Recently, I have come across a growing number of speculations suggesting that wild animals lead net negative lives. Proponents of this view typically refer to insects, arthropods, invertebrates, or species with r-selective reproductive strategies. The conclusion they draw is usually that we should aim to reduce their numbers in one way or another. Unfortunately, birth control is seldom discussed in this context. Habitat destruction appears to be the preferred method.

There is, of course, some value in speculating about virtually any topic in science. What troubles me is that such speculations may be mistaken for established theories, particularly given the way they are presented to broader audiences through public forums, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

The central argument typically runs as follows: animals with r-selective reproductive strategies produce many offspring, of which only a few survive. The experience of a usually violent death therefore constitutes a large proportion of their lives.

This argument rests on two assumptions:

1. The experience of death itself is something terrible.
2. The experience of death actually makes up a significant proportion of those animals' lives.

I want to push back against both assumptions.

First Assumption: Is a Violent Death Really That Bad?

When I contemplate my own death, I consider it tragic for three main reasons:

1. All the good experiences I will never have again.
2. The grief it will bring to family and friends.
3. It will prevent me from doing good in the world.

In short, I want to live as long as possible, provided I remain in reasonable health. By contrast, the manner in which I die — whether torn apart by wild animals, burned alive, or passing away in my sleep — seems to matter relatively little in the grand scheme of things. This excludes prolonged suffering, such as the kind caused by serious illness factory farming or some insecticides. 

So why do I assign so little weight to the experience of death itself?

In a life-or-death situation, the pain system tends to shut down as long as the body remains in fight-or-flight mode. And since we are discussing scenarios that end in death, there is no subsequent trauma to recover from.

A personal account

When I was fourteen, I was hit by a car and hovered between life and death for roughly half an hour before losing consciousness. I woke up three weeks later in hospital. Since I would not have survived without intensive medical care, and since we are concerned here with subjective experience rather than outcome, this episode serves as a useful proxy for a death experience.

How did I experience it?

First, I was struck by something I could not immediately identify — it felt no worse than bumping one's head. My immediate instinct was to get up and continue on my bike. Fortunately, my trainer held me down, correctly suspecting a spinal injury. I insisted I was fine; the car had barely touched me, I told him. They showed me the wreckage of my bike to convince me otherwise. That, by far, was the worst part of the entire experience. I was also concerned about my mother having to come and collect me — until they mentioned they had already called a helicopter, at which point I became genuinely euphoric. I also felt a slight pang of guilt about the cost to taxpayers — though, in my mind, this seemed entirely disproportionate, since I remained firmly convinced that it had been nothing more than a scratch.

When the doctor arrived, he administered an injection, and everything went dark. Despite three fractured vertebrae, several other broken bones, and a lung injury that nearly killed me, I did not experience a single moment of pain. To put it in utilitarian terms: if I assigned a value of −100 to the worst experience of my life — being left by someone I loved — this entire episode would rate no more than −1. And I am not unusual in this regard. 

This suggests an ironic implication for negative utilitarians: by the same logic used to argue that r-selected animals lead net negative lives, one might conclude that humans are among the most unfortunate species of all, given how frequently we fall in love and are disappointed. That conclusion would, of course, be overly simplistic — just as it is overly simplistic to focus exclusively on reproductive strategy.

Second Assumption: Does the experience of dead make up a big part of an Animal's Life?

This claim is repeated so often, in one form or another, that it risks being accepted as fact. Yet I have never seen anyone provide actual figures to support it.

To calculate the proportion of the death experience in an animal's life, we would need to know two things: when consciousness begins, and how long the dying process lasts. Consider the following examples:

• Animal A is a small invertebrate whose consciousness began one week, or 604,800 seconds, before hatching. She lived undisturbed inside her egg and was eaten immediately upon hatching. The entire dying process lasted one second. That amounts to 1/604,800 of her life — the remainder was, by any reasonable assessment, a peaceful existence.
• Animal B is a human who lived for eighty years and experienced severe cancer pain for one month. That month represents roughly 1/960 of his life — and yet it also included the psychological burden of knowing he was going to die, something probably unavailable to most non-human animals.

These are deliberately simplified examples. No one can say with confidence when consciousness begins in a given individual animal, let alone across categories as broad as arthropods or invertebrates. But that is precisely the point: we should not treat a hypothesis as an established theory when no data exists to support it.

Why this idea is dangerous

To my knowledge, there is a strong consensus among researchers working with arthropods that preserving these animals is of critical importance. Yet a small number of proponents of the opposite view have already gained notable traction, and there are reasons to think this could accelerate. 

1.Algorithms favour controversial ideas. 

2. Such proponents may present themselves as uniquely concerned with animal welfare rather than ecological function. 

3. Industries involved in habitat destruction may find it in their best interest to promote a narrative that makes their activities appear less harmful.

It is unlikely that the general public will ever broadly accept the idea that reducing animal populations constitutes a form of welfare intervention. Nevertheless, even the perception that a scientific debate exists on this question may be enough to reduce public motivation to engage in conservation efforts — and that outcome alone warrants taking the argument seriously.