Cognition in endotherms vs ectotherms

[Gordon Swobe]

Jason, you asked why I think warm-bloodedness might be the best indicator of consciousness in nature. GPT helped me compile this list.
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Here’s a structured bulleted list of how endotherms’ cognition differs from ectotherms’, with emphasis on features that might suggest consciousness is far more likely (perhaps only) in endotherms:

• Metabolic stability and sustained brain activity
• Endotherms regulate their body temperature internally, enabling consistent neuronal firing rates.
• Ectotherms’ brain activity slows dramatically in cold environments, limiting stable cognition.
• Brain size and complexity
• Endotherms (birds and mammals) evolved disproportionately large brains relative to body size.
• Complex cortical and pallial structures in mammals and birds support flexible cognition and integration across sensory modalities.
• Sleep architecture
• Endotherms exhibit REM and slow-wave sleep, both strongly associated with memory consolidation, dreaming, and possibly conscious processing.
• Ectotherms show simpler or absent sleep states, with little evidence of REM-like patterns.
• Extended developmental learning
• Mammals and birds often undergo long juvenile periods requiring parental care, during which they learn complex behaviors.
• Extended learning supports flexible, context-dependent cognition—hallmarks of conscious agents.
• Sensory richness and multimodal integration
• Endotherms process multiple sensory inputs (vision, audition, olfaction, touch) with integrative neural hubs.
• Ectotherms typically show less cross-modal integration and more reflex-driven responses.
• Social cognition
• Many endotherms (e.g., primates, corvids, dolphins) demonstrate theory of mind, empathy, and cooperative problem solving.
• Ectotherms rarely display comparable social-cognitive complexity, with most interactions being instinct-driven (e.g., mating, territoriality).
• Symbol use and communication
• Endotherms (humans, parrots, songbirds, cetaceans) use vocal learning and sometimes symbolic communication.
• Ectotherms generally rely on fixed signals (color changes, simple calls) without evidence of compositional communication.
• Problem-solving and innovation
• Endotherms invent tools, use abstract reasoning, and solve novel problems beyond survival needs.
• Ectotherms show limited innovation, with behavior mostly constrained to evolutionary programs.
• Play behavior
• Play is widespread in mammals and birds, suggesting exploratory cognition and imagination.
• Ectotherms rarely engage in play, and when they do, it is much less elaborate.
• Emotional regulation and attachment
• Endotherms show evidence of affective states (joy, fear, grief) mediated by complex limbic systems.
• Ectotherms display simpler motivational states tied directly to survival drives.
• Flexibility under stress
• Endotherms can sustain complex cognitive performance under a wide range of environments due to thermal homeostasis.
• Ectotherms’ cognition collapses when environmental conditions shift outside narrow ranges.
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Of these 22 reasons, REM sleep in endotherms but not ectotherms might be the most compelling. Conscious critters dream.

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

Formatted..

[Jason Resch]

I appreciate the formatting.

I think whenever asking AI to bolster ones argument it is prudent to ask the AI in a separate prompt to argue the opposite.

E.g., to ask the AI for evidence that ectotherms are conscious. Then, if you don't feel like being the arbiter of the evidence, have a third fresh prompt consider the evidence list for each side of the argument to make a final assessment.

Otherwise the task of using AI in this way has little value, since it is so accommodating, it will do whatever is asked of it.

As to the list, I think there is evidence that fish dream. Also, some fish species have been observed to seek analgesics when in pain. There is evidence that bees engage in play, and that they will tolerate some pain when the reward is great enough. Wasps can learn and recognize human faces.

More critiques below:

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 1:02 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Formatted..

Here’s a structured bulleted list of how endotherms’ cognition differs from ectotherms’, with emphasis on features that might suggest consciousness is far more likely (perhaps only) in endotherms:

• Metabolic stability and sustained brain activity

  • Endotherms regulate their body temperature internally, enabling consistent neuronal firing rates.

This point is like using the fact that mammals sleep to argue that they aren't conscious. Why should constancy of activity matter? Reptiles are groggy when they're cold. Mammals are groggy when they're falling asleep or waking up.

• • Ectotherms’ brain activity slows dramatically in cold environments, limiting stable cognition.

• Brain size and complexity

  • Endotherms (birds and mammals) evolved disproportionately large brains relative to body size.

How big does a brain have to be to be conscious? A shark has a larger brain than a shrew.

