EVOLUTION: Of Mice . . .

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence — from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Judith Lewis Herman. New York: Basic Books, 1992. 276 pp. $27.00. ISBN 0-465-08765–5.Shattered Assumptions: Toward A New Psychology of Trauma, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman. New York: The Free Press, 1992, 256 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-02-916015–4.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence — from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

https://www.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/2008_syllabus/2008_readings/1_MorganTromborg2008.pdf

Sources of stress in captivity

Guidelines for the treatment of animals in behavioural research and teaching

The Five Freedoms have had major impact on animal welfare thinking internationally. However, despite clear initial statements that the words ‘freedom from’ should indicate ‘as free as possible from’, the Freedoms have come to be represented as absolute or fundamental freedoms, even rights, by some animal advocate and other groups. Moreover, a marked increase in scientific understanding over the last two decades shows that the Freedoms do not capture the more nuanced knowledge of the biological processes that is germane to understanding animal welfare and which is now available to guide its management. For example, the named negative experiences of thirst, hunger, discomfort and pain, and others identified subsequently, including breathlessness, nausea, dizziness, debility, weakness and sickness, can never be eliminated, merely temporarily neutralised. Each one is a genetically embedded element that motivates animals to behave in particular ways to obtain specific life-sustaining resources, avoid or reduce physical harm or facilitate recovery from infection or injury. Their undoubted negativity creates a necessary sense of urgency to respond, without which animals would not survive. Also, the temporary neutralisation of these survival-critical affects does not in and of itself generate positive experience. This questions the commonly held assumption that good animal welfare will result when these internally generated negative affects are minimised. Animals may also experience other negative affects that include anxiety, fear, panic, frustration, anger, helplessness, loneliness, boredom and depression. These situation-related affects reflect animals’ perceptions of their external circumstances. Although they are elicited by threatening, cramped, barren and/or isolated conditions, they can often be replaced by positive affects when animals are kept with congenial others in spacious, stimulus-rich and safe environments which provide opportunities for them to engage in behaviours they find rewarding. These behaviours may include environment-focused exploration and food acquisition activities as well as animal-to-animal interactive activities, all of which can generate various forms of comfort, pleasure, interest, confidence and a sense of control. Animal welfare management should aim to reduce the intensity of survival-critical negative affects to tolerable levels that nevertheless still elicit the required behaviours, and should also provide opportunities for animals to behave in ways they find rewarding, noting that poor management of survival-critical affects reduces animals’ motivation to utilize such rewarding opportunities. This biologically more accurate understanding provides support for reviewing the adequacy of provisions in current codes of welfare or practice in order to ensure that animals are given greater opportunities to experience positive welfare states. The purpose is to help animals to have lives worth living, which is not possible when the predominant focus of such codes is on survival-critical measures. Finally, an updated characterisation of animal welfare that incorporates this more accurate understanding is presented.

Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A Life Worth Living”

Understanding behaviour: the relevance of ethological approaches in laboratory animal science

Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgements. Part 1 Introduction. 1 Focus of Animal Welfare. Part 2 Paths from the Past. 2 Agricultural Sciences and Animal Welfare: Crop Production and Animal Production. 3 Veterinary Science and Animal Welfare. 4 Genetics, Biotechnology and Animal Breeding: Mixed Blessings. Part 3 Assessment of Animal Welfare. 5 Animal Welfare, Grading Compromise and Mitigating Suffering. 6 Standardized Behavioural Testing in Non-Verbal Humans and Other Animals. Part 4 Human Inputs and Animal Welfare. 7 Human-Animal Interactions and Animal Welfare. 8 Environmental Enrichment: Studying the Nature of Nurture. 9 Social Contexts of Animal Welfare. Part 5 Thinking Outside the Box. 10 Integrated Perspectives: Sleep, Developmental Stage and Animal Welfare. 11 The Wider Context of Animal Welfare Science. References. Index.

The Sciences of Animal Welfare

It has been suggested that acts of violence against human and nonhuman animals share commonalities, and that animal abuse is a sentinel for current or future violence toward people. The popular and professional acceptance of strong connections between types of violence is beginning to be used to justify social work interventions and to influence legal decision making, and so requires greater scrutiny. Examination of the limited pool of empirical data suggests that animal abuse is relatively common among men, with violent offenders having an increased probability of reporting prior animal abuse—with the majority of violent offenders not reporting any animal abuse. Causal explanations for "the link," such as empathy impairment or conduct disorder, suffer from a lack of validating research and, based on research into interhuman violence, the assumption that violence has a predominant, single underlying cause must be questioned. An (over)emphasis on the danger that animal abusers pose to humans serves to assist in achieving a consensus that animal abuse is a serious issue, but potentially at the cost of failing to focus on the most common types of abuse, and the most effective strategies for reducing its occurrence. Nothing in this review and discussion should be taken as minimizing the importance of animals as frequent victims of violence, or the co-occurrence of abuse types in "at-risk" households. However, given the weakness of the underlying data, emphasizing the indiscriminate dangerousness of all animal abusers may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences.

Emily Patterson-Kane

Papers

Understanding behaviour: the relevance of ethological approaches in laboratory animal science

The Sciences of Animal Welfare

Animal Abuse as a Sentinel for Human Violence: A Critique

Rats demand social contact

Limited perception of video images by domestic hens