Psychology Commons^™

Wild Animal Suffering And Vegan Outreach, Eze Paez

Animal Sentience

Ng’s strategic proposal seems to downplay the potential benefits of advocacy for wild animals and omit what may be the most effective strategy to reduce the harms farmed animals suffer: vegan outreach.

To Minimize Animal Suffering, Broaden The Definition Of Animal Cruelty, Eleonora Gullone

Animal Sentience

Mandatory veterinary reporting of suspected abuse might discourage caregivers from seeking treatment for their injured animals. Animal abusers are more likely to be brought to justice by raising community awareness about the link between animal cruelty and human violence and its implications for the wellbeing of both humans and animals. Commonly accepted definitions of animal cruelty focus only on cruelty that is socially unacceptable, excluding an enormous amount of unnecessary animal suffering caused by humans. Only by broadening the definition of animal cruelty can we bring about the cultural change necessary to minimize this animal suffering.

Animal Suffering And Human Bias, Stijn Bruers

Animal Sentience

Ng proposes concrete ways to decrease animal suffering on the basis of commonsense economic logic and research in welfare biology. But to reduce animal suffering effectively in livestock farming, animal experimentation or the natural environment we have to become more aware of our pervasive and spontaneous but unreliable intuitive moral judgments. These can generate biases that prevent us from decreasing animal suffering effectively.

An Animal Victim's Best Chance: Veterinary Legal Duty To Report Cruelty In The U.S., Lora Dunn

Animal Sentience

Legislation throughout the U.S. recognizes animal sentience and the importance of veterinary reporting to combat the ongoing suffering of these animal victims: All 50 states have felony penalties available for animal cruelty crimes, and veterinary reporting is permitted or required in the majority of states. The remaining minority of U.S. states should take action to require veterinarians to report animal cruelty and render veterinarians immune for good faith reporting.

Veterinary Medical Associations Need To Educate Veterinarians For Mandatory Reporting Of Suspected Animal Abuse, Melinda V. Merck

Animal Sentience

When animals are suffering, we have a duty to take action. With appropriate incentive and educational support mandatory veterinary reporting can be a great legal avenue to help ensure their safety and welfare.

Fish Pain's Burden Of Proof, Carl Safina

Animal Sentience

A hypothesis like Key’s, that fish cannot feel pain, should really be stated as a null hypothesis — an assumption that there is no difference in the things being compared. Then evidence — including anecdotal evidence — for and against rejecting the null hypothesis can be examined and weighed. Key (2016a) has proven only that fish lack mammalian brains.

What Does The Child Protection Movement Teach Us About The Role Of The Mandated Reporter Of Abuse?, Bill C. Henry

Animal Sentience

Requiring veterinarians to report suspected animal abuse faces many of the same issues, concerns and hurdles once faced by the child protection movement. The history of child protection may hence provide a strategic model for progress in animal protection. Being able to anticipate the hurdles will help prepare us to overcome them.

Burden Of Proof Lies With Proposer Of Celestial Teapot Hypothesis, Brian Key

Animal Sentience

Bertrand Russell famously imagined the existence of a celestial teapot to highlight that the burden of proof of a hypothesis lay with its proposer and it was not the responsibility of others to refute it. Those who propose that fish feel pain must bear the burden of proof for their hypothesis. There are several common arguments adopted by those defending the position that fish feel pain. For instance, proponents envisage that pain is so important for human survival that they can’t imagine fish could exist without it. Out of this argument from incredulity emerges the idea that pain must have …

Animal Suffering In China, Peter J. Li

Animal Sentience

Chinese policy has been aimed at maximizing GDP; it is time to focus also on minimizing animal suffering.

Science And Sensibility, Bernard E. Rollin

Animal Sentience

The sentience and suffering of animals is obvious to common sense, even if science and industry claim to be agnostic. Economic incentives to reduce the suffering of animals are welcome, but it is not clear whether animals can turn to science for help.

The Contribution Of Equitation Science To Minimising Horse-Related Risks To Humans, Melissa Starling, Andrew Mclean, Paul Mcgreevy

Animal Training and Obedience Collection

Equitation science is an evidence-based approach to horse training and riding that focuses on a thorough understanding of both equine ethology and learning theory. This combination leads to more effective horse training, but also plays a role in keeping horse riders and trainers safe around horses. Equitation science underpins ethical equitation, and recognises the limits of the horse’s cognitive and physical abilities. Equitation is an ancient practice that has benefited from a rich tradition that sees it flourishing in contemporary sporting pursuits. Despite its history, horse-riding is an activity for which neither horses nor humans evolved, and it brings with …

When The Client Is Not The Abuser, But One Of The Abused, Tania Signal

Animal Sentience

The question of client confidentiality and reporting animal abuse is complicated when the client is not the abuser, and when the abuse (of both people and animals) may escalate precisely because it has been (or may be) reported.

