{"id":156576,"date":"2025-11-27T16:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156576\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T16:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:13:08","slug":"consciousness-could-be-an-ancient-trait-evolved-millions-of-years-ago-not-a-human-superpower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156576\/","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness Could Be an Ancient Trait Evolved Millions of Years Ago, Not a Human Superpower"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Credit: ZME Science\/Midjourney.<\/p>\n

Consciousness is the strangest thing evolution ever pulled off. It\u2019s not a trait like wings or fur, but rather something that exists solely as a product of the mind. For the longest time, we\u2019ve treated consciousness as humanity\u2019s private club \u2014 no entry for creatures without language or a big, folded cortex. But science is starting to catch up to nature. Across the animal kingdom, from crows solving puzzles to pigeons hesitating before ambiguous images, there are glimmers of something familiar. These minds don\u2019t just react; they choose, they interpret, they might even reflect.<\/p>\n

New research from Ruhr University Bochum suggests that consciousness may not be the pinnacle of human evolution at all. Instead, it may be an ancient adaptation \u2014 a flexible biological tool that other species have been refining for millions of years. Their studies propose that consciousness may have evolved earlier, more diversely, and in stranger forms than we ever imagined.<\/p>\n

The Alarm Inside<\/p>\n

Two research teams \u2014 one led by philosophers Albert Newen and Carlos Montemayor, the other by neurobiologist Onur G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn and postdoctoral researcher Gianmarco Maldarelli \u2014 are dismantling some of the oldest assumptions about what it means to be conscious.<\/p>\n

Newen and Montemayor propose a framework they call the ALARM theory of consciousness. It divides awareness into three distinct levels: basic arousal, general alertness, and reflexive self-consciousness. And each serves a unique survival role.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvolutionarily, basic arousal developed first, with the base function of putting the body in a state of ALARM in life-threatening situations so that the organism can stay alive,\u201d said Newen.<\/p>\n

This earliest form of consciousness, they argue, was not born in the cerebral cortex but in older brain structures like the thalamus and brainstem. It\u2019s the mind\u2019s emergency siren, such as the jolt of pain that warns an animal to flee or freeze.<\/p>\n

Next came general alertness, the capacity to focus on one signal in a storm of sensory noise. \u201cThis makes it possible to learn about new correlations: first the simple, causal correlation that smoke comes from fire and shows where a fire is located,\u201d said Montemayor.<\/p>\n

The final step is reflexive self-consciousness \u2014 the mind\u2019s ability to turn inward, to model itself. Humans, chimpanzees, dolphins, and even magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror. This self-awareness, Newen explained, \u201cmakes it possible for us to better integrate into society and coordinate with others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together, these layers form an evolutionary ladder from simple survival to introspection. And according to Newen, even creatures with tiny brains may climb the first rungs.<\/p>\n

The Birds That Know<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn and Maldarelli come in. Their companion paper, \u201cConscious Birds,\u201d turns the avian brain into a test case for the ALARM theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this article, we start from the assumption that consciousness is not the ultimate triumph of human evolution but rather represents a more basic cognitive process, possibly shared with other animal phyla,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n

The team focuses on three hallmarks of consciousness \u2014 sensory experience, neural architecture, and self-awareness \u2014 and finds striking parallels between birds and mammals.<\/p>\n

In one experiment, pigeons were shown a pattern of flashing dots that could be interpreted as moving either horizontally or vertically. The birds were trained to peck one key for horizontal motion and another for vertical motion. Even though the image on the screen never changed, their choices alternated \u2014 first one direction, then the other \u2014 revealing spontaneous shifts in what they perceived. This kind of bistable perception, where the same stimulus leads to alternating subjective experiences, has long been considered a hallmark of mammalian consciousness. The pigeons\u2019 performance suggests that their brains, though wired differently, can produce the same kind of inner flicker between competing interpretations of reality.<\/p>\n

That alternating perception, Maldarelli and G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn note, \u201cindicates that the avian visual system can perceive several perceptual interpretations that compete to access consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not Just Seeing, Perceiving<\/p>\n

Even more striking were the experiments with crows. <\/p>\n

The birds were trained to signal whether they had seen a faint light on a screen \u2014 sometimes by moving their heads, other times by pecking a target. The brightness of the light was adjusted so that it hovered right at the edge of visibility. Sometimes it was perceptible, sometimes it was not. While the crows made their decisions, electrodes recorded the activity of single neurons in a brain region called the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), which is the avian equivalent of our prefrontal cortex.<\/p>\n

