Every living being experiences the world differently.

A bee perceives ultraviolet patterns on flowers that remain invisible to us. A dolphin explores its surroundings through echoes rather than vision. A weakly electric fish detects invisible electric fields generated by itself and other organisms. Humans, in contrast, rely heavily on vision and language. None of these perceptual worlds is more "real" than another—they are simply different ways of interacting with the same environment.

This idea raises one of the oldest and most fascinating questions in biology and philosophy: are animals conscious?

The question has been debated for decades, and in recent years it has become increasingly important in discussions about animal welfare. Some researchers argue that conscious experience—particularly the conscious experience of pain and suffering—is essential for welfare itself. If an individual cannot consciously experience suffering, does its living condition truly matter?

From my perspective, every living being deserves a basic level of respect regardless of where we place it on a hypothetical "consciousness scale." At the same time, I recognize that ethical decisions are rarely black and white. Conservation, veterinary medicine, and animal welfare often require difficult choices, and limited resources inevitably force us to prioritize some forms of suffering over others.

Perhaps an even more interesting question is not simply whether animals are conscious, but what consciousness actually is.

There is no universally accepted definition. Some researchers associate consciousness with self-awareness, others with the ability to integrate information, while many define it more broadly as the capacity for subjective experience.

One influential perspective, proposed by Feinberg and Mallatt, defines consciousness as subjective experience. According to their theory, consciousness requires a sufficiently developed and hierarchically organized central nervous system, together with several additional neurobiological features. Under these conditions, an organism becomes capable of having subjective experiences. An intriguing implication of this view is that consciousness is not exclusively human. Instead, it may have evolved independently in several animal lineages possessing sufficiently complex nervous systems.

This perspective also challenges a common anthropocentric assumption—that humans necessarily represent the pinnacle of cognitive complexity. Several non-human animals possess remarkably sophisticated nervous systems and exhibit behaviours such as social learning, cooperation, play, complex communication, planning, and flexible problem-solving. Examples include dolphins, corvids, elephants, cephalopods, and even weakly electric fish such as Gnathonemus petersii.

Can we truly compare the consciousness of humans and other species? Probably not completely. Even in humans, our understanding of consciousness ultimately relies on subjective reports. With animals, we must infer subjective experience indirectly through behaviour, cognition, neurobiology, and evolution. We may never know exactly what it feels like to be a dolphin, an octopus, or a raven.

Yet this uncertainty does not mean that subjective experience is beyond scientific investigation. On the contrary, modern neuroscience, cognitive biology, behavioural ecology, and comparative psychology provide increasingly powerful tools for exploring how different organisms perceive and interact with their worlds.

Every species experiences reality through the sensory systems that evolution has equipped it with. Humans are predominantly visual, but other animals may perceive aspects of the environment that are almost impossible for us to imagine directly.

Dolphins inhabit a three-dimensional underwater world structured by sound. Through echolocation they perceive distance, texture, movement, and shape in ways fundamentally different from human perception. They also display playful and creative behaviours, including producing and manipulating vortex rings—temporary underwater structures formed from swirling water.

Weakly electric fish such as Gnathonemus petersii perceive their surroundings electrically. By generating weak electric fields and detecting tiny distortions within them, they continuously construct a sensory representation of nearby objects, other animals, and even social interactions. In a sense, they do not primarily "see" the world—they interpret it electrically.

Corvids combine remarkable memory with sophisticated problem-solving abilities and social learning. Elephants possess exceptional spatial memory while maintaining rich social relationships that include behaviours associated with empathy, cooperation, and mourning.

These examples suggest that consciousness—or more broadly, subjective experience—is unlikely to be a single phenomenon measured on a ladder with humans standing at the top. Instead, it may emerge in many different forms, shaped by each species' body, nervous system, sensory ecology, environment, and evolutionary history.

Perhaps the most meaningful question is therefore not whether animals experience the world less than humans, but how differently they experience it.

Understanding those different ways of experiencing the world is the central idea behind House of Kin. Each species inhabits its own perceptual world—its own Umwelt. The more we learn about these worlds, the better we can understand not only animal behaviour and welfare, but also the extraordinary diversity of life itself.