Digital Commons Network^™

Saving Tigers In America: Part 2, Andrew Rowan, Kathleen Rowan

Tales of WellBeing

In the second of three articles, the reasons individuals and organizations keep tigers are examined with the help of three case studies of failed tiger keeping.

Animal Models In Neuropsychiatry: Do The Benefits Outweigh The Moral Costs?, Carrie Figdor

Animal Models - Psychology

Animal models have long been used to investigate human mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. This practice is usually justified in terms of the benefits (to humans) outweighing the costs (to the animals). The author argues on utility maximization grounds that we should phase out animal models in neuropsychiatric research. The leading theories of how human minds and behavior evolved invoke sociocultural factors whose relation to nonhuman minds, societies, and behavior has not been homologized. Thus, it is not at all clear that we are gaining the epistemic or clinical benefits we want from this animal-based research

Dog Ecology And Demographics In Several Areas In The Philippines And Its Application To Anti-Rabies Vaccination Programs, Amit Chaudhari, Tamara Kartal, George Brill, Kazami Joanne Amano, Maria Glofezita Lagayan, Daphne Jorca

Demographics and Populations

Understanding dog population dynamics plays a vital role in planning both rabies and dog management interventions. Establishing a human to dog ratio and an understanding how the urban/rural nature of the community might affect the overall dog population estimate provides an easy-to-use reference to estimate approximate dog populations in a range of communities. A total of 10,664 households were interviewed in 10 locations in the Philippines (2017 and 2018) to understand the dog population variations among the urban, semi-urban and rural areas. Epicollect5 and OSM tracker applications were used to conduct household interviews using a predesigned fixed set of questions. …

Free Will And Animal Suicide, Sabina Schrynemakers

Animal Sentience

David Peña-Guzmán presents two arguments against the view that because only humans have free will only humans can commit suicide: (1) nonhuman animals may possess free will, and (2) the libertarian notion of free will is incompatible with scientific explanation. The free will objection to animal suicide is indeed mistaken, but Peña-Guzmán’s criticism of the libertarian notion of free will seems misplaced. His target should instead be the assumption that free choices must be made consciously or self-reflectively or the assumption that freedom cannot come in degrees.

Pain Sentience Criteria And Their Grading, Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg

Animal Sentience

On the basis of the target article by Crump and colleagues, we suggest a more parsimonious scheme for evaluating the evidence for sentience. Since some of the criteria used by Crump et al. are not independent and some are uninformative we exclude some criteria and amalgamate others. We propose that evidence of flexible learning and prioritization, in conjunction with relevant data on brain organization, is sufficient for assigning pain-sentience to an animal and we suggest a scoring scheme based on four criteria.

Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms

Animal Sentience

The criteria for determining animal sentience proposed in the target article are sensible but they lack an explicit functional justification for the focus on pain. This commentary provides an abbreviated account of the most basic functional principles that underpin animal sentience and articulates some minimal criteria for determining its presence.

Crustacean Pain, Michael Tye

Animal Sentience

This commentary discusses the target article’s methodology, the relevance of the claim that crustaceans lack a neocortex to the thesis that they feel pain, and the evaluation of the results of some trade-off experiments done with hermit crabs.

No Need For Certainty In Animal Sentience, Yew Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

This commentary supports Crump et al.’s (2022) point that where risks to welfare are severe, strong evidence of sentience is sufficient to warrant protecting welfare. Crump et al.’s eight criteria for sentience are also useful. Flexible decision-making (5) and flexible behaviour (6) are consistent with Ng (1995). The concession that the “no-need-for-sentience” proposition is unnecessary also strengthens the importance of the target article’s conclusions.

What Might Decapod Sentience Mean For Policy, Practice, And Public?, Richard Gorman

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. provide eight criteria for evaluating sentience in decapods, with scope for for application to other taxa. Their work has attracted the interest of policymakers. This commentary discusses the limitations of conceptual and legal acknowledgement of sentience in chainging practice and public attitudes. More work is needed. Social science may be able to help.

Fine-Tuning The Criteria For Inferring Sentience, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

“Sentience” means the capacity to feel, and feelings are private affairs. Sentience is hence extremely difficult to quantify in nonhuman animals. We have no direct means of determining whether an animal is sentient. Thus we rely on a series of indirect measures or criteria which collectively provide some level of confidence about the probability that an animal is sentient. Crump et al. propose a modified framework based on 8 criteria for estimating the likelihood of sentience in a target taxon. Whereas I very much like their proposed framework, I would suggest a couple of amendments that may improve it further: …

Emotional Component Of Pain Perception In The Medicinal Leech?, Brian D. Burrell

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. have provided a series of criteria to assess animal sentience that is focused on the perception of pain, which is known to have both sensory and emotional components. They also provide a qualitative scoring system to assess data that address the eight criteria and apply this paradigm to decapod crustaceans. The criteria laid out have the potential to be applied to other invertebrates typically thought to have sensory response to tissue damage, but no emotional component to pain perception.

