Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds

BBC | Article

Around the same time that Rene Descartes was saying "I think therefore I am", the Catholic church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei "vehemently suspect of heresy" for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.

It was a shift in thinking that opened our eyes to a truer, richer picture of the Universe and our place in it.

Shifting ourselves from the centre of the Universe a second time may well do the same for our understanding of ourselves as well as the other living things with whom we share the planet.