Wild Insect Welfare: An Emerging Frontier in Animal Ethics

With trillions of wild insects alive at any moment, even small probabilities of insect sentience carry enormous welfare implications — and human activities affect insect populations at unprecedented scale.

Key Facts

Insects represent approximately 80% of all animal species, with an estimated 10 quintillion (10^19) individual insects alive at any time.
Evidence for insect pain experience remains contested but is growing: bees show evidence of pessimistic cognitive bias after stressors, suggesting emotional states.
Pesticide use causes mass insect mortality — neonicotinoids affect bee navigation, foraging, and reproduction, with population-level consequences.
Wild insect populations have declined by 45-75% in some monitored regions over recent decades, with habitat loss and pesticide use as primary drivers.
Wild-caught insects used in fishing as bait represent a largely unexamined welfare context affecting billions of individual animals annually.
The Rethink Priorities Wild Animal Welfare team has published research estimating the scale of wild insect welfare under various sentience probability assumptions.

Welfare Considerations

Wild insect welfare is the most uncertain and philosophically challenging frontier in animal ethics. If insects have even a small probability of experiencing something — if there is even a 1% chance that a bee experiences distress — then the sheer number of insects means that the expected welfare significance of human impacts on insect populations is immense. The uncertainty itself is the defining challenge: we cannot currently determine whether insects have morally relevant experiences, and the behavioral and physiological evidence points in different directions for different species and experimental contexts. A precautionary welfare approach — reducing unnecessary insect harm, particularly through pesticide reform and habitat restoration — makes sense both for insect welfare and for ecosystem services, making it one of the most tractable areas for pragmatic action despite philosophical uncertainty.

What You Can Do

Reduce or eliminate pesticide use in your garden, particularly systemic insecticides like neonicotinoids.
Plant native wildflowers and maintain naturalistic garden areas that provide insect habitat and food sources.
Support the Pesticide Action Network and Buglife in their campaigns for pesticide reform and insect habitat protection.
Follow and share research from Rethink Priorities and the Insect Institute on insect sentience and welfare.
Advocate for national pesticide regulation that incorporates insect population monitoring as a key environmental indicator.