The study of conscious experiences in animals has been suppressed for a long time by the dominance of behaviorism and by the conviction that it would be impossible to study private experiences experimentally. Times have changed and viable techniques have been developed to use conscious experiences as experimental variables. I outline a conceptual model illustrating why conscious experiences have survival value and have been selected for. The model ties conscious experiences to learning and to potential messages for biocommunication. It is argued that ethics based on uneducated gut feelings is not a reliable guide to conduct and that we urgently need experimental studies of conscious experience, including studies on pain and suffering. Examples of promising approaches in the field of conscious visual experiences (percepts) are given to show that neuroscience has progressed far enough to start to solve puzzles regarding conscious experiences in the animal kingdom.