Other Anthropology Commons^™

Evolution And Animal Welfare, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Assessment of Animal Welfare Collection

Animal welfare is a topic often thought to reside outside mainstream biology. The complexity of the methods used to assess welfare (such as health, physiology, immunological state, and behavior) require an understanding of a wide range of biological phenomena. Furthermore, the "welfare" of an animal provides a framework in which a diversity of its responses can be understood as fitness-enhancing mechanisms. Different methods for assessing animal welfare are discussed, with particular emphasis on the role of an animal's own choices and reinforcement mechanisms. No part of biology is as yet able to explain consciousness, but by confronting the possibility that …

Contested Moralities: Animals And Moral Value In The Dear/Symanski Debate, William S. Lynn

Human and Animal Bonding Collection

Geography is experiencing a ‘moral turn’ in its research interests and practices. There is also a flourishing interest in animal geographies that intersects this turn, and is concurrent with wider scholarly efforts to reincorporate animals and nature into our ethical and social theories. This article intervenes in a dispute between Michael Dear and Richard Symanski. The dispute is over the culling of wild horses in Australia, and I intervene to explore how geography deepens our moral understanding of the animal/human dialectic. I begin by situating the inquiry into ethics and animals in geography. Next, I provide a synopsis of Dear …

Animals, Ethics And Geography, William S. Lynn

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

No abstract provided.

Why It Is Important To Understand Animal Behavior, Joy Mench

Anthropomorphism and Anthropocentrism Collection

Although people have long been fascinated by the behavior of animals, the formal discipline of animal behavior--ethology--is actually relatively new, dating to the work of Konrad Lorenz in Austria in the 1930s. Application of ethological principles and methods to the study of animal welfare is an even newer endeavor, of course, and one that has generated a great deal of stimulating discussion and controversy during its short history. In this paper, I provide an overview of the development of behavioral approaches to the study of animal welfare. I then discuss some reasons that behaviors are important to animals and describe …

A Demanding Task: Using Economic Techniques To Assess Animal Priorities. A Reply To Mason Et Al., C. M. Sherwin, C. J. Nicol

Economics and Animal Welfare Collection

No abstract provided.

Personality And Attitudes Toward The Treatment Of Animals, Steve Mathews, Harold A. Herzog

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

The authors examined the relationship between personality and attitudes toward the treatment of animals by administering the Sixteen Personality Factor Inventory and the Animal Attitudes Scale to 99 college students. The personality scales were only weakly related to attitudes about animal welfare issues. Two personality factors, sensitivity and imaginativeness, were significantly correlated with attitudes towards animals. Gender and sensitivity explained 25% of the variance in attitudes, with most of the variance accounted for by gender.

Interactions Among Dogs, People, And The Environment In Boulder, Colorado: A Case Study, Marc Bekoff, Carron A. Meaney

Pets Collection

From September 1995 to April 1996 we studied interactions among dogs, people, and the environment in Boulder, Colorado. Data on behavioral disturbances by off-leash dogs who were accompanied by a person were collected with respect to dog-dog and dog-human interactions, dog-wildlife encounters, dogs trampling vegetation, and dogs entering and disturbing bodies of water. A questionnaire also was administered. Behavioral data showed that off-leash dogs generally did not travel far off trail, that when they did it was for short periods of time, and that they rarely were observed to chase other dogs, disturb people, chase wildlife, destroy vegetation, or enter …

Water, Sugar, And Power: Irrigation In Southern Puerto Rico During The Late Nineteenth Century, Marisol Ramos

Published Works

The purpose of this thesis was to address an important element in the study of the sugar cane industry in Puerto Rico that has been neglected in its literature: water. By analyzing the failure of the Guayama Irrigation Project of 1864-1866, the thesis showcased the importance of water and the establishment of irrigation projects to local hacendados as an strategy to address the vulnerability that the sugar cane industry at the time was facing: falling prices, low capacity, and the ever present danger of droughts, which the colonial government was unable to solve for lack of liquid capital.

Many Voices: Medical Anthropologists Explore The Meaning Of Health, Illness, And Cure, Michael Hass

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Lindenbaum, Shirley and Margaret Lock, eds. Knowledge, Power and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine in Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. xvii + 242 pp. including notes, references, and indices. $50.00 cloth, $15.00 paper.

Etkin, Nina L. and Michael L. Tan, eds. Medicines: Meanings and Contexts. Quezon city, Philippines and Amsterdam: Health Action Information Network and the University of Amsterdam, 1994. v + 305 pp. $15.00 paper.

Good, Byron J. Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: an Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. $54.95 Cloth, $17.95 paper.

Rodeo And Recollection-Applied Ethics And Western Philosophy, Bernard E. Rollin

Sports and Entertainment Collection

No abstract provided.

Gender Differences In Attitudes Toward Animal Research, Jennifer J. Eldridge, John P. Gluck

Experimentation Collection

Although gender differences in attitudes toward animal research have been reported in the literature for some time, exploration into the nature of these differences has received less attention. This article examines gender differences in responses to a survey of attitudes toward the use of animals in research. The survey was completed by college students and consisted of items intended to tap different issues related to the animal research debate. Results indicated that women were more likely than men to support tenets of the animal protection movement. Likewise, women were more likely than men to favor increased restrictions on animal use …

Animal Issues In The Media: A Groundbreaking Report, George Gerbner

Film and Television Production Collection

What kinds of animals do we see on television and in print media? What are the trends, themes, scenes, and contexts in which animals appear? How are they treated? What are the roles for which they are cast and the fate for which they are destined? What issues drive press and magazine coverage, and how do animal activism, legislation, science and other issues play out in the coverage? Finally, what are some implications for further research, activity, and policy?

