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Figuring out whether animals have consciousness has implications for how we think about animal welfare, and also how we think about creativity

Unless we are solipsists, we conclude that all human beings are conscious.

A simple extrapolation to animals would be to say that those with similar characteristics to humans, could also have consciousness.

I am not aware of any strong theories on animals being unconscious, other than intuitions of some AGI researchers who conjecture that sentience hangs together with unique learning capabilities of humans.

And suppose that we have a reasonable (best available) current explanation for why animals are not conscious, I don't think that puts us in a Pascal's wager situation, because considering our own (recognised) fallibility, and the asymmetry of being right and wrong with respect to moral outcomes, we could consider to tread on the safe side until we have more evidence.

This implies that we should treat animals carefully, as their sentience allows them to feel pain, until we have a lot more information. Interestingly, this also implies that wild nature is evil and that we should seek to get rid of it (if we continue to believe in animal consciousness).

TL;DR: We only have vague conjectures on animal consciousness