The effectiveness of conditioned aversion in wolves: Insights from experimental tests
It has been suggested that conditioned food aversion (CFA) could be a potential non-lethal intervention by which to deter attacks on livestock by large carnivores. CFA occurs when an animal associates the characteristics of a food with an illness, thus rejecting that food in subsequent encounters. CFA can be associated with an artificial odour during […]
Animal Welfare in Predator Control: Lessons from Land and Sea. How the Management of Terrestrial and Marine Mammals Impacts Wild Animal Welfare in Human–Wildlife Conflict Scenarios in Europe
The control of predators, on land and in the sea, is a complex topic. Both marine and terrestrial mammal predators come into conflict with humans in Europe in many ways and yet their situations are rarely compared. Areas of conflict include the predation of livestock and farmed fish, and the perceived competition for wild prey […]
Compassionate versus consequentialist conservation
Ethical treatment of wildlife and consideration of animal welfare have become important themes in conservation, but ethical perspectives on how best to protect wild animals and promote their welfare are diverse. There are advantages to the consequentialist harms ethical framework applied in managing wild herbivores for conservation purposes. To minimize harms while achieving conservation goals, […]
Pets and pests: vervet monkey intake at a specialist South African rehabilitation centre
Vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) encounter a plethora of anthropogenic risks as a result of their ability to exploit human-altered environments. A systematic assessment of these risks has not been carried out to date. Here, we aim to begin addressing this gap in our understanding of human-vervet conflict in South Africa. We present a descriptive analysis […]
Human disturbance affects personality development in a wild carnivore
Human activity can dramatically affect personality traits in birds and small mammals. However, we know very little about how anthropogenic disturbance shapes personality in mammalian carnivores, and whether the personality traits that may be affected have fitness consequences in human-dominated landscapes. We adapted standard experiments commonly used to assess personality in captive animals to compare […]