These are questions we shall address in this report. The report presents the findings of a benchmark study that begins the …

Evaluation Of Animal Welfare By The Self-Expression Of An Anxiety State, M. P. Carey, J. P. Fry

Assessment of Animal Welfare Collection

Although mental well-being has long been accepted as an important aspect of animal welfare, the subjective feelings of farm or laboratory animals are regarded as lying beyond the scope of scientific enquiry. We now report that pharmacological conditioning of pigs with a drug, pentylenetetrazole, known to induce anxiety in man, permits investigation of the presence or absence of this psychological state during exposure to a variety of environmental stimuli encountered during normal husbandry. Such pharmacological conditioning therefore provides a valuable means to assess and improve elements of animal welfare and should be applicable to other species that show operant behaviour.

Big Game, Big Bucks: The Alarming Growth Of The American Trophy Hunting Industry, Teresa Telecky, Doris Lin

Big-Game and Trophy Hunting Collection

The trophy hunting of exotic animals by American big game hunters is increasing at an alarming rate. Over 45,000 foreign animals were killed and imported to the U.S. by American trophy hunters in 1993, a 71% increase in only a four-year period. Among the imported trophies are thousands of threatened and endangered species, as well as species listed under CITES. The number of endangered and threatened species killed and imported by American trophy hunters increased by 83% in the same period. Three factors have contributed to the rising numbers of animals killed and imported by American trophy hunters: 1) The …

Get The Facts On Cats

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Wildlife Wins At The Polls

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

The Animal Research Controversy: Protest, Process & Public Policy, Andrew N. Rowan, Franklin M. Loew, Joan C. Weer

Experimentation Collection

The controversy today regarding the use of animals in research appears on the surface to be a strongly polarized struggle between the scientific community and the animal protection movement. However, there is a wide range of opinions and philosophies on both sides. Mistrust between the factions has blossomed while communication has withered. Through the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the animal movement grew in numbers and financial resources, and developed much greater public recognition and political clout. The research community paid relatively little attention to the animal movement for much of this period but, alarmed by several public relations coups …

Canned Hunts--Canned Cruelty

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Surviving Disasters

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Animal Protection And Medical Science, David O. Wiebers, Jennifer Leaning, Roger D. White

Experimentation Collection

Over the past decade, the debate concerning animal use in biomedical research, education, and testing has contributed to an environment of public posturing on both sides. Many in the medical and animalprotection communities have come to view one another as adversaries with hopelessly different goals.

In the face of rapid and substantial increases in public concern over the wellbeing of animals, many in the medical community have sought to fend off what they see as an increasingly threatening social trend. Those who have spoken out on behalf of various medical organisations or institutions have generally been avid animal-research advocates. Those …

Public Attitudes Toward Animal Research: Some International Comparisons, Ralph Pifer, Kinya Shimizu, Linda Pifer

Attitudes Toward Animal Research Collection

A comparative analysis was made of the public's attitudes toward the use of animals in scientific research in 15 different nations. The intensity of opposition to animal research was found to vary from relatively low levels in Japan and the United States to much higher levels in France, Belgium, and Great Britain. More women than men were opposed to animal research in all 15 nations. Scientific knowledge, or the lack of knowledge, was not found to have a consistent relationship with attitudes toward animal research. Concern about the environment was found to be related to opposition to animal research in …

Loved--Or Lost?

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Prisoners Of The Trade

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Slaughter On The High Seas

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Animal Welfare And Individual Characteristics: A Conversation Against Speciesism, Marc Bekoff, Lori Gruen

Animal Welfare Collection

It seems impossible for a human being not to have some point of view concerning nonhuman animal (hereafter animal) welfare. Many people make decisions about how humans are permitted to treat animals using speciesist criteria, basing their decisions on an individual's species membership rather than on that animal's individual characteristics. Although speciesism provides a convenient way for making difficult decisions about who should be used in different types of research, we argue that such decisions should rely on an analysis of individual characteristics and should not be based merely on species membership. We do not argue that the concept of …

Assessing Animal Well-Being: Common Sense, Uncommon Science, David Fraser

Assessment of Animal Welfare Collection

The scientific assessment of the well-being of an animal involves finding indicators of three broad criteria: 1) a high level of biological functioning; 2) freedom from suffering in the sense of prolonged fear, pain, and other negative experiences; and 3) positive experiences such as comfort and contentment. The tools available to assess animal wellbeing include a mixture of common sense and cutting-edge science. Measures of animal productivity can help to assess an animal’s level of biological functioning, but they need to be used with care. Among veterinary approaches, pathology detects breakdown in biological functioning, while epidemiology identifies the circumstances under …

Fight Fur Now!

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Reversing The Count

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.

Animals, Archetypes, And Popular Culture: Tales From The Tabloid Press, Harold A. Herzog, Shelley L. Galvin

Entertainment Collection

This paper characterizes the portrayal of animals and human-animal relations in one genre of American popular culture—the “supermarket” tabloid press. A total of 789 animal-related stories and photographs in 82 issues of four tabloid magazines were analyzed according to theme. The items fell into nine categories in which animals were portrayed as objects of affection, saviors, threats, victims, things to be used, sex objects, imaginary and mythological beings, surrogate humans, and objects of wonder. It is argued that these themes represent archetypes reflecting the roles that animals have had in human cultural and psychological life since the historical origins of …

The Hsus: Helping Animals

Close Up Reports

No abstract provided.