Includes pet stores and assistance animals.
Naturalness is considered important for animals, and is one criterion for assessing how we care for them. However, it is a vague and ambiguous term, which needs definition and assessments suitable for scientific and ethical...
The keeping of exotic pets is currently under debate and governments of several countries are increasingly exploring the regulation, or even the banning, of exotic pet keeping. Major concerns are issues of public health and...
Boredom is likely to have adaptive value in motivating exploration and learning, and many animals may possess the basic neurological mechanisms to support it. Chronic inescapable boredom can be extremely aversive, and understimulation can harm...
An animal's welfare state is intrinsically linked to its affective state. Evidence suggests that sentient, conscious animals can experience a range of affective states, such as pain, fear or boredom as well as positive affects...
Many scientists studying animal welfare appear to hold a hedonistic concept of welfare -whereby welfare is ultimately reducible to an animal’s subjective experience. The substantial advances in assessing animal’s subjective experience have enabled us to...
Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward outgroups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the...
Many pet cats are kept indoors for a variety of reasons (eg, safety, health, avoidance of wildlife predation) in conditions that are perhaps the least natural to them. Indoor housing has been associated with health...
Restricted experience in early life is known to contribute to long-lasting predispositions to fear and anxiety in mammals. It is commonplace for young domestic dogs not to experience many features of the environment in which...
This book focuses primarily on human kindness and compassion rather than on human cruelty, callousness, indifference, and egocentric endeavors. It is common knowledge that many lay people and professional researchers treat animals in their charge...
Many species of fishes are aggressive when placed in small aquaria. Aggression can negatively affect the welfare of those individuals toward whom it is directed. Animals may behave aggressively in order to defend resources such...