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BioScience 67: 301–305. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. All rights
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doi:10.1093/biosci/biw177 Advance Access publication 1 February 2017
More Training in Animal Ethics
Needed for European Biologists
MIRIAM A. ZEMANOVA
Research on basic animal biology and ecology is essential for increasing our knowledge and for improving species conservation. However, it often
involves the suffering or killing of a certain number of animals, and such matters are rarely debated. Moreover, in providing education in ethics,
biology seems to lag behind other disciplines of life sciences. Here, I first review several situations in biological research and species management
in which animal ethics issues arise. Second, in order to determine the current status of the ethics education of undergraduate students in
biological sciences in Europe, I report the results of the evaluation of curricula at 150 universities offering such programs. Surprisingly, merely
9% of the programs offered ethics as a mandatory and stand-alone course. I consider this a significant gap in biological education and advocate
that biologists should receive proper training in animal ethics.
Keywords: animal ethics, biology, conservation, education
With advances in science and a drive for more
knowledge, our society faces increasingly significant
legal, social, political, economic, and ethical challenges.
The ethical considerations are particularly crucial for the
formulation of scientific research practice (Shammo and
Resnik 2009). One area of potential ethical issues in science
is research on animals. The discussion on this topic usu-
ally revolves around the use of animals in pharmaceutical
and medical experiments (e.g., Gross and Tolba 2015, Joffe
etal. 2016), but the suffering and killing of animals are also
a frequent part of research in basic biology and species
management, and this is very rarely discussed (Crozier and
Schulte-Hostedde 2015). Biologists often need to consider
the ethical aspects of their practice, and this is only pos-
sible if they are encouraged and given the tools to do so.
This should start with the education of biology students. In
the following, I provide a brief summary of ethical issues
involving animals in biological research and species con-
servation, and I assess to what extent European universities
include ethics in the curricula of study programs in biologi-
cal sciences.
The invasiveness of biological research
Research in ecology and biology remains crucial for increas-
ing our knowledge and improving the management and
conservation of species in the midst of the current biodiver-
sity crisis (Butchart etal. 2010, Pereira etal. 2010), but this
usually means invasive sampling of a certain number of ani-
mals. Marking and sampling practices include taking blood
samples, toe-clipping amphibians and reptiles, hot-branding
marine mammals, and using implants or subcutaneous dyes
(Sutherland et al. 2004, Schmidt and Schwarzkopf 2010,
Walker et al. 2012). The latest research shows that it is not
only vertebrates that can experience pain (Elwood 2011,
Sneddon etal. 2014, Elwood and Adams 2015), but marking
techniques that might affect animals’ welfare but not their
survival are still considered acceptable (Cattet 2013). Even
research not requiring invasive methods, such as behav-
ioral studies, could potentially involve animal suffering
(Buchanan etal. 2015). The viability of a population is thus
often prioritized over the interests and rights of individual
animals (Farmer 2013).
Dilemmas in species conservation
Because concerns for species preservation often arise from
ethical or moral values, ethics is an inherent part of biological
conservation (Cohen 2014). Nonetheless, animal ethics and
welfare may not always be explicitly considered (Harrington
et al. 2013). Whereas conservation managers seem to have
goals similar to those of people favoring animal rights, wild-
life management often includes culling in order to reduce
the population size and protect other species or habitat
(Ehrenfeld 1991, Woodroffe and Redpath 2015). For instance,
approximately three million kangaroos are killed each year
to lower their impact on agricultural production in Australia
(Boom etal. 2012). Culling is also sometimes used to man-
age the high population density of African elephants, which
causes significant harm to the ecosystem (Marris 2007).
Sometimes, animals need to be relocated or reintroduced,
with the aim to recover a species population of conservation
AQ1
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302 BioScience •March 2017 / Vol. 67 No. 3 http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
concern. However, animal welfare is not always considered
under these circumstances either, even though significant
challenges such as mortality, disease, or human–animal
conflict often occur (Harrington et al. 2013). Specifically,
there have been several accounts of unintentional disease
transmission from captive to wild populations (Woodford
and Rossiter 1994), and stress and maladaptation to the new
environment can result in high death rates of the reintro-
duced animals (Teixeira etal. 2007, Harrington etal. 2013).
Given that reintroduction programs are associated with
significant financial costs and a failure rate of up to 50%
(Fischer and Lindenmayer 2000), when is it acceptable to
conduct such projects? There is surprisingly little discussion
of ethics in the literature on reintroductions (Harrington
etal. 2013).
Another controversial topic is the eradication of invasive
species, which are species introduced to a location where
they spread and reproduce rapidly, causing severe problems
to native organisms (Pysek etal. 2004). Even just one inva-
sive species can substantially change the whole ecosystem, as
was the case with the introduction of the Nile perch (Lates
niloticus) into the African lakes (Kaufman 1992). The pre-
ferred approach to dealing with invaders is to prevent their
arrival and establishment, but when the species is already
present, the default action is removal, which is often lethal
to the individuals (Genovesi 2005). Still, invasive and pest
animals do not have a smaller capacity to experience pain
than other species, but the tools for their control that are
considered best for animal welfare may not be very effective
(Littin 2010).
Stress on researchers’ self-regulation
The examples listed above illustrate that biologists and
conservation practitioners frequently face complex ethical
challenges in their work and need to weigh the potential
gain in knowledge and benefit to the population or eco-
system against the negative impacts on individual animals
or species (Minteer and Collins 2005, 2008). One would
therefore hope that the scientific community enforces ethi-
cal considerations—for example, as a part of the peer review
of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals.
