Animal Welfare - Science topic

Many thanks for your reply, I will give it some thought!

You're very welcome!

It's very much important but neglected topic in today's world. In the recent pandemic also animals have been neglected. At this period so much animals are having suffered hunger a lot. There was no one you could feed them and the NGO's also gon shut down too. There was no one beside them so is very important topic about to talk or research.

Dear Francesco Nardelli interesting question. I never thought about this. Please have a look at the following recent link:

(published April 7, 2021)

Polar is the best way to go. The chest belt is worth trying. I recommend contacting directly Polar, they have the longest experience with measuring ECG recordings.

It would be worth to try microcomputer-based devices (Raspberry Pi and similar ones). What you need is a microcomputer, wifi, and electrodes on a chest belt. It can cost in the order of tens of dollars.

Some colleagues from electronic faculty can put it together. 12 bits wide potential recordings exported into the CSV file will serve as a satisfactory input for any software evaluating ECG recordings.

When you got ECG, you can use complexity measures to follow the complexity of the ECGs. It gives much more data than HRV.

Dear Zharif Zulkarnail

Thank you for your idea. We have tried PCA analysis based on elemental composition "Elemental composition of pork meat from conventional and animal welfare farms by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and ICP-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and their authentication via multivariate chemometric analysis" . We are trying better chemical method for distinguishing between animal welfare and non welfare meat.

Thank you

i cannot add anything personally, but Stevan Harnad at Universite du Quebec a Montreal would be a good person to contact.

good proposition

Roger Mason Thank you sir for your blessings

Take a look for animal welfare in zoos:

Thank you for inviting me to publish in this respected journal. Hope you more and more success and I am ready to cooperate 

Emad

Please take a look at the following PDF attachments.

Interesting question following

Dear Michelle,

I recommend you to contact Dra. Cristiane Schilbach Pizzutto . She's a very well known specialist that works with enrichment and animal behaviour in primates.

She's else the president of the Animal Welfare Committee of the Veterinarian Council here.

Best regards.

I would suggest that you contact the Reptile Keepers at the zoos/aquariums that have good populations/displays of a number of crocodilians. They are often conducting research on behavioral enrichment, know of unpublished work, and have ideas on what not to do. One way to find the keepers easily is to find out who keeps the breeders log or the taxonomic group information and they can get you good contact information.

That's a great question. Philosophically, animal law and environmental law respond to different imperatives, and legally they have different objects. Environment is an intrinsically anthropic concept, after all the environment is what surrounds men. The protection of biodiversity, in international law and in most national legal systems, typically is considered part of environmental law, and as such it not concerned by the wellbeing of wildlife, but by its conservation for anthropic reasons (moral, economical, etc). Even though animal law has many links with environmental law, is a different branch of law.

This link of article is helpful

Greeting

Our journal Ethnoentomology specialises on ethnoentomology and cultural entomology. www.ethnoentomology.cz

The Group of Eastern-European Ethnobiologists is also very interesting. They organise Eastern European Ethnobiology Workshops every couple of years.

Dear Helen

, I am very much interested in this research , as I am doing LLM Environmental Law , at University of Sussex- United Kingdom

Thank you for providing further details . 

The short answer is 'no'. A longer answer is as follows: Species naturally change their ranges over time, usually just by small amounts - invading areas contiguous with where they lived before - but sometimes by long-distance dispersal even across ocean gaps. Monkeys reached South America from Africa, presumably by rafting on trees washed out to sea, for example. Over 30 million years [please check that number!] they have radiated into many new species, adapted to their new environment, and their competitors (sloths, marsupials etc.) and predators. Clearly they are now native, and so will the descendants of grey squirrels in Europe be after 30 million years. So 'yes', at some point between 0 and 30 million years. Where you draw the line is pretty arbitrary. Is the dingo native in Australia after 4000 [again check!) year? No, but it is on its way: genetically and behaviorally distinct from the dogs that came with people, but still the same species.

Oups, my apologies for missing the s! I am sorry to hear that conservation efforts came to a halt. Sadly, it won't be the first ones doomed by lack of political will and law enforcement...

As for the communication of your results, pre-prints can be an option if you want to discuss your methods and findings in more details with the community.

Dave Druce is the ecologist of the park and should be able to direct you to the correct person at game capture

Dr Dave J. Druce

Park Ecologist (Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park)

Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife

Hluhluwe Research Centre

Tel: +27 (0) 35 562 0606

Cell: +27 (0) 82 315 7249

E-mail: druced@kznwildlife.com

Many thanks for the help, much appreciated

Hi Eduardo.

