Organisms Commons^™

Strong Inferences About Pain In Invertebrates Require Stronger Evidence, Edgar T. Walters

Animal Sentience

Evidence for sentience in animals distantly related to humans is often sought in observations of behavioral and neural responses to noxious stimuli that would be painful in humans. Most proposed criteria for painful sentience in “lower” animals such as decapod crustaceans have no necessary links to the affective (“suffering”) component of pain. The best evidence for painful affect in animals is learned aversion to stimuli associated with noxious experience, and conditioned preference for contexts associated with relief from aversive consequences of noxious experience, as expressed in voluntary behavior. Such evidence is currently lacking for any invertebrate except octopus.

Report Of A Meeting On Contemporary Topics In Zebrafish Husbandry And Care, Nikki Osborne, Gregory Paull, Adam Grierson, Karen Dunford, Elisabeth M. Busch-Nentwich, Lynne U. Sneddon, Natalie Wren, Joe Higgins, Penny Hawkins

Ichthyology Collection

A meeting on Contemporary Topics in Zebrafish Husbandry and Care was held in the United Kingdom in 2014, with the aim of providing a discussion forum for researchers, animal technologists, and veterinarians from academia and industry to share good practice and exchange ideas. Presentation topics included protocols for optimal larval rearing, implementing the 3Rs (replacement, reduction, and refinement) in large-scale colony management, and environmental enrichment. The audience also participated in a survey of current practice relating to practical husbandry, cryopreservation, and the provision of enrichment.

Malanda Gold: The Tale Of A Unique Rainbowfish From The Atherton Table-Lands, Now On The Verge Of Extinction., Peter J. Unmack, Keith Martin, Michael P. Hammer, Brendan Ebner, Karl Moy, Culum Brown

Ichthyology Collection

No abstract provided.

Thinking Pigs: Cognition, Emotion, And Personality, Lori Marino, Christina M. Colvin

Mammalogy Collection

An exploration of the cognitive complexity of Sus domesticus, the domestic pig.

Animal Mourning: Précis Of How Animals Grieve (King 2013), Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

Abstract: When an animal dies, that individual’s mate, relatives, or friends may express grief. Changes in the survivor’s patterns of social behavior, eating, sleeping, and/or of expression of affect are the key criteria for defining grief. Based on this understanding of grief, it is not only big-brained mammals like elephants, apes, and cetaceans who can be said to mourn, but also a wide variety of other animals, including domestic companions like cats, dogs, and rabbits; horses and farm animals; and some birds. With keen attention placed on seeking where grief is found to occur and where it is absent …

Segregation Of Information About Emotional Arousal And Valence In Horse Whinnies, Elodie F. Briefer, Anne-Laure Maigrot, Roi Mandel, Sabrina Briefer Freymond, Iris Bachmann, Edna Hillmann

Sentience Collection

Studying vocal correlates of emotions is important to provide a better understanding of the evolution of emotion expression through cross-species comparisons. Emotions are composed of two main dimensions: emotional arousal (calm versus excited) and valence (negative versus positive). These two dimensions could be encoded in different vocal parameters (segregation of information) or in the same parameters, inducing a trade-off between cues indicating emotional arousal and valence. We investigated these two hypotheses in horses. We placed horses in five situations eliciting several arousal levels and positive as well as negative valence. Physiological and behavioral measures collected during the tests suggested the …

About Turkeys, The Humane Society Of The United States

Agribusiness Collection

John James Audubon, a well-known bird expert and nature enthusiast, described wild turkeys as birds of great beauty. The history and origin of wild turkeys is uncertain, yet many share Audubon’s sentiment that the wild turkey is “one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States of America.” Today, wild turkeys can be found throughout the nation. Following the selection of the bald eagle as the American symbol, Benjamin Franklin remarked that the turkey was more “respectable”, and a “true original native”.

About Fish, Humane Society Institute For Science And Policy

Aquaculture Collection

Although a number of fish species have been studied in their freshwater life stages, further research on the behavior and habitat requirements of ocean-going fish is required. While fishes have historically been regarded as more “primitive” than other vertebrate groups, Rodriguez et al concluded that several memory and learning systems of bony fishes are noticeably similar to those of reptiles, birds, and mammals. When animals as small and under appreciated as fish display complex mating systems, parental care, and demonstrate the ability to traverse significant distances using olfactory and celestial cues, it is clear that previously established definitions of intelligence …

About Chickens, The Humane Society Of The United States

Agribusiness Collection

The chicken is the world’s most numerous domesticated bird, with over 52 billion farmed worldwide in 2008, rivaling the dog as the most ubiquitous domestic animal globally. These birds have fascinated scholars and researchers since the dawn of Western civilization, and recent studies are beginning to reveal the depths of their complexity and cognitive ability. According to Andrew F. Fraser, professor of veterinary surgery at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Donald M. Broom, professor of animal welfare at University of Cambridge: “Those who have studied the behaviour of the domestic fowl in detail…, especially those who have looked at feral …

Vocal Recognition Of Pups By Mother Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, Tadarida Brasiliensis Mexicana, Jonathan P. Balcombe

Sentience Collection

The ability of Mexican free-tailed bat mothers and pups to recognize vocalizations of their presumptive kin (pup isolation calls and mother echolocation calls, respectively) was tested using playbacks of recorded calls. Captive individuals were presented with calls of two bats, one presumptive kin and the other a stranger, from opposite sides of a circular wire arena. Response was determined by amount of time spent on each side of the arena, time spent in contact with a cloth bat model in front of each speaker, and number of separate contacts with each model. For the latter two measures, mothers showed a …

Three Blind Mice, See How They Run: A Critique Of Behavioral Research With Animals, Michael A. Giannelli

Experimentation Collection

Animal research has been a traditionally accepted and respected part of modern psychology from its earliest days. The prevalent view of animals in contemporary psychology has origins far more basic than the scientific method. Its roots are deeply imbedded in Judaeo-Christian culture, a tradition which postulates a wide gulf between humankind and the animal world. The Darwinian revolution and the ethological outlook it fostered, while of immense biological significance, has for the most part been neglected by modern American comparative psychologists in favor of a positivistic-behaviorist orientation with a heavy reliance upon laboratory experimentation.

In recent years, opposition to animal …

The Behaviour Of Swine, J. P. Signoret, B. A. Baldwin, D. Fraser, E. S. E. Hafez

Mammalogy Collection

The pig was a forest-dwelling animal from the beginning of its history. In some parts of the world it has been domesticated for at least 7000 years. The European breeds of domestic swine were derived from the local wild pig, Sus scrofa. Herds ranged in pastures and forests and kept indoors only for fattening. The breeds in the Far East were derived from another wild pig, Sus vittatus, a smaller animal with shorter legs and a higher reproductive ability (Mohr 1960; Zeuner 1963). The two types interbred readily. The modem breeds of pig evolved from different crossings between the two …