• • Complex cortical and pallial structures in mammals and birds support flexible cognition and integration across sensory modalities.

An alligator can see and hear at the same time.

• Sleep architecture

  • Endotherms exhibit REM and slow-wave sleep, both strongly associated with memory consolidation, dreaming, and possibly conscious processing.

Fish don't have eyelids but they enter a rem like phase during sleep.

• • Ectotherms show simpler or absent sleep states, with little evidence of REM-like patterns.

• Extended developmental learning

  • Mammals and birds often undergo long juvenile periods requiring parental care, during which they learn complex behaviors.

Are babies not conscious because they haven't gone through a learning stage to learn complex behaviors?

• • Extended learning supports flexible, context-dependent cognition—hallmarks of conscious agents.

• Sensory richness and multimodal integration

  • Endotherms process multiple sensory inputs (vision, audition, olfaction, touch) with integrative neural hubs.

  • Ectotherms typically show less cross-modal integration and more reflex-driven responses.

Fish can be trained to do tricks. That requires learning new behaviors, not innate reflexes.

• Social cognition

  • Many endotherms (e.g., primates, corvids, dolphins) demonstrate theory of mind, empathy, and cooperative problem solving.

Some male cuddle fish will fake looking like a female in order to sneak past a larger male. This requires a theory of mind (to know how to deceive another).

• • Ectotherms rarely display comparable social-cognitive complexity, with most interactions being instinct-driven (e.g., mating, territoriality).

Octopuses do. See "my octopus teacher".

Wasps will watch a fight between two other wasps and then based on the fighting abilities observed, decide whether or not they have a chance at challenging the winner in a fight to establish dominance.

• Symbol use and communication

  • Endotherms (humans, parrots, songbirds, cetaceans) use vocal learning and sometimes symbolic communication.

Bees communicate where the best flowers can be found.

• • Ectotherms generally rely on fixed signals (color changes, simple calls) without evidence of compositional communication.

Bee dances are compositional.

• Problem-solving and innovation

  • Endotherms invent tools,

Non-inventors are not conscious?

• • use abstract reasoning, and solve novel problems beyond survival needs.

Octopuses solve complex problems. Some examples:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-here-are-eight-examples-how.html

For instance, learning how to open a glass jar with a screw top lid.

• • Ectotherms show limited innovation, with behavior mostly constrained to evolutionary programs.

• Play behavior

  • Play is widespread in mammals and birds, suggesting exploratory cognition and imagination.

Bees play.

• • Ectotherms rarely engage in play, and when they do, it is much less elaborate.

• Emotional regulation and attachment

  • Endotherms show evidence of affective states (joy, fear, grief) mediated by complex limbic systems.

See the emotional state of the octopus in my octopus teacher after it suffered an shark attack.

• • Ectotherms display simpler motivational states tied directly to survival drives.

Simpler =/= not conscious 

• Flexibility under stress

  • Endotherms can sustain complex cognitive performance under a wide range of environments due to thermal homeostasis.

  • Ectotherms’ cognition collapses when environmental conditions shift outside narrow ranges.

So does an endotherms during sleep, head trauma, anaesthesia, etc. An ability to turn on and off doesn't mean one isn't conscious when one is fully awake and alert.

Jason

[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 4:54 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I appreciate the formatting.

I think whenever asking AI to bolster ones argument it is prudent to ask the AI in a separate prompt to argue the opposite.

E.g., to ask the AI for evidence that ectotherms are conscious.

That is not what I asked. I asked for the cognitive differences would support it. And yes, you can be the judge.

Mainstream science is that the behaviors of the simplest organisms are instinctive, not conscious. A significant part of human life is also instinctive, but you make no room for the word instinct in your vocabulary. I can see how it as an inconvenient concept for someone who thinks that even my camera is conscious.

-gts

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[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 11:05 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 4:54 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I appreciate the formatting.

I think whenever asking AI to bolster ones argument it is prudent to ask the AI in a separate prompt to argue the opposite.

E.g., to ask the AI for evidence that ectotherms are conscious.

That is not what I asked. I asked for the cognitive differences would support it. And yes, you can be the judge.

Mainstream science is that the behaviors of the simplest organisms are instinctive, not conscious.

There is no mainstream science regarding the consciousness of others. There's not even a mainstream philosophy on this question.

A significant part of human life is also instinctive, but you make no room for the word instinct in your vocabulary.

