• yokonzo@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    That technically is the definition of sentience, basically consciousness with the ability to react and have awareness of your surroundings. I think the word your looking for is sapience, which is the ability to contemplate and act productively using knowledge and reasoning

    • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I think jumping spiders fit into the sapience category then. They’re known to learn different prey types and change their hunting strategies accordingly, even learning typical behaviour and being able to pick out sick/injured insects and figuring out they don’t need to go full stealth.

      They’ve even been observed to enter REM like dreaming states, where it’s assumed they process a lot of the visual information they picked up throughout the day.

      So basically every animal higher than the jumping spider might fit into the sapience category, which is kinda wild to think about