The primary goal of this study was to explore the social buffering effect that humans offer to goats and dogs with limited exposure to human socialization, particularly in situations involving interactions with unfamiliar humans. A...
Farm animals can socially learn to trust a human after observing that human handling a familiar conspecific gently, even if they never positively interacted with the human themselves. This study aimed to evaluate whether pigs...
Lion (Panthera leo) cubs are used in wildlife interaction tourism but the effects on cub welfare are unknown. We assessed the behaviour of three cohorts of lion cubs, twelve animals in total, at three different...
My study highlighted not only the strength and complexity of the “human shield” effect, but also that trail systems, while valuable to research, need to be constructed in a way which enables the target species...
Human activities are increasingly impacting our oceans and the focus tends to be on their environmental impacts, rather than consequences for animal welfare. Global shipping density has quadrupled since 1992. Unsurprisingly, increased levels of vessel...
Animal-visitor interactions are widely available in zoos and aquariums, yet the effects of these programmes on the welfare of the animals involved have only recently begun to be studied. The impact of one type of...
This paper highlights the main themes which emerged from a study carried out with Animal Technicians and researchers to better understand: - perceptions of rat tickling - potential drivers and barriers to the uptake of...
Overexpression of abnormal behavior among captive primates indicates poor management practices. The type, frequency, and contributing factors of abnormal behaviors vary highly across individual animals in captive settings. This study explored if sex, rearing history...
Lately, there has been a growing interest in studying domestic cat facial signals, but most of this research has centered on signals produced during human-cat interactions or pain. The available research on intraspecific facial signaling...
A growing body of research shows that farm animals frequently seek and enjoy human interaction. However, there is a lack of information on how positive human contact affects ducks’ stress and fear responses. An experiment...