Individual Personality Differences In Goats Predict Their Performance In Visual Learning And Non-Associative Cognitive Tasks, Christian Nawroth, Pamela M. Prentice, Alan G. Mcelligott

Learning Ability Collection

Variation in common personality traits, such as boldness or exploration, is often associated with risk–reward trade–offs and behavioural flexibility. To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of consistent behavioural traits on both learning and cognition. We investigated whether certain personality traits (‘exploration’ and ‘sociability’) of individuals were related to cognitive performance, learning flexibility and learning style in a social ungulate species, the goat (Capra hircus). We also investigated whether a preference for feature cues rather than impaired learning abilities can explain performance variation in a visual discrimination task. We found that personality scores were consistent …

Use Of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment As An Indicator Of Welfare In Donkeys, Michela Minero, Emanuela Dalla Costa, Francesca Dai, Leigh Anne Margaret Murray, Elisabetta Canali, Françoise Wemelsfelder

Animal Welfare Collection

One of the objectives of the Animal Welfare Indicators project was to develop animal-based indicators to assess donkey welfare, including their emotional state. This study aimed to develop a fixed rating scale of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) for donkeys, to evaluate the inter-observer reliability when applied on-farm, and to assess whether the QBA outcomes correlate to other welfare measures.

A fixed list of 16 descriptors was designed on the basis of a consultation in a focus group. The fixed list was then used by four trained observers to score nine 2 min videos of groups of donkeys owned by six …

Mating Games Squid Play: Reproductive Behaviour And Sexual Skin Displays In Caribbean Reef Squid Sepioteuthis Sepioidea, Jennifer Mather

Reproductive Behavior Collection

Observation of the sexual interactions of Sepioteuthis sepioidea squid during the short reproductive stage of their lives showed a scramble competition system, with both male and female polygyny. Mature females were faithful to a specific location in the daytime, whereas males moved from group to group and formed short-term consortships with females. Males defended females from other males, particularly with an agonistic Zebra display. Male–female pairs exchanged Saddle-Stripe displays, after which males might display an on–off Flicker. There was considerable female choice. Only if a female responded to this display with a parallel Rocking action would she pair and would …

Hpi Reactivity Does Not Reflect Changes In Personality Among Trout Introduced To Bold Or Shy Social Groups, Jack S. Thomson, Phillip C. Watts, Tom G. Pottinger, Lynne U. Sneddon

Social Behavior Collection

Physiological stress responses often correlate with personalities (e.g., boldness). However, this relationship can become decoupled, although the mechanisms underlying changes in this relationship are poorly understood. Here we quantify (1) how an individual’s boldness (response to novel objects) in rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, changes in response to interactions with a population of either bold or shy conspecifics and we (2) measured associated post-stress cortisol levels. Initially-bold trout became shyer regardless of group composition, whereas shy trout remained shy demonstrating that bold individuals are more plastic. Stress-induced plasma cortisol reflected the original personality of fish but not the personality induced …

The Value Of Pets To Public And Private Health And Well-Being, Leslie Irvine, Laurent Cilia

Human-Companion Animal Relationships Collection

This analysis reviews empirical studies of the health benefits of pet ownership published between 1980 and 2016 and collected in the database of the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative, or HABRI. The analysis began with 373 titles and eventually encompassed a dataset of 151 full-text documents. Along with analysis of substantive content, each study received a score for methodological rigor. The number of studies has steadily increased, particularly since 2000, and methodological rigor has improved. The literature encompasses four topics, including cardiovascular, general, and psychosocial health, and physical activity. Overall, the research finds that pets benefit human health, although the available …

Why Babies Do Not Feel Pain, Or: How Structure-Derived Functional Interpretations Can Go Wrong, Helmut Segner

Animal Sentience

The response to pain involves a non-conscious, reflexive action and a conscious perception. According to Key (2016), consciousness — and thus pain perception — depends on a neuronal correlate that has a “unique neural architecture” as realized in the human cortex. On the basis of the “bioengineering principle that structure determines function,” Key (2016) concludes that animal species such as fish, which lack the requisite cortex-like neuroanatomical structure, are unable to feel pain. This commentary argues that the relationship between brain structure and brain function is less straightforward than suggested in Key’s target article.