Whereas journal publishers increasingly require research-
ers to consider animal welfare, not all journals provide strict
ethical guidelines to which authors need to conform, and
as long as a study adheres to legal regulations, editors may
not examine its ethical dimensions (Marsh and Eros 1999,
Vucetich and Nelson 2007). This is particularly the case with
studies that involve invertebrates, which have limited legal
protection (Andrews 2011). In these situations, codes of
practice and policies are important, but they may not be very
useful when a researcher needs to decide between different
ethical principles that may be in conflict (Shrader-Frechette
and McCoy 1999).
Therefore, the assessment of whether certain practices
are justified often depends entirely on the judgment of the
scientist (e.g., Farnsworth and Rosovsky 1993, McCoy and
Berry 2008). But the question remains: Are biologists actu-
ally trained to assess the ethical dimensions of their practice
that involves animals?
Lack of training in ethics at European universities
To answer this question, I assessed the extent of courses in
biological fields (i.e., biology, ecology, and life sciences) in
undergraduate (bachelor’s degree) programs in Europe. The
undergraduate stage is the time when students start to learn
what it means and entails to be a scientist, and any educa-
tion in ethics should be incorporated as early as possible
(Eisen and Berry 2002). Using a sample of 150 universities
in 36 European countries (figure 1, supplemental table S1),
I searched for evidence of courses in ethics by review-
ing documents describing the program curricula, which
were available on university websites. I found that only 14
programs (9%) provided ethics as a stand-alone and com-
pulsory course (figure 1). These programs were offered at
universities in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy,
Poland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. However, this
still does not mean that ethical issues pertaining to animal
research are being discussed. In terms of a specific content
of the teaching, ethical issues about genetically modified
organisms, the role of science in society, or gene therapy
were among the most often listed topics. Twenty-nine uni-
versities (19%) offered ethics only as an optional course
or as a part of another course. But the majority, 107 (72%)
out of the 150 surveyed programs, did not offer any ethics
training to the students (figure 1). This situation does not
seem to be specific to Europe. For instance, Zaikowski and
Garrett (2004) reported more than 10 years ago that most
undergraduate programs in the United States did not require
an ethics course to receive a degree in the biosciences. The
status apparently has not significantly changed since then
(Smith 2014).
The reason for the observed lack of training in ethics
might be that this type of education has historically not been
considered to be of much importance in the life sciences
(Douglas 2009). Through verification and the elimination
of bias, science has strived to distinguish itself from the
humanities (Reiser and Heitman 1993). And in the case
of animal use and lethal management, compassion for the
organism may be thought to interfere with scientific objec-
tivity (Nelson etal. 2016).
Necessity of training in ethics
If morality was common sense, we would not hear of so
many controversies. It is unfortunate that often, only reveal-
ing the circumstances of serious breaches of professional
and ethical guidelines leads to a call for more ethics among
scientists (e.g., Vucetich and Nelson 2007, Mitcham and
Snieder 2014). The basic ethical principles are usually shown
to us by our parents and schoolteachers, but the professional
ethics of students and early researchers are often mod-
eled by the behavior of the principal investigator in the lab
(Eisen and Berry 2002). However, given that the majority of
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Figure 1. Lack of training in ethics at the European universities. The map shows 150 surveyed undergraduate programs
in the biological sciences that include ethics as a stand-alone and compulsory course in their curricula (n = 14; triangles),
and programs in which ethics is included only as a part of another course, as an optional course, or not offered (n = 136;
circles). See supplemental table S1 for more details.
researchers did not obtain explicit training in ethics, how
can we expect them to provide an example for and educate
the next generation of biologists?
The contentious issues of research and management of
animals that were discussed above could be approached
from several different angles, and an ethics education can
offer formal tools and concepts for building arguments and
rationalizing decisions (Jamieson 2008, Minteer and Collins
2008). Courses in ethics would provide students with the
key skills of reasoning, critical thinking, and argumentation
and enable researchers to identify and analyze the ethical
aspects of animal use and conservation, as well as use these
skills beyond their undergraduate studies (Nelson and
Vucetich 2012, Crozier and Schulte-Hostedde 2015). How
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this incorporation of ethics into the curriculum could be
implemented has been discussed elsewhere (e.g., Zaikowski
and Garrett 2004, Herreid 2014, Smith 2014). The most
effective approach might be to provide specific examples
of case studies combined with discussion of the emerging
practical guidelines that are specific to the research and
management of wildlife animals (Curzer etal. 2013, Lindsjo
etal. 2016).
Biological research and species conservation are valuable
and needed, but we should reflect upon and acknowledge
ethical problems when they emerge. Research on animals
remains a controversial topic in both scientific and public
debates (van Zutphen 2002, Mervis 2015), and scientists
must be able to justify and communicate their research
cl e arly.
Conclusions
There are several possible circumstances in animal research
and conservation in which ethical issues arise, and ethically
conducted research and management are possible only if
scientists are properly trained. The results presented here
should provide a useful overview of the lack of training in
ethics in European biological education. Hopefully, aware-
ness is the first step on the way to improvement.
Acknowledgments
I thank Elisa Aaltola and Gieri Bolliger for encouragement
and Gerald Heckel for support. This manuscript was greatly
improved by comments from John Vucetich and the two
anonymous reviewers.
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Miriam A. Zemanova (miriam.andela.zemanova@gmail.com) is a graduate
student at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, in
Switzerland, working at the interface of population genetics and community
ecology. She is also interested in animal and ecological ethics, animal welfare,
and humane education of biologists.
