Dead Bugs

It’s not every morning you wake up to discover you’re a mass murderer. But that’s what happened this morning.

Go back 600 millions years and we find the ancestor we share with the insect world — probably some sort of a slug with limbs.

That slug had feelings. Feelings of joy upon finding a dirty great pile of rotting foliage. Maybe fear whenever the local sulphur geyser erupted.

Those emotional states — it turns out — are just as present in their modern day arthropod descendants; The same as they’re present in us.

Bugs don’t just feel pain. They feel anxious. They get depressed. They experience hope and desire; If not exactly as we do, then pretty close.

Maybe the only thing that’s surprising about this discovery is how long it took us to notice.

Let’s just hope the afterlife isn’t full of dead bugs.