Welfare Assessment

Includes methods and protocols to monitor or assess animal health, pain, and other emotions.

Sanz-Moreno, A., da Silva-Buttkus, P., Terwee, C. B. et al. 2024. Assessment of quality of life and wellbeing in mouse preclinical research – A scoping review. Neuroscience Applied 3, 104058.

Mouse preclinical research is of great scientific interest to understand the mechanisms of human diseases and test potential therapeutic interventions. Researchers characterize biological and physiological traits, behaviors and disease symptoms using standardized phenotypic protocols in...

Paterson, E. A., O’Malley, C. I., Abney, D. M. et al. 2024. Development of a novel primate welfare assessment tool for research macaques. Animal Welfare 33, e3.

Primates are important species for biomedical research and ensuring their good welfare is critical for research translatability and ethical responsibility. Systematic animal welfare assessments can support continuous programme improvements and build institutional awareness of areas...

Padalino, B., Menchetti, L. 2024. The first protocol for assessing the welfare of dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) kept under nomadic pastoralism. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 11.

There is no protocol to measure the welfare level of dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarious) kept under pastoralism—the predominant husbandry system of this species. This study therefore aimed to develop and describe a protocol for measuring...

Laméris, D. W., Salas, M., Eens, M. et al. 2024. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment of bonobo emotional expressivity across observer groups and zoo housing environments. Animal Welfare 33, e28.

Human evaluation of animal emotional expressivity can inform animal welfare. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) has been applied to domesticated and some non-domesticated animals, but its use in primates is limited despite their emotional expressivity. We...

Ibach, S., Chou, J.-Y., Battini, M. et al. 2024. A systematic approach to defining and verifying descriptors used in the Qualitative Behavioural Assessment of sows. Animal Welfare 33, e8.

Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) is a welfare evaluation tool that uses a holistic approach to capturing an animal’s emotional state. Lists of QBA descriptors validated to assess pig welfare exist, but their definitions are often...

Flint, H. E., Weller, J. E., Parry-Howells, N. et al. 2024. Evaluation of indicators of acute emotional states in dogs. Scientific Reports 14(1), 6406.

A complete assessment of animal welfare requires not just an understanding of negative emotional states, such as fear and anxiety, but also of positive states, such as calmness and happiness. However, few studies have identified...

Dazord, A., Primault, M. 2024. Development of an animal welfare tool for zoo-housed primates, considering intra- and inter-rater reliability. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 12(2), 69–78.

Over the past few decades, the concept of animal welfare has become increasingly prominent in Western societies. Faced with this collective awareness, various organisations are now making it a point of honour to consider the...

Baumgartner, K., Hüttner, T., Clegg, I. L. K. et al. 2024. Dolphin-WET—Development of a Welfare Evaluation Tool for bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) under human care. Animals 14(5), 701.

Ensuring high standards of animal welfare is not only an ethical duty for zoos and aquariums, but it is also essential to achieve their conservation, education, and research goals. While for some species, animal welfare...

Young, L., McCallum, R., Perreault, M. et al. 2024. Opportunistically using a Chronic Unpredictable Stress study to investigate ‘inactive-but-awake’ behaviour as a potential welfare indicator in laboratory rats. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 274,

Being awake but motionless, inactive-but-awake (IBA), has been suggested to reflect low arousal negative affect in several species. This preliminary study investigated IBA in rats exposed to Chronic Unpredictable Stress (CUS), opportunistically (to comply with...

Simpson, L., Grove, J., Bronson, E. et al. 2024. Quality of Life assessment: The value of longitudinal data in making the end-of-life care decision for a macaque (Macaca silenus/Macaca nemestrina). Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 27(2),

Assessing quality of life in animals is an art as much as a science. Despite the use of questionnaires and keeper reports which consider several aspects of well-being, the process often remains subjective. Keepers have...

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