Assessing the Welfare of Captive Group-Housed Cockroaches, Gromphadorhina oblongonota
The welfare of invertebrates under human care is of growing concern, particularly with the increasing interest in insect farming as an environmentally sustainable means of producing food. Additionally, individual welfare monitoring systems can be time-consuming and impractical for larger groups, particularly when individual animals are difficult to identify. It is, therefore, imperative to develop a […]
Assessing Negative Welfare Measures for Wild Invertebrates: The Case for Octopuses
Welfare metrics have been established for octopuses in the laboratory, but not for octopuses living in the wild. Wild octopuses are constantly exposed to potentially harmful situations, and the ability to assess the welfare status of wild octopuses could provide pertinent information about individuals’ health and species’ resilience to stressors. Here, we used underwater photos […]
Studying Animal Feelings: Integrating Sentience Research and Welfare Science
The goal of this article is to bring together two fields of research — animal sentience research and animal welfare science — with the aim of advancing our understanding of animal emotions, especially their subjectively experienced or ‘felt’ component (feelings). While these two research areas share a common interest in animal feelings, they have had […]
Frog in the Well: A Review of the Scientific Literature for Evidence of Amphibian Sentience
Millions of amphibians are traded annually around the world for the exotic pet industry. Their experience during both trade, and in captivity as pets, leads to numerous animal welfare issues. The poor welfare of many pet amphibians is due in part to poor attitudes and acceptance of amphibian species to suffer. Amphibians, like other vertebrate […]
The Welfare of Invertebrate Animals
This book is devoted to the welfare of invertebrates, which make up 99% of animal species on earth. Addressing animal welfare, we do not often think of invertebrates; in fact we seldom consider them to be deserving of welfare evaluation. And yet we should. Welfare is a broad concern for any animal that we house, […]
Misadventures of Sentience: Animals and the Basis of Equality
This paper aims to put in question the all-purposes function that sentience has come to play in animal ethics. In particular, I criticize the idea that sentience can provide a sound basis of equality, as has been recently proposed by Alasdair Cochrane. Sentience seems to eschew the standard problems of egalitarian accounts that are based […]
Given the Cold Shoulder: A Review of the Scientific Literature for Evidence of Reptile Sentience
We searched a selection of the scientific literature to document evidence for, and explorations into reptile sentience. The intention of this review was to highlight; (1) to what extent reptile capability for emotions have been documented in the scientific literature; (2) to discuss the implications this evidence has for the trade in reptiles; and (3) […]
Summoning compassion to address the challenges of conservation
Conservation practice is informed by science, but it also reflects ethical beliefs about how humanity ought to value and interact with Earth’s biota. As human activities continue to drive extinctions and diminish critical life-sustaining ecosystem processes, achieving conservation goals becomes increasingly urgent. However, the determination to react decisively can drive conservationists to handle complex challenges […]
We demand compromise: which achieves more, asking for small or large changes?
Welfare is the state of an animal on a continuum, from poor to good, so many decisions about it are decisions of degree, such as how much feed, space or environmental enrichment should be provided. Other decisions are more discrete, such as whether animals should be kept in cages. However, in practice, many such decisions […]
Welfare assessment and relevant ethical decisions: Key concepts
Animal welfare is the subject of rapidly increasing concern in most countries in the world and this concern is resulting in changes in the ways in which animal users keep and treat animals. The welfare of an individual is its state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment. This includes the state of […]