I thought quite some people who are doing insect sentience research were skeptical about it to start with. Yes, they mostly already cared about animals. Negative findings would help people to reorient toward animals that are more evidently sentient, and I do think people will be motivated to promote that conclusion.

I wonder whether there are some lower-hanging-fruit interventions for insects that we could start pursuing now, rather than waiting until we have fully systematic approaches. In our effectiveness-minded space, we tend to focus on large, systematic interventions that can shift the biggest numbers and affect a large share of the animals under consideration. And I agree with the point here that there are still huge uncertainties, especially when it comes to wild insect populations where we’re extremely clueless, so it makes sense to hold off on anything too drastic.

But even with that uncertainty, there may still be neglected, practical opportunities that are small in percentage terms yet still affect enormous numbers of animals.

For example, in the US, there are live insects sold as reptile feed. I’ve heard estimates from a major supplier that roughly 100 million live crickets are sold each week – about 5 billion per year. And “pre-feed” mortality might be extremely high, possibly upward of 90 percent.

This represents only a tiny fraction of total farmed or wild insects, of course. But given that it still involves billions of animals, could targeted interventions here be worth pursuing anyway?