What a great subject!  I am not aware of any studies on the following, but anecdotally, I have seen training increase the self-confidence of anxious animals.  Such animals are initially difficult to train because positive reinforcement training requires that an animal do something in order to be rewarded.  Anxious animals tend to freeze when they are put into situations that demand that they act, so it's difficult (comparatively speaking) to get them to do something for which they can be rewarded.  In other words, training for them is initially not enriching --- it's stressful.  Once they figure out the rules of the game, though, they become eager to participate, because while they are participating, they have some control over what happens in their lives.  Performing a behavior becomes a way of demanding a treat.  Such control improves the welfare of all animals, but it has seemed to me that it is especially beneficial for those with anxious personalities.  I'd guess this effect would occur even with Skinner box training, but it would certainly fit in with the cognitive bias testing mentioned above.  I would expect cognitive bias to become more positive as an anxious animal gains more confidence.  Anyway, I'd love to see this hypothesis explored scientifically.

In essence, training teaches an animal to think about controlling its environment, so an animal that has learned trial-and-error is probably more likely to benefit from other enrichment tools (e.g., foraging devices) or to find ways to enrich itself.  An animal that has learned to think in this way could be able to benefit from more complicated enrichment devices that would take up more of its time.  I would expect that the brain changes seen in animals in enriched environments would be even more obvious in animals enriched through training.

For the period of time it is being trained, an animal does not experience the boredom of confinement.  Making human interactions positive reduces stress and provides some social stimuli for isolated animals.  These factors combined (and probably others that don't come immediately to mind) should help reduce stereotypies.  It would be easy to check something of that type.

I think there are all sorts of ways to explore training as enrichment.  If you are training husbandry behaviors, you would be killing two birds with one stone (so to speak) --- or maybe even three birds, because husbandry-trained animals reduce handler stress, too.  Best of luck to you in your endeavors.

Wendy 

Dr Osho department of animal production and health Federal University of Technology Akure,  Nigeria and Professor I Adebayo of the department of animal health and production of the Federal University of Technology Akure,  Nigeria 

See my Leiden University blog Animal Rights in Anthropology (based on recent book Culture and Conservation: Beyond Anthropocentrism) :http://www.leidenanthropologyblog.nl/articles/Beyond-multispecies-ethnography-Engaging-anthropology-with-animal-rights  

Also, see this debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldnYTYMx-k

Hi, regardless the element of the sample if they are files, records, animals, lab resutls or people, the sample size is calculated similarly.

To do power analysis to estimate your sample size, you have to write your hypothesis, and based on that you decide what statistical test you will use. It should be one of the inferential statistics. so you need to determine the following: alpha {standard to be .05}, power [standard to be .80], effect size {small, moderate, or large, each test has its own value, you can find these values in the net}. Then download free programs to calculate the sample size such as G. power.

Dear friend,

I have a suggestion to you., there several articles in this area, but i h@ve another suggestion. There is one of the best distinguished proffesors in Iran with the name of Prof. M. J. Zamir who is my supervisor and have several valid books not only in this field but also in others.

He will be a valuable source for researches, his page is:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/M_Javad_Zamiri?_sg=SHH4KBLwKIGT%2FTjSly8EsITvsAAE4Oo%2FBE4TWY9Ea5eoL%2Fg2UQ237wPi%2BLe0GR%2BNKhww8NgAkyW3QGn7zKSYLQ%3D%3D.

Regards,

Mehdi

negative or positive presentation of animals is  purely culture specific and not amenable to generalizations and stereotypical pigeonholing .

Hi Vivi,

I am actually doing  a review of lameness detection/diagnosis tools/technologies at the moment. So far, as far as I have read in the literature, only the StepMatrix, and some pedometers and accelerometers as someone has mentioned, are commercially available. This is not to say there are not others, they have just not been demonstrated as such in the literature as being commercially available.

Vivi, I would be interested to read the report regarding farmers using technologies for lameness detection.

The OIE (World Animal Health Organization) provides guidance for free roaming dogs, which be accessed online:

OIE, 2014. Stray dog population control, Chapter 7.7 OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code - Version 7 - 07/07/2014. 

You may also wish to examine the recommendations of the International Companion Animal Management Coalition, Humane Dog Population Management Guidance, which describes several strategies using case studies,one of which is catch, neuter, release. 

In Colombia we have a law that request the construction of municipal pens to house cattle and other farm animals that are in the city.  Actually this is just a law but the real situation is the municipal pens do not exist in many cities.  Abandoned cows are given to farmers or to abattoirs.

Jonathan -- apology accepted.  I am familiar with some of your work -- keep it up but always be careful with the words that you use because there are many in this business with an agenda to 'prove' their preconceived beliefs that are not evidence-based.

