Every year sees an increase in the number of dogs admitted to rescue shelters. However well these dogs are cared for in the shelter it cannot be ignored that being in such a situation is stressful, and the time spent in the shelter may change the dogs’ behaviour which may in turn influence their chances of being bought from the shelter. This research examined the behaviour of stray and unwanted dogs on their first, third and fifth days in an Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) shelter. A questionnaire was also distributed to members of the public to determine how popular the USPCA was as a place from where to purchase a dog, and what factors about a dog's physical characteristics, behaviour and environment influenced potential buyers. Results revealed no significant difference between the behaviour of stray and unwanted dogs although the public viewed stray dogs as much less desirable than unwanted dogs. Time in the shelter had no adverse effects on the dogs’ behaviour. Indeed those changes which did occur during captivity, dogs being more relaxed in the presence of people and eating food more quickly, may be considered as positive changes. The USPCA was viewed as a popular place from which to buy a dog. Of factors influencing the public's choice, the dog's environment and behaviour appeared more important than its physical characteristics. The presence of a toy in the dog's cage greatly increased the public's preference for the dog, although the toy was ignored by the dog. The welfare implications of sheltering dogs are discussed.

Free-living hens perch on branches in trees and domestic hens (Gallus gallus domesticus) show signs of unrest if they cannot reach a perch, suggesting that night-time perching is a behaviour that hens are motivated to perform. This motivation was quantified in two experiments using a weighted push-door that hens had to push open in order to gain access to a perch. First, the motivation of individual birds to perch, and second, the effect of a companion bird on perching motivation, were measured. Eight adult laying hens (Lohmann Selected Leghorn) were trained to push through the door at increasing resistances, and the individual capacity of each hen was determined. Hens were then tested once per day, at lights-off in a test pen where pushing through the push-door gave access to the resource. Two consecutive series of increasing resistances were used in the experiment: 25, 50, 75 and 100 per cent of each bird's maximum capacity. In the first experiment, the resources offered were either a perch (treatment) or a ‘sham perch’ that could not be used for perching (control). Hens opened significantly heavier doors in order to gain access to a perch than to gain access to the sham perch. In the second experiment, pushing through the door gave access either to a perch with a companion hen already perching on it (treatment) or to a perch and a companion hen roosting on the floor (control). In this comparison, four of the hens did not push through the door, probably because of aggressive interactions with the companion, and no significant differences between treatments were found. We conclude that hens are motivated to use a perch for night-time roosting and that they should be housed in systems with perches.

An experiment was conducted to compare the effect of two levels of house stocking density (34kg m 2 and 40kg m’2) on broiler welfare and behaviour. The trial monitored 121 900 birds housed in eight flocks under commercial conditions and used a range of behavioural and productivity measures to assess welfare.

At the higher stocking density: i) the daily mortality was greater for part of the rearing period; ii) the incidence of leg problems, contact dermatitis and carcase bruising increased; Hi) the birds’ resting behaviour was increasingly disturbed; iv) locomotion and ground pecking decreased; and v) lying and preening patterns were affected, probably due to increased disruption by other birds.

Aspects of welfare were adversely affected at the higher stocking density. Further research is required to determine how stocking density affects welfare under different commercial conditions.

This study examined the effects of enriching the environment on the behaviour and productivity of pigs, in an attempt to assess changes in welfare. A total of 102 pigs were housed in either barren or enriched housing from birth to slaughter. The barren environments were defined as intensive housing and the enriched environments incorporated extra space, an area which contained peat and straw in a rack. Enriching the environment reduced both the amount of time pigs spent inactive and the time involved in harmful social and aggressive behaviour. Tail biting was absent from the enriched environment but four pigs were removed from barren pens with severe tail damage. Pigs housed in enriched environments spent longer durations in exploratory behaviour than those in barren housing, and young pigs in enriched environments performed locomotory behaviour more frequently than their counterparts in barren environments. Overall growth rates were similar in both treatments. These results indicate that welfare is improved by enrichment with substrates and suggest that barren pens should be modified to provide these facilities.

