Sentience (Earth-5875)

"After exhausting every other strategic option, my creators activated the rings, they, as well as all additional sentient life within three radii of the galactic center, died, as planned."

- 343 Guilty Spark

Sentience is the quality of possessing senses and the abilities of perception.

Sentience definitions
According to the forerunners, if a civilization reached the top of the Technological Achievement Tiers, they would enter a stage known as "transsapience", above "average" sapient life, a category which they only ever included the precursors and the Gravemind.
 * Non-sentience: living organisms which lack the capacity to perceive and think, most which are plant life.
 * Semi-sentience: beings with emerging sentience or traits of of sentience.
 * Sentience: low-order thinking life. Only a select few sentient beings are sapient, but all sapient beings are sentient. The term "sentience" is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to sapience.
 * Sapience: high-order thinking life, capable of symbolism and abstraction. It describes beings capable of using knowledge, understanding, understanding wisdom, and self-awareness. Humans, sangheili, and unggoy are examples of sapient species. Human synthetics and forerunner Metarchs are also sapient.