The question of animal emotions

Oxidative status: A general but overlooked indicator of welfare across animal species?

Because of their ubiquity, plasticity, and direct effects on the nervous system, markers of oxidative status may be of great value to assess animal welfare across species and conditions in the wild. However, welfare biologists have not yet seized this opportunity, possibly because the validity of these markers as welfare indicators remains questionable. A validation process was, therefore, performed here using a meta-analytical approach considering three conditions assumed to impair the welfare of animals. With very few exceptions, two of the four considered markers consistently varied across these negatively-valenced conditions. By highlighting the current underrepresentation of markers of oxidative status in animal welfare studies, and by concretely illustrating that some of these markers can consistently reflect negative affective states, this article aims to encourage biologists to include these physiological markers in their toolbox to better measure, monitor, and perhaps also improve the welfare of animals in their natural habitat.

The Welfare of Dogs as an Aspect of the Human-Dog Bond: A Scoping Review

The close bond that can exist between humans and their dogs is an important aspect of the evolutionary, economic, and social connections between the two species. There is a need for a better understanding of the place of the dog within the human-dog bond and on ways the human-dog bond affects dog welfare. We conducted a scoping review to investigate to what extent and in what ways dog welfare is addressed in the research literature on the human-dog bond. We identified 706 publications on the human-dog bond from across the globe that were published from 2012 to 2023. We found that 246 of these 706 publications had a focus on dog welfare. Our review showed that the interplay of characteristics and backgrounds of owners/handlers and their dogs was linked to dog welfare in multiple, both positive and negative, ways. Our review is limited by the fact that most of the research that we reviewed involved pet dogs and in majority came from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) societies. There is a need for a better understanding of how the human-dog bond affects the welfare of working, assistance, and service dogs.

Capturing wild animal welfare: a physiological perspective

Affective states, such as emotions, are presumably widespread across the animal kingdom because of the adaptive advantages they are supposed to confer. However, the study of the affective states of animals has thus far been largely restricted to enhancing the welfare of animals managed by humans in non-natural contexts. Given the diversity of wild animals and the variable conditions they can experience, extending studies on animal affective states to the natural conditions that most animals experience will allow us to broaden and deepen our general understanding of animal welfare. Yet, this same diversity makes examining animal welfare in the wild highly challenging. There is therefore a need for unifying theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that can guide researchers keen to engage in this promising research area. The aim of this article is to help advance this important research area by highlighting the central relationship between physiology and animal welfare and rectify its apparent oversight, as revealed by the current scientific literature on wild animals. Moreover, this article emphasises the advantages of including physiological markers to assess animal welfare in the wild (e.g. objectivity, comparability, condition range, temporality), as well as their concomitant limitations (e.g. only access to peripheral physiological markers with complex relationships with affective states). Best-practice recommendations (e.g. replication and multifactorial approaches) are also provided to allow physiological markers to be used most effectively and appropriately when assessing the welfare of animals in their natural habitat. This review seeks to provide the foundation for a new and distinct research area with a vast theoretical and applied potential: wild animal welfare physiology.

Recognition of emotion and pain by owners benefits the welfare of donkeys in a challenging working environment

Working donkeys (Equus asinus) support human living standards globally. However, there is little information on the effect of human perceptions of emotion and pain on the welfare of working donkeys. We interviewed donkey owners (n = 332) in Pakistan to determine the relationship between human perspectives on donkey sentience: emotions and the ability to feel pain, and the routine working practices that could impact donkey welfare. The majority of donkey owners used padding under the saddle (n = 211; 63.6%; 95% CI (58.3%-68.9%)) and provided access to food (n = 213; 64.2%; 95% CI (58.9%-69.3%)) and water (n = 195; 58.7%; 95% CI (53.4%-64.1%)) during the working day. Owners reported that at some point in their donkey's life, 65.3% (95% CI (60.2%-70.5%)) had load-associated injuries, of which 27.7% (n = 92; 95% CI (22.8%-32.5%)) were wounds, 20.5% (n = 68; 95% CI (16.1%-24.8%)) were lameness and 7.2% (n = 24; 95% CI 4.4%-10.0%) were back pain. In total, 81.3% (95% CI 77.1%-85.5%; n = 270) of owners believed that their donkeys felt pain, and 70.2% (95% CI (65.2%-75.1%; n = 233) of owners believed that their donkeys had emotions. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was used to understand the relationship between owners' recognition of emotions and pain in donkeys and their working practices. The MCA factor map revealed two clusters, named positive and negative clusters. The positive cluster included owner's recognition of donkey pain and emotions, the availability of food and water, use of padding under the saddle, absence of injuries along with the willingness to follow loading guidelines. The negative cluster represented practices that did not benefit donkey welfare, such as using saddles without padding and a lack of food and water during work. The presence of injuries, owners not recognizing that donkeys feel pain and emotion along with an unwillingness to follow loading guidelines were also found in the negative cluster. We show that the owners who recognized sentience in their donkeys were more likely to use practices that are good for donkey welfare. The ability of owners to identify sentience in donkeys, along with their willingness to follow welfare guidelines, are important factors in improving the lives of working donkeys.

Bridging the Gap: Human Emotions and Animal Emotions

Our experiences of the conscious mental states that we call emotions drive our interest in whether such states also exist in other animals. Because linguistic report can be used as a gold standard (albeit indirect) indicator of subjective emotional feelings in humans but not other species, how can we investigate animal emotions and what exactly do we mean when we use this term? Linguistic reports of human emotion give rise to emotion concepts (discrete emotions; dimensional models), associated objectively measurable behavioral and bodily emotion indicators, and understanding of the emotion contexts that generate specific states. We argue that many animal studies implicitly translate human emotion concepts, indicators and contexts, but that explicit consideration of the underlying pathways of inference, their theoretical basis, assumptions, and pitfalls, and how they relate to conscious emotional feelings, is needed to provide greater clarity and less confusion in the conceptualization and scientific study of animal emotion.

Grazing Cattle, Sheep, and Goats Are Important Parts of a Sustainable Agricultural Future

Many people believe that animal agriculture should be phased out and replaced with vegetarian substitutes. The livestock industry has also been attacked because it uses vast amounts of land. People forget that grazing cattle or sheep can be raised on land that is either too arid or too rough for raising crops. At least 20% of the habitable land on Earth is not suitable for crops. Rotational grazing systems can be used to improve both soil health and vegetation diversity on arid land. Grazing livestock are also being successfully used to graze cover crops on prime farmland. Soil health is improved when grazing on a cover crop is rotated with conventional cash crops, such as corn or soybeans. It also reduces the need for buying fertilizer. Grazing animals, such as cattle, sheep, goats, or bison, should be used as part of a sustainable system that will improve the land, help sequester carbon, and reduce animal welfare issues.