I do not think that there is any one in the business who denies the existence of nociceptors or the fact that they synapse with tracts that go to the brain and initiate nocifensive behaviour.

I also am of the opinion that whether or not they are aware has no bearing on the welfare question.  All fish workers should always be concerned for the welfare of the fish they are working with independent of any potential awareness.

don

After a lit review, we went with a simplified system which we are validating

I am working with that, Terry and may tell you the improvements are great.

Dear Tim,

Search for Welfare Quality, a European project to objectify and measure animal welfare in pig husbandry. That may give you insight.

Best regards, Robert.

Hi Bruce. Thanks for the article.

Personally, doing research in zoos, the biggest enrichment impact I can think of is forage feeding accmopanied by natural bedding (e.g., mulch). Primate have to spend a much larger portion of time searching for food producing activity budgets (for foraging) that are more in-line with what is seen in the wild. Other naturalist manipulanda include browse (promotes more appropriate nest-building/resting behaviors, also feeding/foraging), probe-mounds (for chimps, promote tool-use feeding).

There's a large literature for this field. You may also benefit from looking at the biomedical enrichment literature (promoting species-typical behavior). Many of the devices/enrichments are not naturalistic but have been associated with more species-typical behavior profiles & activity budgets after being introduced.

Another issue may not be the nature of the enrichment but the practicalities or its presentation (e.g., how presented, predictability, accessibility).

Just a few (recent)

Birkett, L. P., & Newton-Fisher, N. E. (2011). How abnormal is the behaviour of captive, zoo-living chimpanzees?. PLoS One, 6(6), e20101.

Mas, J., Stafford, R., & Jensvold, M. L. (2013). Captive chimpanzee preference for environmental enrichment: naturalistic vs. artificial.

Zaragoza, F., Ibáñez, M., Mas, B., Laiglesia, S., & Anzola, B. (2011). Influence of environmental enrichment in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes spp.) and gorillas (gorilla gorilla gorilla): behavior and faecal cortisol levels. Revista Científica, 21(5), 447-456.

A tip! The EU Project "Welfare Quality" has developed a different and more specific concept of animal Welfare, which builds from the 5 freedoms. It's called "The 12 criteria of animal welfare", it is avaiable through google. It is invented to be applied to assessing welfare of farm animals but indeed the criteria it can be applied to all domestic animals.

Hello Dr David

It is very interesting to look on the topics. I am currently working on understanding forest biophysical parameters using synthetic aperture radar. I am interested in studying more about ecological footprint and economics of CO2 reduction. Hope we could speak more and work out further.

Mohamed Musthafa

If a specific teaching programme is offered (e.g. a MS), I would suggest the closing date to apply and the fees.

Owner reported and in person behavioural assessments differ, but it is controversial as to which is better. The two do not correlate particularly well (they tend to have high sensitivity OR specificity, but not both). The presence of absence of the owner during behavioural testing does have a huge effect on the observed behaviour. Probably the best quality "in-person" welfare assessment I know of was by Palestrini, where they videotaped dogs at home alone, however you would need to do it in the presence of the owner too unless you just want to look for separation anxiety. Owner reported behavioural assessments can be good for finding the presence of behaviour problems using the CBARQ, but I don't think you will get a great correlation with any measure of underlying welfare as measured by other techniques. This is not to say it is incorrect however, as it could be said that dogs with behaviour problems (aggression, phobias, separation anxiety) are more likely to have compromised welfare and so in this sense it will give you some answers. For measuring temperament or behavioural traits, I believe that assessment in a behavioural paradigm is superior. Perhaps you could instead look at whether dogs recently bred for working (such as the border collie or kelpie) are more likely to have behavior problems if they do not have a "job" to do. Owners are likely to notice these behaviour problems because they are a problem to the owner too and not just the dog (in most situations). You would be more likely to get a meaningful answer from this question, and it would be applicable. I think that a lot of these highly driven working dogs do not cope well in the home environment without a job to do! I think we notice this present clinically as behaviour problems such as phobias, aggression and separation anxiety. I hope this helps.

Just a note: Art.9 on wild animals is not particularly relevant if your aim is to do work of ecological relevance, especially if it is in natural environments. I guess this article is mostly aimed at medical and laboratory work, like most of the regulations on animal experimentation.

I would ask someone who are in charge of the ethical permits at the institution that provides them. They should know. If you do work without permit, when you really should have one, most journals will not accept that work for publication (and it may be that your institution will lose its permit to work on animals, if you are caught doing research without permits)- in general you have to provide the license number in the paper.