On-farm scoring of behavioural indicators of animal welfare is challenging but the increasing availability of low cost technology now makes automated monitoring of animal behaviour feasible. We discuss some of the issues with using automated methods to measure animal behaviour within the context of assessing animal welfare. Automated feeders (eg for dairy calves) can help measure the degree that animals are hungry and have potential to identify sick animals even in group housing. Such equipment is best used for longitudinal studies of individual animals rather than making comparisons between farms. Devices attached to animals (eg accelerometers or GPS devices) can help measure the activity levels of animals with a high degree of accuracy and can easily be transported between farms, making them best suited for welfare assessment at the group level. Automated image analysis has great potential to assess movement within groups of animals, but following individual animals can be difficult. The techniques have been validated against traditional methods (eg direct observation). The accuracy of measures taken automatically varies between methods but can be increased by combining measures. Technological developments have provided us with a variety of tools that can be used to monitor behaviour automatically, and these have great potential to improve our ability to monitor animal welfare indicators on-farm. However, it is important that methods be developed to measure a wider range of behaviour patterns. Animal welfare assessment schemes should not place undue emphasis on behavioural indicators solely on the basis that they can be monitored automatically.

The aversive effects of 90 per cent argon in air, 30 per cent carbon dioxide in air or 90 per cent carbon dioxide in air were investigated in slaughter weight pigs. Aversion was assessed from their reluctance to enter the three gaseous atmospheres to obtain a reward (apples). The pigs did not show any aversion to the inhalation of 90 per cent argon in air. The majority of the pigs did not show aversion to the presence of 30 per cent carbon dioxide in air. By contrast, the inhalation of 90 per cent carbon dioxide was aversive to the majority of the pigs. Fasting them for up to 24h prior to testing did not overcome the pigs ‘ reluctance to enter an atmosphere containing 90 per cent carbon dioxide.

This paper reports a study of the behaviour of captive orang utans (Pongo pygmaeus) at Chester Zoo, UK. The study addressed two questions: what is the effect of the presence of fresh browse on the animals’ behaviour; and what is the effect of the presence of visitors? The first part of the study analysed the animals’ time budgets. The results indicated that the provision of fresh browse led to a decrease in the time spent sitting inactive by both adults and infants; it also led to an increase in the time spent by adults foraging for small food items in the woodchip floor-covering beneath the branches of browse. The time-budget data also showed differences in the animals’ behaviour between periods when large groups of visitors arrived and other periods on the same days when visitors were fewer. Specifically, adults used available paper sacks to cover their heads more during periods of high visitor density, and infants held onto adults more. The second part of the study comprised an experiment in which visitor behaviour was manipulated. Visitor groups of similar sizes were asked to behave either quietly or noisily (making vocal noise), in order to determine whether the observed effects of visitors were attributable to group size or to the fact that larger groups tend to be noisier. The experiment indicated that the animals responded particularly to noise: when confronted with noisy groups, all animals looked more at the visitors, and infants approached and held onto adults more. The findings suggest that zoo managers may need to take visitor behaviour into account in order to promote orang utan welfare.

Emotions are now largely recognised as a core element in animal welfare issues. However, convenient indicators to reliably infer emotions are still needed. As such, the availability of behavioural postures analogous to facial expressions in humans would be extremely valuable for animal studies of emotions. The purpose of this paper is to find out stable expressive postures in sheep and to relate these expressive postures with specific emotional contexts. In an initial experiment, we identified discrete ear postures from a comprehensive approach which integrates all theoretically distinguishable ear postures. Four main ear postures were identified: horizontal ears (P posture); ears risen up (R posture); ears pointed backward (B posture); and asymmetric posture (A posture). In a second experiment, we studied how these ear postures were affected by specific emotional states elicited by exposing sheep to experimental situations in which elementary characteristics (ie suddenness and unfamiliarity, negative contrast and controllability) were manipulated. We found that: i) the horizontal P posture corresponds to a neutral state; ii) sheep point their ears backward (B posture) when they face unfamiliar and unpleasant uncontrollable situations, hence likely to elicit fear; iii) they point their ears up (R posture) when facing similar negative situations but controllable, hence likely to elicit anger; and iv) they expressed the asymmetric A posture in very sudden situations, likely to elicit surprise. By cross-fostering psychological and ethological approaches, we are able to propose an interpretation of ear postures in sheep relative to their emotions.

