Editor's introduction to the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science

Animal welfare names a science in which investigators ask the general question: What are the capacities, sensibilities, needs, and interests of animals as they relate to their welfare? The objects of study in this emerging field are exclusively animals other than humans. Numerous contexts give rise to this interest in nonhuman animal welfare: The intensification of the use of animals since World War II, particularly on the farm and in the laboratory. The development of moral philosophies that establish nonhuman animals as objects of moral consideration. The advances in science in fields that have added to our understanding of animals, such as cognitive ethology. Advances in technology that give us more direct access to human physiology and psychology and undercut the tradition of using animal models. The success of the contemporary animal rights movement in placing the issue of the treatment of animals before the public.     

The Dying Animal

The study of animal death is poised to blossom into an exciting new interdisciplinary field—and one with profound relevance for bioethics. Areas of interest include the biology and evolution of death-related behavior in nonhuman animals, as well as human social, psychological, cultural, and moral attitudes toward and practices related to animal death. In this paper, I offer a brief overview of what we know about death-related behavior in animals. I will then sketch some of the bioethical implications of this emerging field of research.     

Sentimentality and the Enemies of Animal Protection

ABSTRACT

Ethical arguments promoting a higher moral status for nonhuman animals have developed a pace since the 1960s. These developments, however, have not been matched by a radical transformation in the way we treat nonhuman animals. In the 1990s, an alternative discourse emerged—the morality of care. Sympathy, empathy, compassion and pity form a family of sentiments that constitute the caring ethic. Sentimentality, the term associated with sentiment, is invariably invoked in our relationships to nonhuman animals. Although carrying positive connotations in the eighteenth century, sentimentality has since become a word of contempt and has been used to discredit our natural sympathy for nonhumans and to disparage animal protection reforms, both past and present. Here I argue for the rehabilitation of the term sentimentality and support Rorty's view that we need to create a moral sentimental education if we are to improve the world, and in particular the world as experienced by nonhuman animals. I believe that this educational enterprise should be directed at the pet-owning group, who are generally speaking already committed animal-lovers and who could be powerful agents for change in securing more justice for nonhuman animals.     

Primate Communication: By Nature Honest, or by Experience Wise?

We review evolutionary views on honesty and deception and their application to studies of nonhuman primate communication. There is evidence that some primate signals are likely to be accurate on the basis of costliness. They appear most often in contexts that include overtly competitive interactions in which unrelated individuals have limited access to information about one another. However, both game theoretic models and most empirical work suggest that costly signals are not often likely to be the basis for honest communication in nonhuman primates. Inexpensive signaling can exist in contexts wherein communication occurs among related animals, something common among many nonhuman primate societies. Another condition in which inexpensive signaling is possible and that is also typical of nonhuman primates, is when sender and receiver both benefit from coordinated interactions. Additionally, when individuals interact repeatedly and can use past interactions to assess the honesty of signals and to modify future response to signals, low-cost signals can evolve. Nonhuman primates appear to deal with the problem of deception via skeptical responding, which can be largely accounted for by learning rules and the fact that they live in stable social groups and can recognize one another and recall past interactions.     

Animal psychology and ethology in Britain and the emergence of professional concern for the concept of ethical cost

It has been argued that if an animal is psychologically like us, there may be more scientific reason to experiment upon it, but less moral justification to do so. Some scientists deny the existence of this dilemma, claiming that although there are scientifically valuable similarities between humans and animals that make experimentation worthwhile, humans are at the same time unique and fundamentally different. This latter response is, ironically, typical of pre-Darwinian beliefs in the relationship between human and non-human animals. Another irony is that debate about such issues has facilitated the participation once more of philosophers in questions concerning experimental psychology: ironic because laboratory-oriented psychologists, especially since the turn of the last century, had been eager to establish the independence of their subject from any influence of philosophy and its investigative methods, as well as from any kind of anthropomorphism.In Britain, certainly more so than in the United States, ethical constraints have prevented the development of psychological research with animals along certain routes. By the 1980s British professional and academic societies had published codes of conduct and guidelines for their members, in part responding to public concern about the welfare of animals in the psychological laboratory. What led to the establishment of these codes and guidelines? This paper analyses the historical background against which professional concern for ethical cost in experimental animal psychology began to take shape, leading to the societies’ open pronouncements of the 1980s.     