Even reflexes are conscious, like when the arm withdraws from a flame. But I would say they involve the consciousness of much smaller clusters of neurons which aren't part of what you would consider the main consciousness of the organism.

I can see how it as an inconvenient concept for someone who thinks that even my camera is conscious.

You should review more sources on what scientists are saying about consciousness of simpler creatures.

Here is where "mainstream science" now is:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings

Jason 

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[Jason Resch]

You can save some time and have AI summarize this report:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/asset-library/news/sentience-in-cephalopod-molluscs-and-decapod-crustaceans-final-report-november-2021.pdf

[Gordon Swobe]

To give credit where credit is due, and as I wrote here many months ago, it was from the philosopher and scientist Nicholas Humphrey that I first about this link to warm-bloodedness. 

He makes what I think is a compelling case about the natural evolution of consciousness.

I learned something new from GPT, however: we have strong evidence of REM sleep, a marker for dreaming, in warm-blooded creatures but not in cold-blooded. I think it is fair to say that creatures that dream are conscious.

You know your dog dreams, but does your lizard?How about your pet amoeba? I think it requires the mammalian cortex or the cortex-like pallium in birds.

-gts

[Jason Resch]

Dreaming is good evidence for consciousness. But absence of dreaming is by no means evidence of no consciousness.

The document I linked suggests these criteria:

the possession of (1) nociceptors,

(2) integrative brain regions and 

(3) the connections between the two,
(4) responses affected by potential local
anaesthetics or analgesics,

(5) motivational tradeoffs between the cost of threat and the potential benefit of obtaining resources;

(6) flexible selfprotective tactics used in response to injury and threat;

(7) associative learning (in other words, learning that goes beyond mere habituation and sensitisation) and finally

(8) behaviour that shows the animal values analgesics when injured.

Anything with a backbone is capable of these. And there is good evidence many invertebrates possess many of these capacities:

If you ask a philosopher whether animals are conscious, you are liable to get any kind of answer. If you ask a pet owner whether or not their dog, cat, or even fish is conscious, you will generally only get one answer.

"An old joke suggests that philosophers (in spite of

all their differences) fall broadly into two classes:
Those who own dogs, it is said, are confident that
dogs have souls; those who do not, deny this."

— Francis Crick in “The Astonishing Hypothesis” (1995)

Jason

[Gordon Swobe]

Never mind the interesting cognitive correlations with warm bloodedness, Jason. Why should I expect you to agree in the first place that consciousness evolved in living things by natural selection like any other adaptive trait?

-gts

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[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Never mind the interesting cognitive correlations with warm bloodedness, Jason. Why should I expect you to agree in the first place that consciousness evolved in living things by natural selection like any other adaptive trait?

I agree with that. Why would you think I would not? It is exactly because I believe that, that I think it's unreasonable to think some zombie reptile laid an egg that hatched into a warm blooded conscious bird. Evolution works by gradations. Intelligence comes in gradations. Why shouldn't consciousness come in gradations? A bird is more conscious than a crocodile, which is more conscious than a fish, which is more conscious than a worm, which is more conscious than an amoeba. I don't believe consciousness is an all-or-nothing, mammalian-level cognition or bust.

Jason

 

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 5:00 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Never mind the interesting cognitive correlations with warm bloodedness, Jason. Why should I expect you to agree in the first place that consciousness evolved in living things by natural selection like any other adaptive trait?

I agree with that. Why would you think I would not? It is exactly because I believe that, that I think it's unreasonable to think some zombie reptile laid an egg that hatched into a warm blooded conscious bird. Evolution works by gradations. Intelligence comes in gradations. Why shouldn't consciousness come in gradations? A bird is more conscious than a crocodile, which is more conscious than a fish, which is more conscious than a worm, which is more conscious than an amoeba. I don't believe consciousness is an all-or-nothing, mammalian-level cognition or bust.

I’m not trying to draw a sharp line between conscious and instinctive/unconscious behavior in the animal kingdom, but there is a difference and this idea is mainstream. 

But why I should I expect you to even begin to agree? You think my camera is conscious! A couple of days ago, you told me that cradles that fall out of trees when the wind blows are conscious. You think guided missiles are conscious. 

You once assigned consciousness to my motion-sensing video doorbell. I have upgraded it since then, by the way, and now it also does facial recognition. 

I’ll know you’re there and who you are even before you ring the doorbell. Does that make my doorbell conscious? No sir, it is a tool I use to extend my vision, no different in principle from a telescope.

-gts

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