The welfare of invertebrate animals including insects, crustaceans, and cephalopods is an emerging frontier in animal welfare science with major practical implications.
Traditional animal welfare frameworks have excluded invertebrates, but growing evidence for sentience in crustaceans, cephalopods, and possibly insects challenges this approach. The scale of potential invertebrate suffering dwarfs that of vertebrates by several orders of magnitude if they have meaningful welfare interests. Developing appropriate welfare standards requires continued investment in basic sentience research.