As it is post-larvae, I would guess that you do need some kind of permit.

Yes both tests are very stressful for mouse but firstly train your mice - as all these procedures usually require some training exercise so that mouse knows what he needs to do to recover/survive/escape. It helps if you know your mice too...you might check out the International Mouse Phenotyping Resource of Standardised Screens for specific details of methods

If you plan to do these experiments on the same cohort of mice I think I would do the water maze first because it triggers survival instinct and they will  associate you with rescue &  will trust you more. Fear conditioning is best done in mice that live in small groups together so that they can reassure each other that all is OK now they have returned to their home cage. Solitary housed mice don't have the luxury of reassurance from another mouse so it will be more stressful for them ! Good luck

Most of the farmers prefer to keep their hens to late production period for higher egg weight and economic aspects rather than substituting them with new birds. The traditional molting methods including feed removal have been criticized by welfare groups. But the feed removal (fasting) is still the most common method to induce a molt in chicken layers.

Some animal lit:

Barber, J. C. E. (2009). Programmatic approaches to assessing and improving animal welfare in zoos and aquariums. Zoo Biology, 28(6), 519–30. doi:10.1002/zoo.20260

Panzera, M. (2013). Sickness and Abnormal Behaviors as Indicators of Animal Suffering. Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism, 1(June), 23–31. doi:10.7358/rela-2013-001-panz

Scott, E. M., Nolan, A. M., & Fitzpatrick, J. L. (2001). Conceptual and Methodological Issues Related to Welfare Assessment: A Framework for Measurement. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section A - Animal Science, 51(sup030), 5–10. doi:10.1080/090647001316922983

Dear Daniela,

indeed I have considered a whole body system because the animals are more free and you could provide NPS such in the humans. I assume that intratracheal would not have the same distribuition as given via aerosol. Additionally, in the WBP chamber some behavior could be conducted such freezing responses and increase in respiratory rate could be assessed as measure of fear.

What do you think since you long experience also with Dr. Hen and other behavioral groups?

Thanks,

Stefano

Hi Zi,

for the replacement, just consider that LD50 is not accepted anymore in Europe as experimental method, apart from Regulatory studies. Hence , you shoud try to set up a good in viro test to check the best concentration to test in vivo.

For the reduction, I would suggest, as mentioned before, to carry out the power analysis accordind to the statystical test you want to use; this website from Prof. Festing could help you a lot http://www.3rs-reduction.co.uk/.

For the replacement, decide the humane endpoints of your experiment (examples are % of weight loss in 48hs, particular behaviour, dehydration, inability to move hind legs or others): if your animals pass that point you should euthanize them; give them a good enrichment and provide analgesics.

Hope it helps, good luck!

Viola

hi ..i am experianced  in CLIA method ,its really good.both insulin and free t3,freet4 and Tsh like immune assays are good in that.

Might check out this site for reference to US FDA CFR 21 regulations. Hope this helps.

Chip, I think they are concerned about the number as well. The one person I spoke to gasped when I said out project could result in 250,000 fishes over a 3-year period. I can make some arguments about how we have reduced the number of fishes taken compared to previous work, but the question is will they accept that.

Hi Josh...I think you are familiar with the work we do here at the Lester Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at Lincoln Park Zoo. Human-animal interactions are among several areas of interest for us and we have looked at this from several perspectives. (a) We have found relatively little effect of crowds on our apes' behavior across 10 years of study...we are writing up a paper right now that will summarize those findings; (b) Chelluri et al. (2013) describes an aspect of keeper-animal interaction in that even unscheduled, informal but positive interactions can have unintended consequences for the animals; (c) We examined the influence of building design on visitor behavior (e.g. Ross et al., 2012) but also have a forthcoming paper in final revisions that demonstrates that progressive building design can positively influence visitor attitudes about zoo apes and wildlife in general. To say that zoos have no positive effects on visitors is, in my view, shortsighted. The question is more aptly framed around evaluating potential positive and negative effects.

There is alot of work out there on the potential negative effects of zoo visitors on primate behavior/welfare but there is good reason to evaluate each of these studies in light of the specific facilities. Facilities that provide appropriate choices for zoo animals often do not have the negative effects described in some studies (see Ross et al., 2005 for a commentary on such a study).

In any case, it's an interesting field of study and I am glad you and others are taking a broad view of the potential questions. Sorry I will miss the ASP symposium.

First and foremost you should consult with your animal care/veterinary staff for advice and training. Another poster has provided a JOVE link - there are multiple protocol videos posted.

We've used Lotek LTD 100 TDRs in the past on both nesting loggerheads and immature Kemp's ridleys. Looks like the current model is LAT 1000 series but check first with company for marine turtles.

