than humans conscious, and how far does consciousness extend in the animal kingdom?
According to Michael Pollan, many mammals, several bird species, and octopuses are now considered conscious by a growing number of scientists — and some researchers extend that circle even to insects. The key shift is that consciousness likely originates not in the cortex but in the upper brain stem, meaning any creature capable of feeling must, by that logic, be granted some form of consciousness.
Pollan grounds this in a philosophical framework popularized by NYU philosopher Thomas Nagel, who argued in his landmark 1970s essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat? that consciousness simply means there is "something it is like" to be a given creature. By that standard, a bat navigating the world through sonar is conscious — and the argument naturally extends to a wide range of animals. Your toaster, on the other hand, experiences nothing at all.
The deeper implication is that the traditional focus on the cortex as the seat of consciousness may have drawn the boundary of the conscious world too narrowly. Research developed from the 1990s onward has shifted attention toward the upper brain stem as the more likely origin point for basic feelings. If that is correct, then any animal possessing even rudimentary feeling qualifies as a conscious being — a conclusion that dramatically expands the moral and scientific weight we assign to animal experience. Pollan acknowledges genuine uncertainty at the edges: he remains unsure whether insects, protozoa, or bacteria cross that threshold. Hear the full conversation on Listenly.
Key concept — What does "conscious" mean here?
Pollan draws on Thomas Nagel's definition: a being is conscious if there is something it is like to be that being — if it has subjective experience. This is distinct from intelligence or behavior; it is purely about whether any inner experience exists at all. A creature that feels anything — however simply — meets that bar.
"Consciousness is precious, consciousness is under siege, and consciousness is worth defending."
— Michael Pollan, 3 Takeaways™, episode #314About Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is a journalist and professor with appointments at both Harvard University and UC Berkeley, two of the world's leading research institutions. Over the course of his career, he has built a reputation for taking deceptively simple questions and following them to their most unexpected and intellectually demanding conclusions — a method he applies with equal rigor to food, plants, psychedelics, and now consciousness itself.
His new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, represents perhaps his most ambitious project to date: a sustained inquiry into why we experience anything at all, not merely what we think. In researching it, Pollan engaged directly with the work of leading philosophers and neuroscientists — including figures such as Thomas Nagel and Christoph Koch — whose competing frameworks shape the current scientific debate about the boundaries of consciousness.
What makes Pollan's perspective particularly credible on the question of animal consciousness is precisely his outsider-insider position: trained as a journalist rather than a neuroscientist, he is skilled at synthesizing contested expert opinion without collapsing its complexity. His engagement with Nagel's "what is it like to be a bat?" framework is not merely illustrative — it is the conceptual spine of his argument for extending the circle of consciousness well beyond the human.