Generalizing Frameworks For Sentience Beyond Natural Species, Michael Levin

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. (2022) offer a well-argued example of an essential development: a rigorous framework for assessing sentience from the perspective of moral concern over an agent’s welfare. Current and forthcoming developments in bioengineering, synthetic morphology, artificial intelligence, biorobotics, and exobiology necessitate an expansion and generalization of this effort. Verbal reports (the Turing Test) and homology to human brains are utterly inadequate criteria for assessing the status of novel, unconventional agents that offer no familiar touchstone of phylogeny or anatomy. We must develop principled approaches to evaluating the sentience of (and thus, our responsibility to) beings of unfamiliar provenance and …

Sentience In Decapods: An Open Question, Mark Briffa

Animal Sentience

Crump et al.’s framework is a powerful tool designed to assist decisions on the ethical treatment of decapod crustaceans. However, the question of whether decapods are sentient (i.e., whether they feel), remains open, perhaps indefinitely. More optimistically, we might design experiments that distinguish among different levels of awareness, sometimes viewed as components of sentience. We should strike a balance between assuming that all organisms are sentient and making unnecessary anatomical assumptions about sentience. Refining current experiments may provide concrete insights about awareness in Decapoda and other taxa.

Unresolved Issues Of Behavioral Analysis In Invertebrates, Charles I. Abramson, Paco Calvo

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. (2022) provide a framework for determining the presence of sentience in organisms. Their target article is interesting and thought-provoking, but it does not consider the many unresolved issues related to behavioral analysis – especially when it concerns invertebrates. We feel that no real progress can be made until such fundamental issues as the need for a consistent definition of conditioning phenomena, the lack of a generally accepted behavioral taxonomy, and the use of cognitive terms to explain invertebrate behavior are examined critically.

Does The Sentience Framework Imply All Animals Are Sentient?, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

The eight criteria proposed in Crump et al.’s framework for evaluating pain sentience in decapod crustaceans are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to markers that could increase confidence in an animal’s sentience more generally. Some of the commentaries have already pointed out that pain is only one kind of sentience (Souza Valente). It has also already been pointed out that there are other criteria for pain that could be usefully added to the framework’s eight (Burrell). This expansive thinking about criteria that can be used to increase confidence in sentience raisess the question: in an expansive …

Distinguishing Epistemic And Moral Grounds For Legal Protection, Carlos Montemayor

Animal Sentience

The criteria proposed by Crump et al. are based on various cognitive roles associated with sentience. A subset of them may be sufficient for certain kinds of welfare, but the presence of all of them should be considered as clearly sufficient for substantial kinds of legal protection based on their relation to capacities that we consider essential for moral standing in human beings.

Unconscious Humans, Autonomous Machines And The Difficulty Of Knowing Which Animals Are Sentient, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Animal Sentience

The framework proposed by Crump et al. still leaves much doubt about whether invertebrates such as crabs are sentient. For example, many complex behaviours - even in humans - occur without sentience. Also, simple machines could easily meet all of Crump et al.’s eight proposed criteria for sentience. Acknowledging the limitations of what we currently know about sentience is important both for formulating legislation correctly and for advancing scientific understanding of this most puzzling of biological phenomena.

Sustainable Development Matters For Animals Too: Governments Have A Responsibility To Recognize That., Jeff Sebo, Cleo Verkuijl, Maria Jose Hotzel, Ploy Achakulwisut, Mairon Baston Lima, Jonathan Green

General - Environmental Sustainability

Animals matter for sustainable development, and sustainable development matters for animals. Yet animal welfare remains largely neglected in sustainable development governance. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to protect species, biodiversity, and habitats, but not individual animals. This June, governments will convene for the UN Stockholm+50 Conference, which marks 50 years of international environmental decision making. At this conference, governments have an opportunity to recognize the importance of animal welfare for sustainable development, and to aspire to harm animals less and benefit them more as part of sustainable development governance. We call on governments to take these steps for …

Modernizing Medical Research To Benefit People And Animals, Jarrod Bailey, Carla Owen, Isobel Hutchinson

General - Animal Welfare

In the context of widespread public and political concern around the use of animals in research, we sought to examine the scientific, ethical, and economic arguments around the replacement of animals with New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and to situate this within a regulatory context. We also analyzed the extent to which animal replacement aligns with British public and policymakers’ priorities and explored global progress towards this outcome. The global context is especially relevant given the international nature of regulatory guidance on the safety testing of new medicines. We used a range of evidence to analyze this area, including scientific papers; …

Vaccinations, Vegans And The Problem Of Moral Consistency, Hal Herzog

Diet

https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/hw_diet

For people who give up the consumption of all animal products for ethical reasons, the decision to get COVID vaccinations can be complicated. The numbers of animals used for COVID research are shrouded in secrecy by the pharmaceutical companies, but it is clear that thousands of nonhuman animals—primarily mice and monkeys—are being used in the search for vaccines capable of combating the parade of new COVID variants.

