How happy is your pet? The Problem of subjectivity in the assessment of companion animal welfare
The ability to evaluate the welfare of non-human animals accurately and objectively is influenced by a variety of factors including the nature of our relationships with them. Subjective biases in the perception of an animal’s quality of life can have either positive or negative consequences for its welfare and are likely to be particularly exaggerated […]
How owners determine if the social and behavioral needs of their horses are being met: Findings from an Australian online survey
Horse owners and carers are responsible for judging the health and welfare status of animals in their care, deciding if and when professional advice should be sought and following any recommendations for treatment. However, little is known about how horse owners perceive and determine the well-being of horses in their care, or the themes that […]
Determining When Birds Perceive Correspondence Between Pictures and Objects: A Critique
The use of pictures in avian visual cognition research has expanded over the past few decades but understanding of how birds perceive pictures has not kept pace. Separate evolutionary pathways and distinct differences in existent avian and mammalian visual systems mean that researchers cannot assume that birds see pictures the way humans do. In this […]
How animal psychology contributes to animal welfare
This article explores the contribution of animal psychology to animal welfare. Since animal welfare includes subjective welfare, it is crucial to know the subjective world of animals. Analysis of the concept of anthropomorphism is particularly important because it is a basic idea of animal ethics. The history of animal psychology, focusing on anthropomorphism and behaviourism, […]
Anthropomorphism, anecdotes, and animals
The ethics of natural history documentaries
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Welfare by design: The natural selection of welfare criteria
The scientific study of animal welfare has generated a welter of complex, equivocal and often contradictory results. Consequently, there is little agreement about how impairment of welfare should be measured. While some solutions to this have been suggested, these have usually relied on more sophisticated versions of, or more control over, existing measures. However, we […]
Anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism as influences in the quality of life of companion animals
Since animal minds are private, so their perception of their own quality of life (QoL) must be also. Anthropocentrism, the interpretation of reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience, has to be guarded against in any assessment of animal welfare; for domestic pets, misapprehensions about their olfactory and cognitive abilities appear to present […]
How animal welfare standards create and justify realities
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot tell us that we live in a plural world in which actions are justified in multiple ways. Moreover, Anne Marie Mol argues that things, certainly including animals, are always multiple, their very existence dependent on the particular practices in which they are implicated. Thus, animal welfare policies must be understood […]
Of bonds and boundaries: What is the modern role of anthropomorphism in primatological studies?
Anthropomorphism (and its obverse, zoomorphism) continues to shift and propel us toward changing perspectives on ourselves and other animals. Discussions of anthropomorphism in primate behavior are ostensibly about our use and definition of terms, but ultimately reflect our views of what is unique to humans or unknowable in other animals. Primatologists doing long-term fieldwork report […]