Does Size … Matter?

by Lucas Chua the crossword king

Let’s say that there is a COW

And that there is also an ant

Hypothetically, if you were in a room with a cow, would you kill it? What about in a room with an ant? I often find myself in this very thought experiment. Caught at such a crossroads, most people conclude that they would kill the ant but not the cow, but what is the underlying reason for this consensus? To answer this question, I have added another layer of difficulty to this thought experiment—a shrimp. Now, if you were in a room with a shrimp, would you kill it? This is a much harder question to answer. The very nature of a shrimp places it as the median between a cow and an ant. Does the hesitancy to kill said shrimp depend on its relative proportions to the ant or its trivial size to the cow? In short, let’s answer the question: does size matter?

To start, we can begin with the assumption that people associate a certain level of sentience with larger animal sizes. Though the perceived sentience may be wrong, it still has relevance as the determining factor in this thought experiment. This thesis ties directly to someone’s hesitancy to kill an animal. The larger the animal, the higher the perceived sentience, and the less likely we are to kill it. In order to understand this thought process, we must decipher the difference between living and being alive. Let’s suppose that you suffered a massive head injury and now can never regain consciousness. Yes, you are technically living, but is this a valuable life worth living? Personally, I think not. What causes us to be alive is our cognitive ability to perceive what is happening around us. Sentience stems from this very idea and should be valued above simple existence. Bringing us back to the thought experiment of this arti-

(pls cle, what is the perceived size of the animal that borders the boundary between acceptable and condemnable murder? I believe the shrimp holds such a position. Unlike a cow or ant, it is hard to articulate the general consensus of a shrimp’s sentience. When looking at a cow, the combination of displayed emotion via sounds and large stature indicates a perceived high level of consciousness. In general, as an animal grows larger in size, its ability to display cognitive autonomy also expands. Not only are larger animals visually more obvious, but their displays hold far more emotional weight to humans. When looking at an ant, its lack of displayed emotion and size indicates to people a low level of sentience. However, when looking at a shrimp, people struggle to pinpoint its place on the sentience scale. They do not make emotional sounds but display physical responses to pain. They are decently sized to a point where many would feel uncomfortable squashing them. When approaching this problem, it becomes clear that people will interpret a shrimp’s level of intelligence in a much wider range than that of an ant or cow. Insofar as sentience, size does matter. Another angle to view this topic is from the associated concepts surrounding animal sizes. For example, let’s consider the mouse to rabbit range of animal sizes; many people tend to associate these sizes with cuteness. When placed in a parallel thought experiment, most people wouldn’t want to kill these animals. Conversely, when imagining creatures in the size range from ants to wasps, there is a stronger association with buzz words such as ‘pests’ and ‘annoying.’ These associations could potentially shift the outcome of this thought experiment towards the side of death. Again, it is evident that size does matter in this thought