Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fishes Are Gaining Academic Respect, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

I respond to five commentaries on my 2016 book What a Fish Knows. The commentaries express more harmony than dissent about my interpretation of fishes as cognitive, aware individuals deserving better treatment by humankind.

Chicken Of The Sea, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Marino summarizes research showing that chickens perform cognitively and emotionally at a higher level than previously assumed. Here, I describe capacities of teleost fishes that parallel those of chickens, including the ability to recognize human faces, perspective-taking, and referential communication. Research on chickens and on fishes reveals an emerging trend in cognitive ethology: abilities once thought limited to a scant few highly intelligent non-humans may actually occur broadly across taxa.

Chimpanzee Research: An Examination Of Its Contribution To Biomedical Knowledge And Efficacy In Combating Human Diseases, Jarrod Bailey, Jonathan Balcombe, Theodora Capaldo

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Research on captive chimpanzees incurs considerable animal welfare, ethical and financial costs. Advocates of such research claim these costs are outweighed by substantial advancements in biomedical knowledge, and that the genetic similarity of chimpanzees to humans enables the former to make critical contributions to preventing, diagnosing and combating human diseases. To assess these claims, we examined the disciplines investigated in 749 studies of captive chimpanzees published from 1995-2004 inclusive, and subjected 95 randomly selected papers to a detailed citation analysis:

49.5% (47/95) of papers had not been cited at the time of this study; 38.5% (34/95) were cited by 116 …

Self-Harm In Laboratory-Housed Primates: Where Is The Evidence That The Animal Welfare Act Amendment Has Worked?, Jonathan Balcombe, Hope Ferdowsian, Debra Durham

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

The 1985 amendment to the United States Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to promote psychological well being of primates in the laboratory represents an acknowledgment of an important welfare problem concerning nonhuman animals. How effective has this amendment been? Perhaps the best-known contributor to psychological distress in primates in the laboratory is nonsocial housing; yet, available analyses suggest that little progress has been made in avoiding single-caging of these animals. Another way to assess psychological well being is to examine rates of self-abusive behavior in laboratory primates. If the AWA has been effective, then post-AWA self-harm rates might be lower than …

Animal Carcinogenicity Studies: 3. Alternatives To The Bioassay, Andrew Knight, Jarrod Bailey, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Conventional animal carcinogenicity tests take around three years to design, conduct and interpret. Consequently, only a tiny fraction of the thousands of industrial chemicals currently in use have been tested for carcinogenicity. Despite the costs of hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of skilled personnel hours, as well as millions of animal lives, several investigations have revealed that animal carcinogenicity data lack human specificity (i.e. the ability to identify human non-carcinogens), which severely limits the human predictivity of the bioassay. This is due to the scientific inadequacies of many carcinogenicity bioassays, and numerous serious biological obstacles, which render profoundly …

Animal Carcinogenicity Studies: 2. Obstacles To Extrapolation Of Data To Humans, Andrew Knight, Jarrod Bailey, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Due to limited human exposure data, risk classification and the consequent regulation of exposure to potential carcinogens has conventionally relied mainly upon animal tests. However, several investigations have revealed animal carcinogenicity data to be lacking in human predictivity. To investigate the reasons for this, we surveyed 160 chemicals possessing animal but not human exposure data within the US Environmental Protection Agency chemicals database, but which had received human carcinogenicity assessments by 1 January 2004. We discovered the use of a wide variety of species, with rodents predominating, and of a wide variety of routes of administration, and that there were …

Cognitive Evidence Of Fish Sentience, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

I present a little-known example of flexible, opportunistic behavior by a species of fish to undermine Key’s (2016) thesis that fish are unconscious and unable to feel. Lack of a cortex is flimsy grounds for denying pain to fish, for on that criterion we must also then deny it to all non-mammals, including birds, which goes against scientific consensus. Notwithstanding science’s fundamental inability to prove anything, the precautionary principal dictates that we should give the benefit of the doubt to fish, and the state of the oceans dictates that we act on it now.

