Advancing zoo animal welfare through data science: scaling up continuous improvement efforts
Advancing animal welfare in zoos is a multifaceted endeavor that lies at the core of their conservation and educational missions. While zoos have made significant strides in improving the wellbeing of their animal residents, challenges persist in ensuring a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to continuous improvement. Some of these challenges stem from the exponential growth of […]
The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Monitoring Animal Identification, Health, and Behaviour
With many advancements, technologies are now capable of recording non-human animals’ location, heart rate, and movement, often using a device that is physically attached to the monitored animals. However, to our knowledge, there is currently no technology that is able to do this unobtrusively and non-invasively. Here, we review the history of technology for use […]
Sustainable animal welfare: does forcing farmers into transition help?
Dutch society is changing, and so is its attitude towards animal welfare. Meat retailers respond by laying down minimum-quality criteria for farmers who wish to supply to supermarkets-forcing them to either aim for higher quality or lose their market. Policy-wise this is a top-down measure that leads to a redistribution of markets. From farmer perspective, […]