 Nevertheless, even if we have perceptual access to the mental states of other humans and familiar animals like our pet dogs, there are sharp limitations to how far this will get us toward solving the general problem of animal consciousness. First of all, our perceptual access may be limited to animals that are familiar, comfortable interacting with humans, and biologically very similar to humans (i.e. mammals). It may be much harder to ‘see’ what (if anything) a spider or a squid is thinking and feeling as she goes about her business — both because these animals may express their mental states differently, and more radically because they may have a very different repertoire of mental states.