From Peter White, Cardiff, UK
In his review of Lars Chittka’s book The Mind of a Bee, Alun Anderson calls the idea that bees might have consciousness “radical” (16 July, p 34). Radical it may be, but it isn’t unprecedented. In 2016, Andrew Barron and Colin Klein proposed ; Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt emerged in a species of fish 520 million years ago; and in 2017, argued that plants might have a form of consciousness. It seems that speculation about consciousness in other species is quite welcome these days.
The problem is, if consciousness is so widespread among living things, then the chances of being born a human are tiny: I should have been a beetle or a plant. I find this disconcerting.