Disposition of Shelter Companion Animals From Nonhuman Animal Control Officers,Citizen Finders,and Relinquished by Caregivers

Many private not-for-profit humane societies have contracts with their local government entities to provide nonhuman animal control services that the law commonly requires the government to provide to its residents. These services normally have the humane organization providing either the total animal control program (including field work to pick up stray animal companions, enforcing local animal ordinances, and the impounding of stray companion animals) or just the boarding of companion animals with no fieldwork or enforcement duties. Shelter companion animals normally come from three main sources: (a) stray or lost companion animals impounded by animal control field officers or animals impounded for violations of humane care regulations; (b) stray companion animals brought to the shelter by a resident who happens across, and catches, a lost companion animal and delivers the animal to the shelter; and (c) companion animals relinquished by their caregivers.     

Complex systems, evolution, and animal models

In this paper, we respond to arguments made concerning our position regarding animal models (Shelley, 2010) by briefly examining the fact that animals (human and nonhuman) are complex systems that have different evolutionary trajectories. This historical fact has implications for using animals as predictive models for human response to drugs and disease.     

Disposition of shelter companion animals from nonhuman animal control officers, citizen finders, and relinquished by caregivers

Many private not-for-profit humane societies have contracts with their local government entities to provide nonhuman animal control services that the law commonly requires the government to provide to its residents. These services normally have the humane organization providing either the total animal control program (including field work to pick up stray animal companions, enforcing local animal ordinances, and the impounding of stray companion animals) or just the boarding of companion animals with no fieldwork or enforcement duties. Shelter companion animals normally come from three main sources: (a) stray or lost companion animals impounded by animal control field officers or animals impounded for violations of humane care regulations; (b) stray companion animals brought to the shelter by a resident who happens across, and catches, a lost companion animal and delivers the animal to the shelter; and (c) companion animals relinquished by their caregivers.     

Longevity suppresses conflict in animal societies

Models of social conflict in animal societies generally assume that within-group conflict reduces the value of a communal resource. For many animals, however, the primary cost of conflict is increased mortality. We develop a simple inclusive fitness model of social conflict that takes this cost into account. We show that longevity substantially reduces the level of within-group conflict, which can lead to the evolution of peaceful animal societies if relatedness among group members is high. By contrast, peaceful outcomes are never possible in models where the primary cost of social conflict is resource depletion. Incorporating mortality costs into models of social conflict can explain why many animal societies are so remarkably peaceful despite great potential for conflict.     

Science, sentience, and animal welfare

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition.     

Understanding Nazi Animal Protection and the Holocaust

Abstract

It is well known that the Nazis treated human beings with extreme cruelty but it less widely recognized that the Nazis also took some pains to develop and pass extensive animal protection laws. How could the Nazis have professed such concern for animals while treating humans so badly? It would be easy to dismiss Nazi proclamations on animals as mere hypocrisy but there may be other explanations for the contradiction. For example, anecdotal reports and psychological evaluations of many prominent Nazis suggest they felt affection for animals but dislike of humans. Second, animal protection measures, whether sincere or not, may have been a legal veil to attack Jews and others considered undesirable. Third, the Nazis blurred moral distinctions between animals and people and tended to treat members of even the Master Race as animals at times. This article argues that at the core of the Nazi treatment of humans and animals was a reconstitution of society's boundaries and margins. All human cultures seek to protect what is perceived to be pure from that which is seen to be dangerous and polluting and most societies establish fairly clear boundaries between people and animals. In Nazi Germany, however, human identity was not contaminated by including certain animal traits but certain peoples were considered to be a very real danger to Aryan purity.     

Making space for traditions

For quite some time, the question of continuity across species with respect to culture has been linked in the academic world with definitional issues: What is culture, and how we can identify culture in a nonverbal species? 1 - 4 Behavioral scientists agree that behavioral traditions are that aspect of culture we can study in nonhuman animals, and we recognize that traditions are widespread in the animal kingdom (reviewed in Fragaszy and Perry, 5 see Laland and Hoppitt 6 ). However, confirming candidate traditions in nonhuman primates has proven frustratingly difficult. The difficulties experienced in identifying and studying traditions in nonhuman primates are correctable because they arise more from a combination of poor logic and conceptual confusion than from an inability to collect appropriate data. I argue that explicit evidence concerning social learning is necessary to evaluate the status of a behavioral practice as a tradition, and I suggest some ways that such evidence can be collected in natural settings using correlational methods and longitudinal designs. Clearer understanding of the social basis of traditions in nonhuman animals is essential to make headway in understanding their relation to human culture. No matter what else one includes in a definition of culture, a social basis for its existence is axiomatic.     