Hermes In The Anthropocene: A Dogologue, Karen Malpede

Animal Sentience

In this dogologue, a writer and the dog who sits near her desk as she works speak. The dog is concerned about the fate of the world in the hands of humans. His urgent questions send the writer into the world of her own memories when she was a child alone with a horse in nature.

The Object Of Grief, Clark Glymour

Animal Sentience

King’s new book is a wonderful collection of diverse anecdotes illustrating the variety of animal practices that are convincing illustrations of grief. Those who want scientific arguments for that conclusion should, however, read elsewhere.

Animal Suffering Calls For More Than A Bigger Cage, Simon R. B. Leadbeater

Animal Sentience

Ng (2016) argues for incremental welfare biology partly because it would be impossible to demonstrate conclusively that animals are sentient. He argues that low cost changes in industrial practices and working collaboratively may be more effective in advancing animal welfare than more adversarial approaches. There is merit in some of Ng’s recommendations but a number of his arguments are, in my view, misdirected. The fact that nonhuman animals feel has already been adequately demonstrated. Cruelty to animals is intrinsic to some industries, so the only way to oppose it is to oppose the industry.

Anticipatory Grief, Tara Fox Hall

Animal Sentience

This commentary reviews Barbara King’s How Animals Grieve, delving into the controversial topic of the status of animals in our society, as well as the key difference between human and non-human grief: the ability to anticipate death.

Modulation Of Behavior In Communicating Emotion, Martin Gardiner

Animal Sentience

King discusses many examples where two animals, as they bond, behave in ways we interpret as expressing love for one another. If one of the bonded animals then dies, signs of loving are replaced by signs we interpret as expressing grief by the animal who remains. I propose a pathway for emotional communication between an animal and an observer that can have a central role in these and other observations by King and in our overall ability to interpret observed behavior in relation to emotion. This pathway provides evidence of emotion in an observed animal by communicating evidence of emotion’s …

Sentience And Animal Welfare: Affirming The Science And Addressing The Skepticism, Nancy Clarke

Animal Sentience

Broom’s (2014) book is a well-researched and thoroughly written exploration and evaluation of the journey from the origins of animal welfare science to what we can say we now know and need to consider in relation to animal sentience and welfare. This book will help to counter any skepticism among academics and policy makers.

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

Nonhuman Mind-Reading Ability, Marthe Kiley-Worthington

Animal Sentience

Harnad (2016) is mistaken that humans are better at mind-reading than other species. Humans have context-independent language, but nonhuman species, especially mammals, have context-dependent nonverbal skills – perceptual, communicative and social -- that can be much keener than our own.

Cognitive Evidence Of Fish Sentience, Jonathan Balcombe

Animal Sentience

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.

Mediating Claims Through Critical Anthropomorphism, Gordon Burghardt

Animal Sentience

Key’s (2016) discussion of his claim that fish do not feel pain ignores the history of attempts to study the attribution of mental states to other species. Although willing to accept that mammals feel pain, Key claims that fish lack the mammalian neural mechanisms underlying pain and are unconscious of their experiences. Consequently, we do not need to be overly concerned about fishing practices that would otherwise be viewed as painful. Key uses a flawed anthropomorphic lens. All attributions of mental events to organisms other than oneself involve inferences derived from anthropomorphic processes through which we process physiological and behavioral …

Fish Lack The Brains And The Psychology For Pain, Stuart W.G. Derbyshire

Animal Sentience

Debate about the possibility of fish pain focuses largely on the fish’s lack of the cortex considered necessary for generating pain. That view is appealing because it avoids relatively abstract debate about the nature of pain experience and subjectivity. Unfortunately, however, that debate cannot be entirely avoided. Subcortical circuits in the fish might support an immediate, raw, “pain” experience. The necessity of the cortex only becomes obvious when considering pain as an explicitly felt subjective experience. Attributing pain to fish only seems absurd when pain is considered as a state of explicit knowing.

Pain And Other Feelings In Humans And Animals, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio

Animal Sentience

Evidence from neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuropsychology suggests that the experience of feelings in humans does not depend exclusively on structures of the cerebral cortex. It does not seem warranted to deny the possibility of feeling in animals on the grounds that their cerebral cortices are not comparable to those of humans.