Eavesdropping By Bats: The Influence Of Echolocation Call Design And Foraging Strategy, Jonathan Balcombe, M. Brock Fenton

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

We used playback presentations to free-flying bats of 3 species to assess the influence of echolocation call design and foraging strategy on the role of echolocation calls in communication. Near feeding sites over water, Myotis lucifugus and M. yumanensis responded positively only to echolocation calls of conspecifics. Near roosts, these bats did not respond before young of the year became volant, and after this responded to presentations of echolocation calls of similar and dissimilar design. At feeding sites Lasiurus borealis responded only to echolocation calls of conspecifics and particularly to "feeding buzzes". While Myotis, particularly subadults, appear to use the …

Vocal Recognition In Mexican Free-Tailed Bats: Do Pups Recognize Mothers?, Jonathan Balcombe, Gary F. Mccracken

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Mother Mexican free-tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana, produce 'directive' calls while searching for pups inside cave maternity roosts. These calls consist of highly repetitive pulses of sound uttered in rapid sequence. Calls are sufficiently intense that they are perceptible above the substantial background noise within roosts at distances of at least 1m. Calls are stereotyped within individuals, and statistically discriminable between individuals. These characteristics are expected for vocalizations that function for mother-pup reunions, and are shared with directive calls described previously in other bats. Mother T. b. mexicana directive calls are statistically no less discriminable than are the isolation calls …

Animal Pleasure And Its Moral Significance, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

This paper presents arguments for, and evidence in support of, the important role of pleasure in animals’ lives, and outlines its considerable significance to humankind’s relationship to other animals. In the realms of animal sentience, almost all scholarly discussion revolves around its negative aspects: pain, stress, distress, and suffering. By contrast, the positive aspects of sentience – rewards and pleasures – have been rarely broached by scientists. Yet, evolutionary principles predict that animals, like humans, are motivated to seek rewards, and not merely to avoid pain and suffering. Natural selection favours behaviours that enhance survival and procreation. In the conscious, …

Prolonged Pain Research In Mice: Trends In Reference To The 3rs, Jonathan Balcombe, Hope Ferdowsian, Lauren Briese

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

This literature review documents trends in the use of mice in prolonged pain research, defined herein as research that subjects mice to a source of pain for at least 14 days. The total amount of prolonged pain research on mice has increased dramatically in the past decade for the 3 pain categories examined: neuropathic, inflammatory, and chronic pain. There has also been a significant rise in the number of prolonged mouse pain studies as a proportion of all mouse studies and of all mouse pain studies. The use of transgenic mice has also risen significantly in prolonged pain research, though …

Cancerous Contradictions: The Mis-Regulation Of Human Carcinogens Based On Animal Data, Andrew Knight, Jarrod Bailey, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

The regulation of human exposures to potential carcinogens constitutes society’s most important use of animal carcinogenicity data. However, for environmental contaminants of greatest U.S. concern, we found that in most cases (58.1%; 93/160) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considered the animal data inadequate to support a classification of probable human carcinogen or noncarcinogen.

The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is a leading international authority on carcinogenicity assessments. For chemicals lacking human exposure data (the great majority), IARC classifications of identical chemicals were significantly more conservative than EPA classifications (p

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

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

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 …

Laboratory Routines Cause Animal Stress, Jonathan P. Balcombe, Neal D. Barnard, Chad Sandusky

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Eighty published studies were appraised to document the potential stress associated with three routine laboratory procedures commonly performed on animals: handling, blood collection, and orogastric gavage. We defined handling as any non-invasive manipulation occurring as part of routine husbandry, including lifting an animal and cleaning or moving an animal's cage. Significant changes in physiologic parameters correlated with stress (e.g., serum or plasma concentrations of corticosterone, glucose, growth hormone or prolactin, heart rate, blood pressure, and behavior) were associated with all three procedures in multiple species in the studies we examined. The results of these studies demonstrated that animals responded with …

The Applicability Of The Self-Fulfillment Account Of Welfare To Nonhuman Animals, Babies, And Mentally Disabled Humans, Tatjana Visak, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

In this paper we will argue that generality is a virtue of Haybron’s account of welfare. Indeed, reflecting on the applicability of his theory to nonhuman animals will give us a better understanding of its applicability to humans. We will first focus on self-fulfillment and suggest an interpretation of Haybron’s account according to which the self-fulfillment of an individual consists in the fulfillment of the aspects of the self that are applicable to that particular individual. This makes Haybron’s account of welfare applicable to all sentient beings. Then we will focus on sub-personal nature-fulfillment and argue that the same interpretation …