Natural Behaviour

In many people’s eyes, the ability for animals to be able to behave ‘naturally’ is essential for their welfare. However, animals do not necessarily want to do behaviour just because it is ‘natural’ or is seen in wild animals. Being chased by a predator is not necessarily good for welfare. Natural behaviour is important because it gives us a baseline for what animals might want to do but it cannot define good welfare on its own. It has to be validated in exactly the same way as other behavioural correlates of welfare, as either contributing to health or being what the animals want to do.

Physiological Correlates of Welfare

The idea that there might be physiological markers of welfare such as ‘stress’ or ‘feel-good’ hormones is a very attractive prospect for animal welfare scientists as it seems to hold out the prospect of simple, objective ways of distinguishing between good and poor welfare. However, many of the proposed physiological measures such as hormones, body temperature and heart rate variability turn out to be much more useful as indicators of arousal than valence. In other words, they tell us that an animal is aroused and motivated but not whether it is aroused because it is receiving something it wants or aroused because it is attempting to escape from something it does not want. Only if physiological measures can be shown to be clearly correlated with health or what animals want should they be used to indicate welfare.

Behavioural Correlates of Welfare

In everyday life, it is often not practical to conduct choice tests or operant conditioning tests, and what vets, farmers, zoo keepers, pet owners and others concerned with the day-to-day care of animals need are quicker and easier ways of assessing whether animals have what they want. Sounds, gestures, facial expressions or other behaviours often provide information about whether animals have, or do not have what they want and so are potential correlates of welfare. However, deciphering the body language of animals correctly take time and effort and it is often not easy to find behaviour that reliably distinguishes between situations that animals want and those that they want to avoid. In order to establish the valence of behaviour such as stereotypies, anticipation behaviour, changes in activity levels or diversity, it has to be shown that these are reliable indicators of what animals want.

Animal Welfare with and without Consciousness

‘Health and what animals want’ is a succinct and easy to understand definition of animal welfare but for many people it misses out the most important element of all—namely, what animals consciously feel. This chapter looks at the advantages and disadvantages of adding consciousness to the definition, starting with what we currently know about consciousness in ourselves and what it might tell us about the conscious experiences of other species. Despite major advances in understanding how brains work, consciousness itself remains the hardest problem in biology. Remarkably, it turns out that we humans do many complex behaviours quite unconsciously, making it more difficult than ever to be certain about consciousness in other species. In view of the continuing difficulties of understanding or even defining consciousness, adding it to the definition of animal welfare confuses rather than clarifies. While leaving open the possibility that many animals do indeed consciously experience pain, pleasure and suffering, the actual definition of welfare does not need consciousness and, most importantly, is more useful and practical without it.

What Animals Want

We now have many different ways of finding out what animals want, from offering them simple choice tests to operant conditioning and using how closely they choose to position themselves with respect to each other and to features of their environment. Animals can vote with their feet, their paws or their beaks, and, if provided with the right equipment, they can push switches, pull levers or use touch screens to indicate what they want. We can even find out how much they want something by seeing if they will ‘work’ to get what they want when it is made more difficult for them to obtain it. Recent developments have included cognitive or judgement tests and other more indirect ways of ‘asking’ animals what they want.

What Is Animal Welfare?

The two main reasons it has been so difficult to arrive at an agreed definition of animal welfare are the ‘complexity problem’ (so many different measures of welfare now available) and the ‘consciousness problem’ (conscious experience is itself so difficult to define). There is, however, a relatively simple definition of welfare that provides a solution to both of these problems. Defining animal welfare as ‘health and animals having what they want’ can be easily understood by scientists and non-scientists alike, expresses in simple words what many existing definitions are trying to say anyway and provides the ‘valence’ needed to validate the long list of welfare measures we now have available. Above all, it shows what evidence we need to collect to improve animal welfare in practice.

Consequences

Scientific facts about animal welfare are distinct from ethical decisions about what ought to be done about those facts. This final chapter covers some of the ideas that readers are likely to come across in thinking about the connection between animal welfare and animal ethics and provides a map or guide through the main areas of controversy. These include the difference between animal welfare and animal rights, speciesism and the conflicts that can arise between animal welfare and conservation. The chapter ends with a look at how humans can benefit in many different ways from improving animal welfare and that, far from devaluing animals as important in their own right, human benefits are likely to strengthen the case for making improved animal welfare part of a sustainable future for the whole planet.

Animal Welfare: The Science and Its Words

Despite growing public concern over the way humans treat animals, there is still no agreed definition of what ‘animal welfare’ is. This lack of a proper definition has been detrimental to animals themselves and has made the whole subject of animal welfare look vague, unscientific and unclear about its core concept. Real improvements in the lives of animals would be greatly helped by a definition of welfare that can be agreed to by everyone, scientists and non-scientists alike, and that could bring together the many different ways in which ‘welfare’ is now measured. The aim of this book is to give such a definition and to make the case that any attempt to definition should be animal-centred and take into account the animals’ own point of view.

Conclusions

As a universally agreed definition of animal welfare, ‘health and what animals want’ passes four important tests. First, it unites and complements most existing definitions by emphasizing the animals’ own point of view. Second, it indicates which physiological and behavioural measures are valid and supplies valence where it is missing. Third, it specifies in practical terms exactly what evidence need to be collected to ensure good welfare. Fourth, it is easily understandable by scientists and non-scientists alike. It is thus fit for the purpose of representing the interests of non-human animals in a world where these often conflict with human interests.

Why Do Animals Want What Is Not Good for Them?

Although animals do generally choose what is good for their health, this is not always so. Evolutionary time lags can give rise to a mismatch between the ancestral environment in which choices evolved and the current environment. This happens in wild animals if their environments change, but it is even more likely to happen in domesticated and captive animals as they are often kept in conditions very different from those of their wild ancestors but with a legacy of choice mechanisms more appropriate to the past than the present. They may therefore, like humans, sometimes want things that are bad for their health. As with humans, there is no simple answer to this conflict. However, as ‘wanting’ has in general been selected to deliver what is good for fitness and survival, what animals want usually delivers healthy outcomes.