Body Contacts and Social Interactions in Captive Odontocetes Are Influenced by the Context: An Implication for Welfare Assessment
Research on the welfare of captive odontocetes has increased in recent years, but has been mostly focused on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Few studies investigated potential welfare indicators using quantitative data linked to a range of conditions or stimuli that are thought to impact the animals’ emotional state. Since odontocetes are social animals that engage […]
The Science of Animal Suffering
Can suffering in non-human animals be studied scientifically? Apart from verbal reports of subjective feelings, which are uniquely human, I argue that it is possible to study the negative emotions we refer to as suffering by the same methods we use in ourselves. In particular, by asking animals what they find positively and negatively reinforcing […]
Anxiety-induced cognitive bias in non-human animals
As in humans, [`]cognitive biases’ in the way in which animals judge ambiguous stimuli may be influenced by emotional state and hence a valuable new indicator of animal emotion. There is increasing evidence that animals experiencing different emotional states following exposure to long-term environmental manipulations show contrasting biases in their judgement of ambiguous stimuli. However, […]
Dogs’ endocrine and behavioural responses at reunion are affected by how the human initiates contact
For dogs, humans are likely to be the most important feature in their environment influencing their welfare. To investigate a commonly occurring human–dog interaction, behavioural and endocrine responses of 12 female beagle dogs were measured before, upon and after the return of a familiar person. Each dog was left by the person in a test […]
Toward a Choice-Based Judgment Bias Task for Horses
Judgment bias tasks for nonhuman animals are promising tools to assess emotional valence as a measure of animal welfare. In view of establishing a valid judgment bias task for horses, the present study aimed to evaluate 2 versions (go/no-go and active choice) of an auditory judgment bias task for horses in terms of acquisition learning […]
Qualitative Behaviour Assessment of horses exposed to short-term emotional treatments
Assessing emotion in animals is fundamental to the study of animal welfare with methodologies for reliable and valid assessments being highly desirable. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) is based on the assumption that human observers are capable of integrating details of animals’ behavioural expressions using descriptors (e.g. calm, playful) that reflect the animals’ putative emotional experiences. […]