This study explored the influence of five types of auditory stimulation (human conversation, classical music, heavy metal music, pop music, and a control) on the behaviour of 50 dogs housed in a rescue shelter. The dogs were exposed to each type of auditory stimulation for 4 h, with an intervening period of one day between conditions. The dogs ‘ position in their kennels (front, back), their activity (moving, standing, sitting, resting, sleeping), and their vocalisation (barking, quiet, other) were recorded over 4 h at 10 min intervals during each condition of auditory stimulation. The dogs’ activity and vocalisation were significantly related to auditory stimulation. Dogs spent more time resting and less time standing when classical music was played than when any of the other stimuli were played. Exposure to heavy metal music encouraged dogs to spend significantly more of their time barking than did other types of auditory stimulation. Classical music resulted in dogs spending significantly more of their time quiet than did other types of auditory stimulation. It is suggested that the welfare of sheltered dogs may be enhanced through exposure to appropriate forms of auditory stimulation. Classical music appears particularly beneficial, resulting in activities suggestive of relaxation and behaviours that are considered desirable by potential buyers. This form of music may also appeal to visitors, resulting in enhanced perceptions of the rescue shelter's environment and an increased desire to adopt a dog from such a source.

This paper reviews the impact on fish welfare of a wide range of slaughter methods used commercially around the world. Because the end result of the slaughter is a food product, and because of the well-known relationship between an animal's welfare and subsequent meat quality, the effects of the slaughter methods on the quality of the flesh are also reviewed where possible. Fish slaughter methods are incredibly diverse, but fall into two broad categories: those that induce loss of sensibility slowly, and those that achieve this rapidly. This paper shows that, in general, the methods that induce loss of sensibility over a long period of time tend to impinge more on the welfare of the animal and are detrimental to the overall quality of the carcass. Methods that cause a rapid loss of sensibility result in the best welfare, providing that they are carried out correctly. They may also produce the highest quality product from the stock offish.

It is a popular notion that, compared to vertebrates, invertebrates have a reduced capacity to experience suffering. This is usually based on arguments that invertebrates show only simple forms of learning, have little memory capacity, do not show behavioural responses to stimuli that would cause ‘higher’ vertebrates to exhibit responses indicative of pain, and have differences in their physiology that would preclude the capacity for suffering. But, how convincing is this ‘evidence’ of a reduced capacity to suffer? Suffering is a negative mental state - a private experience - and, as such, it cannot be measured directly. When assessing the capacity of an animal to experience suffering, we often compare the similarity of its responses with those of ‘higher’ animals, conceptualized in the principle of argument-by-analogy. By closely examining the responses of invertebrates, it can be seen that they often behave in a strikingly analogous manner to vertebrates. In this paper, I discuss published studies that show that invertebrates such as cockroaches, flies and slugs have short- and long-term memory; have age effects on memory; have complex spatial, associative and social learning; perform appropriately in preference tests and consumer demand studies; exhibit behavioural and physiological responses indicative of pain; and, apparently, experience learned helplessness. The similarity of these responses to those of vertebrates may indicate a level of consciousness or suffering that is not normally attributed to invertebrates. This indicates that we should either be more cautious when using argument-by-analogy, or remain open-minded to the possibility that invertebrates are capable of suffering in a similar way to vertebrates.

The visual system of domestic poultry evolved in natural light environments, which differ in many respects from the artificial light provided in poultry houses. Current lighting systems are designed mainly around human vision and poultry production, ignoring the requirements of poultry vision and the functional development of visual abilities during rearing. A poor correlation between the light provided and that required for effective vision may influence visually mediated behaviours such as feeding and social interaction, leading to distress and poor welfare. To understand fully the impact of the light environment on the behaviour and welfare of domestic poultry we need (i) to measure the physical properties of the light environment in a standard and relevant manner; (ii) to identify the limits of visual abilities in various light environments; (iii) to determine how light environments during rearing may disrupt the functional development of vision; and (iv) to resolve how visual abilities and lighting interact to affect visually mediated behaviour. Some conclusions can be drawn about the impact of current lighting regimes on bird welfare but there remains a pressing need to resolve various issues in this interaction. We propose, first, that dark periods should have a minimum duration of six hours; second, that bright light should be used in cases where pecking damage and cannibalism do not pose a problem; and third, that it is unlikely that the 100 Hz flicker associated with fluorescent light can be perceived by poultry. With less certainty, we can suggest that ultraviolet-supplemented lighting may have some welfare benefits, and that very dim lighting may adversely affect ocular development. We can only speculate on other issues, such as preferences and motivations for different coloured lighting or the ways in which lighting affects recognition of conspecifics. Several organisations and authorities have issued guidelines for poultry house lighting that strive to safeguard welfare and that are consistent with our current, but limited, understanding. One omission is a standard system for measuring light levels in poultry houses. Illumination with natural daylight would be an ideal solution to many lighting problems. Although some systems require artificial lighting for production purposes, we argue that it may be possible to rear birds humanely in artificial environments that contain some features of natural light. These features should be those for which poultry show some motivation, or whose exclusion would damage visual development.