Doughnut Economics - Incorporating Animal Welfare, Janice H. Cox, Peter Stevenson

Environmental Economics

Doughnut Economics is a ground-breaking system developed to change an outdated development paradigm based on endless economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), replacing this by a new paradigm that is fit for the 21st century context and challenges, and which meets the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.

Doughnut Economics provides an excellent model for charting our post-COVID-19 economics future. We have only one cause for concern. Among its 21 planetary boundaries and societal objectives there is currently no room for animal well-being. COVID-19 has taught us that ignoring how we treat …

The Un-Iversalization Of Animal Welfare Law, Sabine Brels

Legislation and regulation

Advancing the protection of animal beings is becoming a universal mission in this early twenty-first century. A few years ago, animal welfare was knocking at the door of the United Nations (UN). Today, it is entering this door. Animal lawyers and protectionists are working to support the full inclusion of animal welfare concerns into the agenda of the UN and its organizations, and to create a new UN-iversal regime. The protection of animal beings, long a missing piece of the international law puzzle, seems likely soon to take its place as a UN objective, alongside protection of human beings and …

The Un-Iversalization Of Animal Welfare Law, Sabine Brels

Law

Advancing the protection of animal beings is becoming a universal mission in this early twenty-first century. A few years ago, animal welfare was knocking at the door of the United Nations (UN). Today, it is entering this door. Animal lawyers and protectionists are working to support the full inclusion of animal welfare concerns into the agenda of the UN and its organizations, and to create a new UN-iversal regime. The protection of animal beings, long a missing piece of the international law puzzle, seems likely soon to take its place as a UN objective, alongside protection of human beings and …

Do You Suffer From Pet-Related Separation Anxiety, Hal Herzog

Herzog - Companion Animal Issues

https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/sc_herzog_compiss/ Separation anxiety has been extensively studied in pets, but few studies have examined separation anxiety in their owners. Nearly half of pet owners report that they can become anxious when they are away from their companion animals. Two studies shed light on this important but neglected aspect of the human-animal bond.

More Evidence Suggests That Vegetarianism Is Mostly Due To Genes, Harold Herzog

Herzog - Animal policy and attitudes

The relative influence of genes and environment on human behavior is one of the most persistent, interesting, and divisive issues in psychology. The human penchant for eating animals is a good example. Clearly, culture has a huge influence on the amount of flesh people consume. The average American, for example, consumes about 240 pounds of meat a year while per capita meat consumption in India is only 10 pounds per year. And your chances of being a vegetarian or vegan are nearly seven times higher if you live in India than in the United States (39% versus 6%). Further, cultures …

Is Time With Pets Good For Our Cardiovascular Health? The Surprising Results Of 129 Studies On Dogs’ Effect On Human Health., Harold Herzog

Herzog - Companion Animals and Health

https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/sc_herzog_comphealth/

The well-studied health benefits (of pet ownership) are claimed to be much greater than the research results actually support. For example, it is claimed that a beloved dog will lower a person’s blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, calm anxiety, and even make it easier to interact with other human beings. A recent systematic review indicate that the physiological effects of interacting with a pet may not be as strong as is commonly reported.

What You Didn’T Know About Having A Pandemic Pet, Herzog Harold

Herzog - Companion Animal Issues

Surveys show that most pet owners are convinced that living with companion animals improves their mental health and psychological well-being. However, many research reports have found that the mental health of pet owners is not measurably better than that of people without a pet. The isolation and stress associated with COVID lockdowns afforded investigators an opportunity to test this "pet effect paradox." Contrary to conventional wisdom, a large majority of studies found pets have little or no impact on human mental health during pandemics.

Do Kids And Adults Value Animal Lives Differently, Harold Herzog

Herzog - Animal policy and attitudes

Humans have various reasons for valuing some species over others. Researchers asked adults and children of different ages to rank animals from people to worms in the order they would give them a lifesaving drug. In some ways, the children were similar to adults in how they valued the species, but in other ways they were very different. There are subtle shifts in how humans prioritize different species as we develop from childhood into adults.

Operationalising One Health-One Welfare, Janice H. Cox

One Health

The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes One Health as an approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. WHO considers the ‘One Health’ approach to be “critical to addressing health threats in the animal, human and environment interface”.

The Puzzling Relationship Between Pet-Keeping And Happiness, Harold Herzog

Herzog - Companion Animal Issues

The $100 billion pet products industry promotes the idea that getting a pet makes people happier. Yet, more than a dozen studies have found that pet owners are not any happier than people who do not live with a companion animal. A psychological process called hedonic adaptation explains why pet-keeping is usually not associated with an increase in overall happiness. New research, however, has found that playing and interacting with pets does result in temporary increases in the happiness of their owners.