What the scientists found was remarkable. These neurons fired in sync with the bird\u2019s decision about whether it had seen the light, not with the light\u2019s actual presence or absence. In other words, the NCL wasn\u2019t tracking the external world; it was tracking the crow\u2019s subjective experience of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCL activity predicted the subjective report rather than the visual input,\u201d the authors note, calling it \u201cthe first evidence of an avian brain area linked to subjective experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Cortex Without a Cortex<\/p>\n

How can a brain the size of a walnut host awareness without a layered neocortex? The answer may lie in its connectome<\/a>, or the brain\u2019s wiring diagram.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe avian equivalent to the prefrontal cortex, the NCL, is immensely connected and allows the brain to integrate and flexibly process information,\u201d said G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn. \u201cBirds thus meet many criteria of established theories of consciousness, such as the Global Neuronal Workspace theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three major models dominate current consciousness research: the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT), the Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), and the Integrated Information Theory (IIT). <\/p>\n

\"Diagrams <\/a>Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and the avian connectome. (A) The GNWT requires local and specialized neuronal modules (small circles grouped by function in the external networks) linked to a central, highly interconnected global workspace.<\/p>\n

G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn and Maldarelli compared the avian brain against all three. They found that the first two fit remarkably well. Birds\u2019 brains show the long-distance connections and feedback loops required by GNWT and RPT, suggesting they could sustain a \u201cglobal workspace\u201d \u2014 a network that broadcasts information across the brain to produce awareness.<\/p>\n

By contrast, IIT\u2019s demand for a specific kind of grid-like, cortical structure wasn\u2019t met. Birds\u2019 pallial tissue resembles cortex in some areas, but not enough to fulfill IIT\u2019s mathematical conditions.<\/p>\n

Still, the findings upend the notion that consciousness depends on mammalian anatomy. \u201cConscious processing is possible without a cerebral cortex,\u201d the authors conclude.<\/p>\n

Recognising the Self<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/a>Experimental conditions of the \u2018mirror-audience test\u2019 in roosters The tested rooster was placed in an arena divided by a transparent glass (A,C) or a mirror (B,D). The warning vocalizations were recorded while the shadow of a bird of prey was projected onto the ceiling. As expected, the rooster did not vocalize when alone (A) and warned the conspecific when visible (C). Interestingly, the rooster did not warn its own reflected image (B), even when a conspecific was present behind the mirror (D).<\/p>\n

Birds also show behaviors that hint at self-recognition, a key feature of reflexive consciousness. Even chickens and pigeons show subtler signs of self-awareness. In one experiment, roosters warned their flocks of aerial predators, but stayed silent when the \u201cother bird\u201d was just their reflection. Pigeons, too, react differently to mirrors than to real companions. They track the timing of their own movements as if they recognize the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese findings indicate that pigeons and chickens do not treat their image as a typical conspecific,\u201d the authors write. \u201cThey show strong signs of knowing that their mirror image is not another individual of their species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consciousness Is Not New<\/p>\n

Across these studies, one idea emerges \u2014 consciousness is not a single leap but a mosaic of adaptive functions. And some of these must be truly ancient. Newen and Montemayor\u2019s ALARM theory suggests it began as a biological warning system and evolved toward the complex awareness we feel today. G\u00fcnt\u00fcrk\u00fcn and Maldarelli\u2019s work shows that this system can emerge in radically different brains.<\/p>\n

Consciousness, it seems, doesn\u2019t belong to any one species or brain type. It\u2019s a flexible solution \u2014 a way for living things to predict, adapt, and endure. When a crow pauses before deciding what it saw, or a pigeon toggles between two realities, we may be watching the same ancient spark that once flickered into human awareness.<\/p>\n

Journal references: <\/p>\n

Albert Newen et al, Three types of phenomenal consciousness and their functional roles: unfolding the ALARM theory of consciousness,\u00a0Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences\u00a0(2025).\u00a0DOI: 10.1098\/rstb.2024.0314<\/a><\/p>\n

Gianmarco Maldarelli et al, Conscious birds,\u00a0Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences\u00a0(2025).\u00a0DOI: 10.1098\/rstb.2024.0308<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: ZME Science\/Midjourney. Consciousness is the strangest thing evolution ever pulled off. It\u2019s not a trait like wings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1408,103641,6567,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-156576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-awareness","9":"tag-consciousness","10":"tag-evolution","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}