It is commonly assumed that animals suffer if they cannot perform behaviours seen in wild conspecifics. Although comparisons with the behaviour of wild conspecifics are a popular method of assessing the welfare of captive animals, their validity has not been fully assessed. Homeostatic models of motivation suggest that many behaviours are stimulus driven rather than internally generated. Thus, it is possible that the non-performance of some wild-type behaviours does not necessarily compromise animal welfare, unless welfare is defined as being compromised by such non-performance. The flexibility of wild animal behaviour and the fact that animals free to perform the complete range of wild behaviours can suffer, must also put into the question the validity of such comparisons. Technical criticisms also arise when one considers the difficulty of constructing accurate and unbiased time budgets for wild animals. It is possible that the expressions of wild-type behaviours correlate with enhanced welfare, rather than cause enhanced welfare. Thus, if the consequences of behaviour are more important than the expression of behaviour itself, environmental enrichment does not necessarily need to rely upon the performance of wild-type behaviours for the improvement of animal welfare. Therefore, although behavioural comparisons with wild animals can be considered as potentially useful indicators of behavioural differences, they cannot always be relied upon to give an objective assessment of animal welfare. To make an assessment of welfare, behavioural comparisons with wild animals should be used in conjunction with other techniques to demonstrate that the consequences of non-performance of wild behaviours results in impoverished welfare.

In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from the adaptive/functional point of view, four levels of agency can be distinguished, namely passive/reactive agency (animal being behaviourally passive or purely reactive), action-driven agency (animal behaviourally pursuing current desirable outcomes), competence-building agency (animal engaging with the environment to gain skills and information for future use) and aspirational agency (the animal achieving long-term goals through planning and autobiographical reflection). Recent progress in affective neurobiology indicates that each tier of agency is supported by a different type of affective functioning, at least in the case of mammals. Furthermore, the particular agency levels can be linked to distinct degrees of awareness as defined by recent selfhood theories. Based on this coupling between agency adaptive functioning, affective neurobiology and animal awareness levels, I examine several links between animal agency and animal welfare, including the notion of animal boredom, and discuss how animal agency might be promoted in the restrictive frameworks of intensive animal farming.

A survey of attitudes towards the welfare and rights of animals was conducted in universities in 11 European and Asian countries, to improve understanding of cultural differences that might impact on trade and international relations. Collaborators’ universities were recruited in each country to assist in the design, translation and administration of the survey via the internet in a convenient selection of the country's universities, providing 3,433 student responses from at least 103 universities. Respondents rated the acceptability of 43 major concerns about animals (focused on type of use, animal integrity, killing animals, animal welfare, experimentation on animals, changes in animal genotypes, the environment for animals and societal attitudes towards animals). Students from European countries had more concern for animal welfare than students from Asian countries, which may be partly explained by increased affluence of European students as there was a positive correlation between student expenditure and concern for animal welfare and rights. Southern and central European countries had most concern for animal rights and unnatural practices. Those in communist or former communist countries in Asia and Europe had most concern about killing animals and those in northern European countries the least. Regional similarities between neighbouring countries were evident in responses to animal issues and there were no differences between ethnic groups within a country. Thus, there were national and continental differences in European and Asian students’ attitudes to animals’ welfare and rights, which appear to arise as a result of the socio-political situation in regions rather than religious or other differences.

Human interaction as environmental enrichment for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and other primates is widely promoted and believed to be of value, but has been subject to little objective evaluation. This study assessed the effects of positive human interaction (eg relaxed treat feeding, playing, and other forms of social interaction compatible with personnel safety) on the behaviour of adult chimpanzees. Subjects were housed indoors in groups of two or three individuals. The level of interaction during routine care and management (ie in the process of cleaning, feeding, and monitoring) represented the baseline condition. The test condition involved a familiar caretaker spending an additional 10 mins per day, 5 days a week, with each chimpanzee. This study was designed to assess carry-over effects of interaction on behaviour outside the context of care staff presence. Therefore, in all phases of the study, data (97 h of focal animal sampling) were collected only when caretakers were absent from the building. During the increased human interaction phase, the chimpanzees groomed each other more and showed lower levels of the following behaviours: regurgitation/reingestion, other oral abnormal behaviours, inactivity, and reactivity to the displays of neighbouring groups. A trend towards reduced agonistic display was also detected. Attempted interactions with the observer shifted significantly from predominantly aggressive to predominantly affiliative in nature. These results suggest that simple, unstructured affiliation between humans and chimpanzees should be a valued component of behavioural management.

