Choice, control, and animal welfare: definitions and essential inquiries to advance animal welfare science

The ways in which humans can support good welfare for animals in their care is an ongoing subject of debate: some place emphasis on the animals’ physical health; others, on animals’ ability to live “natural lives”; and others on animals’ affective states or psychological wellbeing. Recently, there has been an increase in interest in how […]

The Four Cs of Psychological Wellbeing: Lessons from Three Decades of Computer-based Environmental Enrichment

Three decades ago, the Animal Welfare Act was amended to require researchers to provide environments that promoted the psychological, as well as the physical, wellbeing of nonhuman primates maintained for research purposes. We developed a computer-task paradigm with the goal of promoting and assessing the psychological wellbeing of rhesus monkeys. Some lessons learned in the […]