Growing scientific recognition of invertebrate sentience challenges the assumption that only vertebrates deserve welfare consideration, with implications for conservation and pest management.
The welfare of wild invertebrates represents the largest potential frontier in animal welfare expansion. If significant proportions of the 1.3 million known invertebrate species experience pain-like states, the scale of unaddressed welfare concern is enormous. The precautionary principle suggests that where credible evidence of sentience exists - as it does for cephalopods and decapod crustaceans - welfare consideration should be extended even before scientific certainty is achieved. Conservation work that protects invertebrate populations also benefits individual animal welfare at scale.