There has been much consideration of well-being in philosophy, especially of human well-being, which contributes to our understanding of animal welfare. Three common approaches to well-being are presented here, which map approximately onto three possible ideas about animal welfare. Perfectionism and other forms of ‘objective list’ theories suggest that there are various values that should be realised or various things that an individual ought to have for his life to be a good life. In the case of humans, this is based on the concept of human nature. This approach is reflected in two ideas about animal welfare: first, that animals should live natural lives (which includes consideration of an animal's nature or ‘telos’), and second, that welfare is concerned with functioning or fitness of animals. The two other approaches are subjective: in other words, they relate solely to the mental processes of the subject. The first, desire fulfilment, suggests that well-being is defined by the satisfaction of desires or preferences. The other, hedonism, states that well-being is the presence of pleasant mental states and the absence of unpleasant ones. These two approaches are both relevant to the idea that the welfare of animals relates solely to their feelings. That idea corresponds most closely to hedonism, so it may be that preferences are most relevant in helping to reveal feelings. However, it is sometimes implied that satisfaction of preferences is itself part of feelings. It would also be possible to maintain, as in the desire fulfilment approach to human well-being, that animal welfare consists of preference satisfaction itself. These possibilities need to be more clearly distinguished. Arguments for and against each approach to well-being are presented, so that scientists may be more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their own ideas about animal welfare.

Although human factors are recognized as influential factors affecting the welfare and productivity of farm animals, only limited research has been conducted to identify these important human characteristics and to quantify their effects. During the last 13 years we have studied two apparently important human factors: the attitude and the behaviour of stockpersons towards farm animals.

We have proposed that in intensive animal production systems there are some important sequential relationships between the attitude and behaviour of the stockperson towards farm animals and the behaviour, performance and welfare of farm animals. Basically we have suggested that because a stockperson's behaviour towards animals is largely under volitional control it is strongly influenced by the attitudes and beliefs that the stockperson holds about the animals. Furthermore, the stockperson's behaviour towards animals affects the animals’ fear of humans which, in turn, affects the animals’ productivity and welfare. It is the occurrence of a stress response by animals which are highly fearful of humans which places their productivity and welfare at risk We have published data which strongly support these interrelationships between human attitude and behaviour and animal behaviour, productivity and welfare. This paper reviews this and other research on this subject. The results of research in the pig industry and to a lesser extent, the poultry industries indicate the excellent opportunity which exists to improve animal productivity and welfare by training and selecting stockpersons to have desirable attitudinal and behavioural profiles towards farm animals.

Animal welfare is multidimensional; its assessment relies on complementary measures covering all dimensions. Welfare Quality® constructed a multicriteria evaluation model for its assessment at unit level (farms, slaughterhouses). Four welfare principles are distinguished (‘Good feeding’, ‘Good housing’, ‘Good health’, and ‘Appropriate behaviour’). An animal unit receives four principle scores (expressed on a 0-100 value scale). These scores are aggregated together to form the overall assessment by sorting animal units into predefined welfare categories boundaried by reference profiles. A unit is assigned to the welfare category above the profile it is considered at least as good as. Several assignment procedures were tested on a set of 69 dairy farms and compared with observers’ general impressions. The welfare categories, reference profiles and assignment procedure were defined in consultation with social scientists, animal scientists and stakeholders. Four welfare categories were defined: ‘Excellent’, ‘Enhanced’, ‘Acceptable’, and ‘Not classified’. The reference profiles were set at 80, 55 and 20, corresponding to aspiration values for Excellent, Enhanced and Acceptable. The assignment procedure resulted from a compromise between theoretical opinion on what should be considered excellent, enhanced or acceptable, and what can realistically be achieved in practice: to be assigned to a given category, a unit must reach its aspiration value on 2 or 3 of the 4 principles, and not score below the aspiration value for the next lowest category on the other principle(s). The model can be used for several purposes, including identifying welfare problems on a farm to advise farmers, or checking compliance with certification schemes.

We discuss the properties of controllability and complexity in novel object enrichment, their definition and present a critique of previous work related to them. We address the relationship between control and complexity, the evolutionary basis of their attractiveness and suggest that the acquisition of control may be a more enriching process than its execution. We propose that, although little work has been directed at separating their relative contributions to enrichment, controllability appears more important than complexity. We discuss the ways in which objects can be responsive both in terms of the predictability of the response and the ‘grade’ of actor-object interaction.