Vulnerable Subjects? The Case of Nonhuman Animals in Experimentation

The concept of vulnerability is deployed in bioethics to, amongst other things, identify and remedy harms to participants in research, yet although nonhuman animals in experimentation seem intuitively to be vulnerable, this concept and its attendant protections are rarely applied to research animals. I want to argue, however, that this concept is applicable to nonhuman animals and that a new taxonomy of vulnerability developed in the context of human bioethics can be applied to research animals. This taxonomy does useful explanatory work, helping to pinpoint the limitations of the 3Rs/welfare approach currently adopted in the context of animal experimentation. On this account, the 3Rs/welfare approach fails to deliver for nonhuman animals in experimentation because it effectively addresses only one element of their vulnerability (inherent) and paradoxically through the institution of Animal Ethics Committees intended to protect experimental animals in fact generates new vulnerabilities that exacerbate their already precarious situation.     

Animal morality: What is the debate about?

Empirical studies of the social lives of non-human primates, cetaceans, and other social animals have prompted scientists and philosophers to debate the question of whether morality and moral cognition exists in non-human animals. Some researchers have argued that morality does exist in several animal species, others that these species may possess various evolutionary building blocks or precursors to morality, but not quite the genuine article, while some have argued that nothing remotely resembling morality can be found in any non-human species. However, these different positions on animal morality generally appear to be motivated more by different conceptions of how the term “morality” is to be defined than by empirical disagreements about animal social behaviour and psychology. After delving deeper into the goals and methodologies of various of the protagonists, I argue that, despite appearances, there are actually two importantly distinct debates over animal morality going on, corresponding to two quite different ways of thinking about what it is to define “morality”, “moral cognition”, and associated notions. Several apparent skirmishes in the literature are thus cases of researchers simply talking past each other. I then focus on what I take to be the core debate over animal morality, which is concerned with understanding the nature and phylogenetic distribution of morality conceived as a psychological natural kind. I argue that this debate is in fact largely terminological and non-substantive. Finally, I reflect on how this core debate might best be re-framed.     

Policing and punishment across the domains of social evolution

Several decades of research in humans, other vertebrates, and social insects have offered fascinating insights into the dynamics of punishment (and its subset, policing), but authors have only rarely addressed whether there are fundamental joint principles underlying the maintenance of these behaviors. Here we present a punisher/bystander approach rooted in inclusive fitness logic to predict which individuals should take on punishing roles in animal societies. We apply our scheme to societies of eusocial Hymenoptera and nonhuman vertebrate social breeders, and we outline potential extensions for understanding conflict regulation among cells in metazoan bodies and unrelated individuals in human societies. We highlight that: 1) no social unit is expected to express punishment behavior unless it collects positive inclusive fitness benefits that surpass alternative benefits of bystanding; 2) punishment with public good benefits can be maintained through either direct fitness benefits (coercion) or indirect fitness benefits (correction) or both; 3) differences across social systems in the distributions of power, relatedness, and reproductive options drive variation in the extent to which individuals actively punish; and 4) inclusive fitness logic captures many punishment‐relevant evolutionary and ecological variables in a single framework that appears to apply across very different types of social arrangements. Synthesis Researchers have long observed that individuals in animal societies punish (and by extension, police) each other, but they have rarely investigated whether general principles underlie this behavior across social arrangements. In this paper, we present a punisher/bystander approach rooted in inclusive fitness logic to predict which individuals should take on punisher roles in animal societies. We apply the approach to eusocial insects and cooperatively breeding vertebrates and outline extensions towards the control of cancer cell lineages and punishment in human groups. We highlight how variation in specific social variables may drive differences in punishing/policing across the social domains.     

Aquatic animals, cognitive ethology, and ethics: questions about sentience and other troubling issues that lurk in turbid water

In this general, strongly pro-animal, and somewhat utopian and personal essay, I argue that we owe aquatic animals respect and moral consideration just as we owe respect and moral consideration to all other animal beings, regardless of the taxonomic group to which they belong. In many ways it is more difficult to convince some people of our ethical obligations to numerous aquatic animals because we do not identify or empathize with them as we do with animals with whom we are more familiar or to whom we are more closely related, including those species (usually terrestrial) to whom we refer as charismatic megafauna. Many of my examples come from animals that are more well studied but they can be used as models for aquatic animals. I follow Darwinian notions of evolutionary continuity to argue that if we feel pain, then so too do many other animals, including those that live in aquatic environs. Recent scientific data ('science sense') show clearly that many aquatic organisms, much to some people's surprise, likely suffer at our hands and feel their own sorts of pain. Throughout I discuss how cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds) is the unifying science for understanding the subjective, emotional, empathic, and moral lives of animals because it is essential to know what animals do, think, and feel as they go about their daily routines. Lastly, I argue that when we are uncertain if we are inflicting pain due to our incessant, annoying, and frequently unnecessary intrusions into the lives of other animals as we go about 'redecorating nature' (removing animals or moving them from place to place), we should err on the side of the animals and stop engaging in activities that cause pain and suffering.     

