Demonstrating that snakes experience emotions

[Malum Argenteum]

when our society generally devalues animal intelligence, it makes it "easier" (on our conscience) to use or abuse them as society sees fit- some for work (like horses), some as food (cows, chickens, sheep, etc), some for companions or entertainment (dogs, cats, birds, etc) & some as "vermin" to be exterminated (snakes, rodents).

You're right, of course, that devaluing an animal species removes a psychological barrier to caring for and about it. There are, though, plenty of aspects of various animal species the value of which could be emphasized and which have the advantage of being demonstrably true. Saying that snakes have emotions/intelligence and that makes them worth valuing could be taken to imply that if there's a species that has no emotions or intelligence then that species is thereby less valuable -- which seems to me to be false.

I do remember years back reading about a study done with snakes & mazes that concluded that when the mazes were designed with snakes in mind (not relying on visual cues, as is normally done with other animals, but on cues snakes can relate to for survival) snakes showed more ability than rats in mazes. Which if you'll pardon the pun, is fairly a-mazing.

That is pretty cool. Not sure if you know about cellular slime molds, which are single celled organisms that group together and collectively learn to get through mazes and improve with practice -- that is, they're intelligent. They're also social, and can be altruistic to genetically unrelated slime molds.

https://appvoices.org/2019/10/11/sli...-intelligence/

https://academic.oup.com/ib/article-.../4/329/5219064