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June 9, 2025—A case for animal consciousness. Plus, exercise may improve gut health, and how the Musk-Trump squabble could hurt space exploration.
—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Elon Musk (left) speaking to reporters alongside U.S. President Donald Trump (right), in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images | | This chihuahua may be having a joyful experience. Stuart Lark/Getty Images | | Scientists are searching for ways to determine if other nonhuman species are conscious. Many animals display behaviors similar to those in humans that indicate a conscious experience, like play or excitement. Last year, a group of philosophers initiated the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which has since been signed by more than 500 scientists. The declaration states that, in light of early evidence of conscious experience in mammals and birds, and possibly all vertebrates, "We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks." Why this is interesting: Defining consciousness is notoriously difficult, even in humans. In lieu of direct evidence for consciousness in animals, scientists look for behavioral and anatomical markers that are consistent with a range of leading scientific theories of consciousness. For example, observing how animals respond to pain has long been a proxy for determining levels of consciousness. But many animals clearly experience joy as well, and this may be a better indicator of subjective experience, experts say.
| | What the experts say: Assuming right off the bat that animals are conscious is probably the best route, says philosopher Jeff Sebo, director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, both at New York University, and one of the initiators of the declaration. He and colleagues argued in a recent paper that: "this assumption is good not only ethically, because it represents a kind of precautionary stance toward our interactions with animals, but also scientifically, because it leads to better and more rigorous hypotheses about the nature of consciousness and the dimensions of consciousness that we can then research." | | How it works: Aerobic exercise seems to encourage activity in gut bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids. One such fatty acid, butyrate, may be especially important in the link between the gut and exercise: it supplies energy to a variety of gut tissues (like epithelial cells lining the gut), can reduce inflammation and can improve cells' ability to take up insulin. Most butyrate is produced by microbes and aerobic exercise seems to boost that production.
What the experts say: "We know there's a slight shunting of blood toward the muscles and away from the gastrointestinal tract during exercise," says Jacob Allen, an exercise physiologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This causes a small decrease in oxygen in gut tissue. Changes in pH or temperature may also dictate which microbes are present.
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- Optometry researchers estimate that about half of the global population will need corrective lenses to offset myopia (nearsightedness) by 2050 if current rates continue to climb. The causes are primarily behavioral, writes Andrew Herbert, a professor of psychology and visual perception at the Rochester Institute of Technology. How can we delay or offset the decline of our distance vision? "Spend less time focusing on objects close to your face, like books and smartphones, and spend more time outside in the bright, natural light," he says. | 4 min read
| | - Divide a rectangular sheet of paper into eight squares and number them on one side only, as shown at top left in the illustration below. There are 40 different ways that this "map" can be folded along the ruled lines to form a square packet which has the "1" square face up on top and all other squares beneath. The problem is to fold this sheet so that the squares are in serial order from 1 to 8, with the 1 face up on top. Click here for the solution and an even harder question!
| | A new space show premieres today at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City. Narrated by actor Pedro Pascal (of Game of Thrones and The Last of Us fame), Encounters in the Milky Way takes an astonishing tour of the solar system and zooms out to show our place in the galaxy. The movement of celestial bodies in the film are all precisely based on data retrieved by the Gaia space mission, which created the most complete map of the Milky Way to date and concluded in March. While they were analyzing data in order to animate the Oort cloud of dusty, comet-like bodies that creates a shell around the solar system, the film's creators noticed a spiral shape among the many Oort bodies--it turned out to be a novel astronomical observation that even the scientists hadn't seen yet. Sometimes art reveals science.
| | If you're ever in NYC and get a chance to visit AMNH and see the new space show, let me know what you think. It's a special one. Email me anytime: newsletters@sciam.com.
—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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