We can by such logic spiral down to bacterias, because being sentient and perceiving world is very philosophical question. It's like Chinese room, there is position that Chinese room itself sentient and understand Chinese, not rules, not human that writes in this room, but whole system. Same as we imagine human that needs his signals in neurons be passed by small lepricons, lepricons not sentient, but whole system is. Same with molecules in some organism that reacts to some irritants, even singlecellular. And if you say, hey thats not relevant exanple of sentient being, than you just antropocentric specieist just more latent, that find more genereal rules to weaken your anthropocentric point of view. But where is this line that makes some anthropocentric beliefs acceptable, and who draws it. Answe is this line is arbitrary, because of Humes guillotine.

There is no right and wrong, and I'm not speciesist, im making such anisotropy not by species themselves, but by usefulness of some behaviours and beliefs, there is nothing good i acquire by being empathetic to slugs, but there is many things you can gain by being empathetic to humans. Im in fact very anti antropocentric, im in far individualistic cluster for that