Animal Sentience Science And Empathy

Ask whether animals feel, and two kinds of answers arrive. One comes from the lab: nociceptors and stress hormones, self-recognition tests, octopuses tending wounds and crows planning for tomorrow. The other comes from the kitchen floor, where a dog reads your mood before you have named it yourself. Neither answer replaces the other. Science tells us what we can responsibly claim about other minds; empathy tells us why the claim matters. Understanding sentience well means holding both.