The Grammy-winning American comedian George Carlin often included animal rights messages in his standup routines. He once joked that he’d like to invent a cockroach spray with a difference: “It doesn’t kill the roaches, but it fills them with self-doubt as to whether or not they’re in the right house.” As one of those animal rights people who expounds on the virtues and benefits of being decent to all sentient beings, I’m often asked: “Where do you draw the line? What about insects?” My answer used to go something like: “Well, we all know that cows, chickens, fish, octopuses, lobsters and crabs feel pain and fear, so if we are going to draw a line somewhere, we can’t exclude them. But what you do about insects, I’m not sure.” Then came my cockroach encounter. I went into the kitchen one morning to make some coffee, and there, on the counter by the sink, was a cockroach. He (or she, or they – who knows?) might have come up the drain looking for a bite to eat. I am just under 1.7 metres (5ft 7ins) tall and weigh about 56kg (8st 12lbs). He was less than a centimetre tall and weighed about the same as a garden pea. He spotted me at about the same time as I spotted him – and ran for it. He hightailed it to the closest object, which was a sugar container. There was silence – nothing moved. I peered over the top of the container, and there he was, pressed up against the back of the jar. I could imagine him holding his breath, trying not to be spotted, hoping I’d go away. I mean, wouldn’t that be what I would do if a giant predator came my way? Some people will dismiss my perspective as anthropomorphic, but that would actually be anthropocentric – believing that humans are vastly more important than everything else – in much the same way that people once thought the sun revolved around Earth. Yay for Copernicus and his heliocentric model. We’ve often disregarded the feelings of those we don’t relate to. Sometimes this has been other humans, based on race, gender, or other arbitrary criteria, but humans aren’t the only ones who think and feel. There are animals that cherish their offspring, feel lonely if their life partner dies, and jump for joy. If you burn an insect with a cigarette, it feels pain. If insects were automatons, ants wouldn’t be able to build fungus farms or form boats; bees wouldn’t be able to communicate complicated directions to hive mates; and cockroaches wouldn’t have learned not to eat certain baits that kill them, much to the frustration of “pest” control companies. So, I quit giving a milquetoast answer to the question of where I draw the line. Now I say: “We know insects think and feel, so if we ever have an option to avoid harming them, let’s go for it.” If there are insects in your home, Peta has developed a handy guide to non-chemical, non-lethal methods of asking them to please go somewhere else to think things over. Ingrid Newkirk is the founder of Peta and author of Animalkind