Emily Patterson-Kane

ASPCA

Patterson-Kane, E. G. and Piper, H. Animal abuse as a sentinel for human violence: a critique. Journal of social issues, 2009, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 589-614. Published by and copyright Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. The definitive version of this article is available from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/ It has been suggested that acts of violence agai...

Social isolation compromises the welfare of rats. However, it is not clear how many rats should be housed together under laboratory conditions. Pair housing, sometimes recommended over group housing, may help avoid aggression and disease transmission. Female rats, however, showed the highest average demand for a group size of 6 (versus 1, 2, 4, and...

An escape response is a coordinated response by an animal to end exposure to a noxious stimulus or potentially dangerous experience. Escape responses may be innate or learned and function to improve the survival of the animal.

Current advances in technologies and treatments provide pet owners and veterinarians with more options for prolonging the life of beloved pets, but can simultaneously lead to ethical dilemmas relating to what is best for both animal and owner. Key tools for improving end-of-life outcomes include (1) sufficient training to understand the valid ethic...

Animal maltreatment has long been of interest in criminology and forensic psychiatry and psychology because of its suspected relation to aggression in general and crimes against humans in particular. Is there a relation between animal maltreatment and greater risk of aggression against others? The mere fact that a greater proportion of persons with...

About This Document HABRI Central Briefs are peer-reviewed summaries of particular applications and issues within the field of human-animal interaction. Each Brief presents an overview of the subject matter, assesses the current state of research, then highlights unresolved questions or issues. Key resources are identified for further reading. Thes...

A sound understanding of laboratory animal welfare should be grounded in a general knowledge of some of the major events, organizations, and philosophies that have shaped how animals are used and cared for since the industrial revolution. This overview includes the evolution of animal protection and advocacy movements, the development of profession...

Lab Animal is a peer-reviewed journal offering information, ideas, methods, and materials for the animal research professional

This chapter addresses animal abuse and animal cruelty, along with some of the explanations that a range of disciplines have proffered when seeking to understand and predict such behaviors, with a focus on evolutionary biology. While providing yet another theory from which to explain violence and cruelty is not the main endeavor of this chapter, ne...

Sows are often housed in barren stalls during breeding and/or gestation. Environmental enrichment may improve sow welfare; however, the value of specific enrichments to sows is largely unknown. Our aim was to compare the motivation of gestating sows (32, n = 8/treatment) housed in stalls (2.1 m × 0.6 m), and fed at commercial levels, for access to...

Behavior is best understood in terms of its function or, in some cases, malfunction. Violence against animals (a.k.a. animal abuse or cruelty) is a class of behaviors distinguished by actions that cause serious suffering, harm and/or death to animals and that are not recognized by the offender's community and society as necessary or reasonable. The...

Understanding how nonhuman animals such as swine respond to their environment and understanding how to provide them with a good quality of life involves using a range of experimental approaches. More and more, ethological researchers are turning to operant methods to answer some of these questions. Employing an operant such as a lever, researchers...

Activity budgets of 18 captive snow leopards were analyzed in order to assess the behaviour of cats housed singly versus those housed socially. Six solitary snow leopards and 12 socially housed snow leopards were compared. Pacing and activity level were used as indicators of the potential welfare states of cats under these two conditions. Solitary...

Researchers seem to be stuck reiterating the now-familiar argument that barren boxes are bad for welfare and that rodents are due ethical consideration. But the prerequisites for real progress are new kinds of arguments, new types of data, and removal of very real practical and cultural obstacles to implementation of meaningful enrichment. We must...

The Sciences of Animal Welfare analyses the diverse, interconnecting subjects which constitute this fascinating multidisciplinary field, whilst also considering the limitations and benefits of those subjects to the development and future of Animal Welfare Science. This book examines past, present and future practices and thinking, including the wid...

Operant procedures occupy a prominent role within animal welfare science because they provide information about the strength of animals' preferences. It is assumed that strongly motivated choices commonly indicate conditions necessary for uncompromised welfare. A review of the literature shows that members of many species will work for access to re...

The effects of noise, in general, and music, in particular, on the behavior and welfare of animals in the laboratory deserve a great deal of empirical study. However, many laboratories must develop their current practices on the basis of sparse and conflicting data. With this commentary we seek to establish some of the factors that should be taken...

The provision of foraging opportunities may be a simple way of improving an animal's welfare, but this approach has been neglected for laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus). Standard housing contains little enrichment, and food is often provided ad libitum, which may result in inactivity and obesity, especially in mature males. Foraging enrichments m...

Rats are a well-understood and widely used laboratory species that should be provided with environmentally enriched caging in line with modern animal welfare guidelines. This paper reviews which sources of enrichment are effective and should be prioritised, and how methods for providing enrichment might be selected using rats' preferences as a guid...

Applied ethology has traditionally focused on farm animal species, whereas there has been much less research directed at understanding the behaviour of laboratory animals in relation to their use as models in research. In this paper, we identify four areas in which ethological approaches could help improve the welfare of laboratory rodents while at...

Nest boxes are a simple and effective form of environmental enrichment. Rats accept a wide range of nest-box types but have the strongest relative T-maze preference for enclosed, opaque, thermoplastic boxes. All laboratories should provide their rats some type of nest box, depending on the most convenient and effective method.

Corn by-products can be used as bedding and nesting products. Corn-cob bedding resists ammonia build-up and corn-husk nesting material resists dampness. It is not clear whether these advantages are at the expense of animal comfort. Corn cob was compared to aspen chip bedding, and corn husk to paper strip nesting material. Data from 20 rats with dif...

There is some evidence that rats benefit from social housing and from some forms of environmental enrichment, such as platforms and shelters. It is less clear whether they benefit from more spacious cages. There is a lack of information about the relative benefits of social contact, enrichment and increased space, because existing studies tend to c...

The size of an enclosure is an integral part of how well it accommodates a nonhuman animal's welfare; however, most enrichment studies concentrate on modifying the area inside the enclosure rather than enlarging it. It has been suggested that rats have little need for more cage space, but there is no empirical evidence about rats' need for space. T...

Preference tests were used to assess a range of enrichment options for rats kept under standard New Zealand (and similar) caging conditions. The rats did not show significant preferences for most of the options, over an empty cage. The exceptions were shredded paper, a nesting box and a semi-enriched condition incorporating a range of modifications...

A study compared the behavior of rats kept under standard conditions with the behavior of those from enriched, semi-enriched, and single-housed conditions to determine whether standard conditions have detrimental effects on nonhuman animal welfare. The subjects were 35 female Hooded Norway rats. Using an emergence box, open field, and Hebb-Williams...

Public concern with the caging conditions of animals kept in laboratories led to research assessing the standard conditions of rats housed in New Zealand laboratories. A total of 113 rats were used in experiments of four basic types. The experiments presented in the first and second chapters assessed the behaviours of rats housed in enriched, stand...

Public concern with the caging conditions of animals kept in laboratories led to research assessing the standard conditions of rats housed in New Zealand laboratories. A total of 113 rats were used in experiments of four basic types. The experiments presented in the first and second chapters assessed the behaviours of rats housed in enriched, stand...

Spine title: Hen's recognition of video images. Thesis (M. Soc. Sc. Psychology)--University of Waikato, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-86)