On the need to redress an inadequacy in animal welfare science: toward an internally coherent framework

The time is ripe for a greater interrogation of assumptions and commitments underlying an emerging common ground on the ethics of animal research as well on the 3 R (replacement, refinement, reduction) approach that parallels, and perhaps even further shapes, it. Recurring pressures to re-evaluate the moral status of some animals in research comes as much from within the relevant sciences as without. It seems incredible, in the light of what we now know of such animals as chimpanzees, to deny that these animals are properly accorded high moral status. Barring the requirement that they be human, it is difficult to see what more animals such as chimpanzees would have to possess to acquire it. If the grounds for ascribing high moral status are to be non-arbitrary and responsive to our best knowledge of those individuals who possess the relevant features, we should expect that a sound ethical experimental science will periodically reassess the moral status of their research subjects as the relevant knowledge demands. We already can observe this reassessment as scientists committed to humane experimental science incorporate discoveries of enrichment tools and techniques into their housing and use of captive research animals. No less should this reassessment include a critical reflection on the possible elevation of moral status of certain research animals in light of what is discovered regarding their morally significant properties, characteristics or capacities, or so I will argue. To do anything short of this threatens the social and moral legitimacy of animal research.     

Wild justice and fair play: cooperation,forgiveness, and morality in animals

In this paper I argue that we can learn much about ‘wild justice’ and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be empathic and moral beings. By asking the question ‘What is it like to be another animal?’ we can discover rules of engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. When I study dogs, for example, I try to be a ‘dogocentrist’ and practice ‘dogomorphism.’ My major arguments center on the following ‘big’ questions: Can animals be moral beings or do they merely act as if they are? What are the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality? What do animals do when they engage in social play? How do animals negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, to develop trust? Can animals forgive? Why cooperate and play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does ‘being fair’ mean being more fit – do individual variations in play influence an individual's reproductive fitness, are more virtuous individuals more fit than less virtuous individuals? What is the taxonomic distribution of cognitive skills and emotional capacities necessary for individuals to be able to behave fairly, to empathize, to behave morally? Can we use information about moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? I conclude that there is strong selection for cooperative fair play in which individuals establish and maintain a social contract to play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may be also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. I also claim that the ability to make accurate predictions about what an individual is likely to do in a given social situation is a useful litmus test for explaining what might be happening in an individual's brain during social encounters, and that intentional or representational explanations are often important for making these predictions.     

“Animals Like Us”: Identifying with Nonhuman Animals and Support for Nonhuman Animal Rights

While anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals has been shown to increase identification with them and, by extension, concern for their wellbeing, little research has directly tested whether identifying with nonhuman animals is similarly associated with concern for their wellbeing. We tested hypotheses related to this premise across three cross-sectional studies. In study 1 (n = 224), we tested the hypothesis that therians—a group of people who self-identify with nonhuman animals, show greater concern for nonhuman animal rights than non-therian furries—people with a fan-like interest in media featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. In study 2 (n = 206), we further tested this hypothesis using implicit and explicit measures of identification with nonhuman animals to predict behavioral intentions to support nonhuman animal rights. In study 3 (n = 182), we tested the generalizability of our findings in a sample of undergraduate students. Taken together, the studies show that explicit, but not implicit, identification with nonhuman animals predicts greater support for their rights. The implications of these findings for research on anthropomorphism and animal rights activism are discussed, as well as the limitations of these findings and possible avenues for future research.     

Genetic engineering and other factors that might affect human-animal interactions in the research setting

Evidence exists, particularly in the welfare literature of nonhuman animals on the farm, that the interaction between nonhuman animals and the personnel who care for them can have a strong effect on the animals' behavior, productivity, and welfare. Among species commonly used for biomedical research, mice appear to be the least-preferred species in animal care facilities. A review of the literature and observations of animal care staff interacting with mice indicated that the following factors may influence this: their small size, their particular behavioral characteristics, and husbandry constraints (such as housing in ventilated racks). In addition, this study questioned whether animal care personnel have a different perception of genetically engineered animals and whether this, in turn, has an effect on their interactions with these animals. The ability to carefully observe an animal's behavior is key in carrying out an animal-wellness assessment and in minimizing pain and distress. Attention to human-animal interactions in the research setting represents an opportunity for refinement for large numbers of animals and potentially for reduction of animal use.