Scientific evidence for pain and stress responses in invertebrates has grown significantly, prompting ethical and policy debates about whether and how invertebrate welfare should be protected.
The question of invertebrate welfare challenges our intuitions about which animals deserve moral consideration. The evidence that many invertebrates have nociceptive systems capable of detecting and responding to harmful stimuli, combined with behavioral evidence of learning and what appear to be motivational states, suggests that dismissing invertebrate welfare entirely is not scientifically defensible. This does not necessarily mean invertebrates deserve the same consideration as mammals, but it does suggest that causing needless pain in lobsters, octopuses, or possibly insects deserves more serious ethical attention than it currently receives.