Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ethics And Care: For Animals, Not Just Mammals, Jennifer A. Mather

Speciesism and Breed Discrimination Collection

In the last few decades, we have made great strides in recognizing ethics and providing care for animals, but the focus has been mainly on mammals. This stems from a bias of attention not only in research but predominantly in non-scientists’ attention (to ‘popular’ animals), resulting partly from discussion about and depiction of animals in publications addressed to the public. This is somewhat due to political pressure, and can result in uneven conservation efforts and biases in targets for welfare concerns. As a result, there has been a huge backlash again, with concerns about pain sensitivity and welfare in fish, …

Welfare Of Non-Traditional Pets, Catherine A. Schuppli, David Fraser, H. J. Bacon

David Fraser, PhD

The keeping of non-traditional or ‘exotic’ pets has been growing in popularity worldwide. In addition to the typical welfare challenges of keeping more traditional pet species like dogs and cats, ensuring the welfare of non-traditional pets is complicated by factors such as lack of knowledge, difficulties meeting requirements in the home and where and how animals are obtained. This paper uses examples of different species to highlight three major welfare concerns: ensuring that pets under our care i) function well biologically, ii) are free from negative psychological states and able to experience normal pleasures, and iii) lead reasonably natural lives. …

Successful Enrichment And Recovery Of Whole Mitochondrial Genomes From Ancient Human Dental Calculus, Andrew T. Ozga, Maria A. Nieves-Colon, Tanvi P. Honap, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, Courtney A. Hofman, George R. Milner, Cecil M. Lewis Jr., Anne C. Stone, Christina Warinner

Andrew Ozga

Objectives

Archaeological dental calculus is a rich source of host‐associated biomolecules. Importantly, however, dental calculus is more accurately described as a calcified microbial biofilm than a host tissue. As such, concerns regarding destructive analysis of human remains may not apply as strongly to dental calculus, opening the possibility of obtaining human health and ancestry information from dental calculus in cases where destructive analysis of conventional skeletal remains is not permitted. Here we investigate the preservation of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in archaeological dental calculus and its potential for full mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) reconstruction in maternal lineage ancestry analysis.

Materials and …

Philosophical Background Of Attitudes Toward And Treatment Of Invertebrates, Jennifer A. Mather

Jennifer Mather, PhD

People who interact with or make decisions about invertebrate animals have an attitude toward them, although they may not have consciously worked it out. Three philosophical approaches underlie this attitude. The fi rst is the contractarian, which basically contends that animals are only automata and that we humans need not concern ourselves with their welfare except for our own good, because cruelty and neglect demean us. A second approach is the utilitarian, which focuses on gains versus losses in interactions between animals, including humans. Given the sheer numbers of invertebrates—they constitute 99% of the animals on the planet—this attitude implicitly …

Communities Based On “Sweaty Infestations Of Joy”: A Look At The Temporary Moral Communities Formed Through International Volunteering Trips., Sarah A. Knowles

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Voluntourism is a phenomenon that is both widely popular and greatly criticized. Voluntourists judge their volunteering based on the relationships formed during the experience. While critics tend to judge voluntourism in terms of long term economic and well-being indicators and statistics. To understand why volunteers judge their own actions as positive in the moment and can change their opinions after the fact, this study will look at overseas volunteer trips as forming temporary moral communities. The lifecycle of voluntourism temporary moral communities is broken down into five periods: 1) Pre-Departure; 2) Arrival; 3) Everyday; 4) De-Orientation; and 5) Return. Using …

The Elephant (Head) In The Room: A Critical Look At Trophy Hunting, Chelsea Batavia, Michael Paul Nelson, Chris T. Darimont, Paul C. Paquet, William J. Ripple, Arian D. Wallach

Chris Darimont, PhD

Trophy hunting has occupied a prominent position in recent scholarly literature and popular media. In the scientific conservation literature, researchers are generally supportive of or sympathetic to its usage as a source of monetary support for conservation. Although authors at times acknowledge that trophy hunting faces strong opposition from many members of the public, often for unspecified reasons associated with ethics, neither the nature nor the implications of these ethical concerns have been substantively addressed. We identify the central act of wildlife “trophy” taking as a potential source of ethical discomfort and public opposition. We highlight that trophy hunting entails …

The Ethical (Or Not So Ethical) Story Behind Your Bar Of Chocolate: The Untold Tale Of A Distressed Ghanaian Farmer, Nadia Ayensah

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

In a time where the ethics of business dealings have become a key factor in the likelihood of the success of that venture due to globalization, it is important to start considering those ventures that are so popular, but whose inner working are rarely heard of. This paper analyzes the history and process of cocoa production in Ghana. It looks at the status quo with regards to the social and economic standing of Ghanaian Cocoa farmers as opposed to the earnings made by cocoa processing companies. With the statistics derived, the paper then considers who is to take responsibility for …