Personally, and I think many animal rights advocates agree with me, I find it basic to animal rights to give respect to *all* animals and acknowledge they all have the same intrinsic rights, such as the right to exist and the right to exist free of human domination and human exploitation. Most vegans I know kindly usher insects trapped in our homes (moths, flies, crickets, etc.) back outside to freedom, don’t swat (murder) flies, don’t purchase things with crushed up beetles in them (like lots of colorings), and don’t wear/purchase silk (based on silkworm rights). This respect for insect animals appears to be logically intertwined with our respect for other animals in the animal kingdom (i.e. veganism means respect for all animals, no matter size, shape, or species). In addition to this basic tenet, if need be, we can also look to sentience and even more difficult hurdles to respect and rights, like human-based practical autonomy to foster respect for insect animals. Steve Wise’s exploration of one species of insect, honeybees, and the science on honeybees having (human-based) practical autonomy (way “more” than sentience) which he uses in his four category hierarchical scale for legal rights (based on the U.S. court system’s focus on autonomy in relation to rights) highlights some of the basics. In his book, “Drawing the Line,” Wise states:
“Chapter 5: Honeybees
In dozens of interviews and public talks after Rattling the Cage appeared, I was asked, usually facetiously, where I would “draw the line.” Monkeys? Cows? Dogs? Snakes? Frogs? and (wink, wink) what about insects? Had I answered this last in the affirmative, scorn would have been heaped upon me. . . . I chose the honeybee as an example of a Category Four animal [lowest ranking on autonomy scale] having an autonomy value below 0.5 [1.0 being high]. To my amazement and horror, the more I learned about the mental abilities of honeybees, the more certain I became that bees were Category Two animals. The question was: how high [a value in Category Two]?
…
Honeybees possess a mental ability many think is strictly the domain of primates: the ability to recognize “sameness” and “difference.” … late long-term memory lasts a honeybee’s lifetime. . . . concluded that honeybees not only possess cognitive mental maps but have a mental tool for skepticism.
. . .
Are honeybees conscious? Griffin says, “If we accept communication as evidence of conscious thinking, we must certainly grant consciousness to honeybees.” Do their tiny brains produce sentience? Apparently so.
. . .
(quoting scientist C. Jung) [the message of the dancing bees] ‘is no different in principle from information conveyed by a human being. In the latter case, we would certainly regard such behavior as a conscious and intentional act and can hardly imagine how anyone could prove in a court of law that it has taken place unconsciously. . . . We are faced with the fact that the ganglionic system apparently achieves exactly the same result as our cerebral cortex.’
. . .
The excellent learning capacity and memory of honeybees, their likely symbolic cognitive map, symbolic communication code, sophisticated communication system, and apparent ability to engage in rudimentary thinking puts them above Categories Three or Four . . . If they were vertebrates I would place them at .75, even .80…”
---end of quoting Steve Wise---
As much as I have enjoyed many of my discussions with Steve Wise and appreciate that his heart is in trying to achieve rights for many, if not all, animals and he is “just starting with” those with scientifically provable practical autonomy, as I have said elsewhere, I don’t agree with his hierarchical structure and agree with Dunayer on this topic, “Supposed superiority isn’t relevant to basic rights. A superior aptitude for technology, verbal language, or anything else doesn’t entitle someone to greater moral consideration or greater legal protection,” and “Life, liberty, and freedom from pain are as relevant to bullfrogs and snakes as to bonobos. In fact, I can't think of any basic right that applies to nonhuman great apes but doesn't also apply to all other sentient beings.”
In sum, a person can acknowledge all insect’s intrinsic rights based on their membership in the animal kingdom, which I think is the essence of “animal rights,” or if you so choose, you can require more, such as basing their rights on their sentience, or even, as Wise lays out, their high rating for practical autonomy! I believe that because insects are animals, they have intrinsic rights, the same rights that all animals in the animal kingdom have, such as living free from human domination and exploitation. I think that this is the obvious position of animal rights. Luckily for insect animals, many people who won’t give respect and recognize rights solely based on someone being an animal will hopefully realize that basing someone’s right to freedom on sentience, or even something as difficult to quantify (and attain) as human-based practical autonomy, gets us to the same conclusion: Insect animals have rights!
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