“An Ant Is Drowning: Here’s How to Decide if You Should Save It”:
Queries like ‘Do individual ants deserve moral concern?’ risk conflating the scientific question of whether ants are sentient, the ethical question of whether only sentient beings deserve moral concern, and the practical question of whether a policy of caring for ants in a particular way is achievable or sustainable.
Scientifically, we can assess how likely particular beings are to possess capacities like sentience, by evaluating the available evidence. Ethically, we can assess how likely these capacities are to matter morally, by evaluating the available arguments. Practically, we can then put it all together to assess how likely these beings are to matter – and how to factor this into the way we live our lives.