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Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
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If new evidence emerges of animals' abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious? We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools. Prof Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London has worked on many of the major studies of bee intelligence. "If bees are that intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something, which are the building blocks of consciousness," he says. Prof Chittka's experiments showed that bees would modify their behaviour following a traumatic incident and seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity. A government review led by Prof Birch in 2021 assessed 300 scientific studies on the sentience of decapods and Cephalopods, which include octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. Prof Birch's team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022. Prof [Kristin] Andrews was among the prime movers of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness signed earlier this year, which has so far been signed by 286 researchers. The short four paragraph declaration states that it is "irresponsible" to ignore the possibility of animal consciousness.
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In 2003, Mary Fran Lyons was going through chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. One day after a treatment session, she went to the mall to have lunch. Lyons had lost all her hair, so she was wearing a baseball cap. "You didn't have to look at me very hard to know things were not quite right," Lyons said. As she was walking along, looking at the stores, a woman approached her. She told her something that Lyons will never forget. "She said, â€I've been sent to tell you that you're going to be OK,'" Lyons remembered. "I stood there and looked at her and I thought, â€Well, who sent you? I mean, who are you?' And I did not say anything. And she said it again: 'You're going to be OK.'" Then the woman simply walked away. Lyons watched her leave, trying to understand what had just happened. But nothing about the woman stood out. "She looked like a completely normal human being," Lyons recalled. "I never met her before, never heard of her since." Later, Lyons told a good friend about her unusual encounter. "And she said, â€Do you believe in angels?'" Lyons recalled. "And I said, â€I do now.'" More than 20 years later, Lyons continues to hold the experience close. "If that woman were standing in front of me right now, I would say to her, â€You gave me hope at a time when I really needed to hear it,'" Lyons said. "And I still think of that to this day."
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