Tonic immobility and phenomenal consciousness in animals: a review.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2025 Michael L Woodruff 6 citations
Tonic immobility (TI) is an innate, last-resort response to predators, often called death feigning or thanatosis, but death feigning includes a broader set of behaviors, with TI as its final stage. This complexity suggests death feigning may involve higher-order intentionality in animals, which could imply some form of phenomenal consciousness. Evidence shows TI alone is an effective predator defense, and its cessation by the prey indicates a first-order intentional state, linked to anoetic and possibly noetic consciousness. Fear should be treated as an intervening variable in TI research. TI may be associated with primal sensory and anoetic consciousness, its termination with noetic consciousness, but autonoetic self-reflective consciousness appears absent. The hypothesis that TI is an evolutionary precursor to theory of mind in humans is discussed as a caution.