There is a huge literature on the subject, as earlier comments have made clear, but some of it is problematic, methodologically. For example, the usual design is the simplest: Before-After comparison (A-B), but better is A-B-A, to see if return to baseline or not. Further, most studies don't use comprehensive ethograms or activity budgets, but concentrate on a few (e.g.) dissipation of bad habits or enhancement of good habits. This does not allow for trade-off complications, e.g. increase in foraging may come at cost of socialising. Further, few studies consider the possibility that 'enrichment' may be stressful, e.g. adding food-vending devices that may increase rates of agonism. Finally, although the main independent variable (usually introduced objects) may be clear, the dependent variables may be less so. Are rates of behavioural output validated with regard to natural behavioural patterns?

You might find this conceptual framework paper useful too:

Hello Bert! first, how many chickens will you monitor? and do you want to do it with cameras, is it an ethology work?

I agree with Linda,

Aristotle describes human characteristics in terms of vices and the opposite - virtues. Sadly, people's language shapes attitudes as we know in humans, hence all the fuss about being PC (Politically Correct for the computer boffins). I never really understood the logic of describing crib biting and weaving in horses as vices, but it led to the most horrendous surgery in horses when the cause was thought to be a negative mental state, the animal having a vice to displeasure the owner. We have advanced a little bit since then, but think of the adjectives we use to describe foxes (cunning, sly, evil, pest etc) in order to reinforce our views of the animal. Let's leave vices in the history box where they now belong, and call them stereotypic behaviours with varying causes that should be tackled.

Best to all,

David

Jessica: I checked with my staff and they tell me that they see the head quivering fairly frequently with both parma wallabies and red kangaroos. They seem to do it for no particular reason- it doesn't seem to be a stress response or a breeding behavior. We've never seen any of the macropods spray urine at each other. Keep in mind, however, that our parma wallabies (although recently descended with wild caught imports) have never been housed with more than one mature male in the mob. Our red kangaroos, on the other hand, are descendants of many generations of captive breeding. We've had more than one adult male in that mob, but old was older and probably did not pose much of a social threat to the breeding male.

This is not species specific but is worth a read for anyone starting from scratch and setting up welfare assessment protocols so it may have some useful info or references for you.

There is a well-knowwn behavioral principle called "the goal gradient effect" that may be relevant here. An example that has been in the psychology literature for more than 50 yrs. is the observation that when rats are trained to run down a runway for food, the closer they come to the goal box, the faster they run. In other words, proximity plays a role in determining the strength of a reinforcer. When you pit the shade reinforcer against the food reinforcer you are essentially testing the reinforcers' relative strengths.

Christophe,

I completely agree. I would prefer an ending of castration rather than a support of castration with anaesthesia. As we have seen there are attempts to make a commercially available anaesthesia for use by farmers to perform castration without pain. However, the favoured method of induction of unconsciousness is CO2. This is what I am objecting to as it is very unreliable as an induction agent due to user error (it is easy to get it wrong), it has a high mortality associated with it, and it provides no post-castration pain relief which is essential.

There was another paper in Animal (the same journal) recommending this technique, which I wrote in and objected to. I had to fight with the editor to get the letter published but I think it is really important that if we are working towards animal welfare we do so with a reliable evidence base.

I attach the link to my letter below.

Dear Colleges

In my opinion all species of animals (mammals, birds, some invertebrates such as octopus) may experience pain. However, as far I know we have evidences (anatomical, physiologic, behavioural etc) of animal consciousness similar to us humans for the vertebrates. So, I am suggesting that we must focus our concerns on the welfare of vertebrate animals but it does not mean that invertebrates are completly out of this debate

The best definition of animal welfare, in my view, was provided by professor David Fraser of UBC in his book "Understanding Animal Welfare" that is the following: "An animal has a good life if it is healthy and thriving, without distortions (genetic, hormonal, dietary or other) that enhance one aspect of its bodily functioning to detriment of others; if its behavioural and physiological systems are not pushed to such extremes that there is a breakdown, or significant risk of breakdown, in health or development; if it can enjoy life, and if negative states - pain, fear, frustration and others - are not so severe or prolonged as to constitute suffering; if it is free to live under circumstances that it might itself choose; and if it is not prevented from doing those things that it is strongly motivated to do" Thanks for your attention.

Five freedoms in addition to a naturalistic environment.

Dear Miljan Erbez

I also experienced this problem. I think most probably it because of increasing the population of sucking flies in that period of time. As i saw in dairy farms which involved with this problem, the cows overcrowding in a very small space and hiding theirs heads and bodies.