WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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When Animals Dream - Exploring Consciousness and Ethics in David M. Pena Guzman\u27s New Book
No full textDavid M. Peña-Guzmán’s latest book explores the fascinating question of whether animals dream, delving into the scientific, philosophical, and ethical implications of animal consciousness
Would Getting a Pet Help You Live Longer?
No full textThe pet effect is the idea that pet ownership is linked to improved mental and physical health. A recent study of studies that concluded owners lived longer was widely covered in the media. Does the preponderance of evidence support the claim that pet owners are less likely to die? What accounts for national differences in the links between pet ownership and mortality
An analysis of trends in the use of animal and non-animal methods in biomedical research and toxicology publications
Get PDFThere have been relatively few attempts to quantitatively assess if, and in which areas, the use of non-animal methods (NAMs) is increasing in biomedical research and importantly, how this compares to the use of live animals. We found that proportionately the reliance on animals in these research areas is decreasing, which will be encouraging to those that support the replacement of animal experiments
The Ongoing Challenge of Accurately Measuring Pet Ownership
Get PDFDespite decades of surveys, accurately measuring pet ownership remains difficult. Learn how varying survey methods and human population density affect pet demographics in the US and UK, and why better data is essential for effective animal population management
Social learning and cultural enrichment for fish welfare
Get PDFThis commentary examines how understanding animal culture—shared behaviors and knowledge transmitted through social learning—plays a role in advancing welfare practices for captive fishes. Despite extensive evidence of fishes\u27 complex sociocultural capacities, their psycho-social needs remain underestimated and unmet in zoos and aquaria. We explore what considering fish culture might mean for welfare practices: diverse social learning opportunities, cultural development, and thoughtful group management. More knowledge about wild fishes\u27 lives will help bridge the gap between their full, complex lives and current captive welfare practices
Is Love of Nature in Our Genes?
No full textIs biophilia a universal human instinct or a trait on which people differ
Birds, Bats and Minds. Tales of a Revolutionary Scientist: Donald R. Griffin. Volume One
Get PDFIn this three-volume biography, we revisit the life and accomplishments of the revolutionary scientist, Donald R. Griffin. He encountered a lifetime of initial hostile resistance to his ideas and studies; now they are largely accepted. He and a colleague discovered the phenomenon of echolocation used by bats to navigate and capture insects, proposed that birds navigate guided by such cues as the sun and stars, and suggested that animals are likely aware, thinking and feeling beings. Forty interviews with his colleagues and friends help us understand the young emerging scientist and the mature researcher. We learn about his and others’ research up to the present times. We gain insights into his thinking and the rigors and delights of fieldwork. Efforts to promote animal well-being intrinsically depend upon the insights from his groundbreaking ideas.
The first volume describes the young Griffin as a child enthusiastically exploring nature near his Cape Cod home; keeping “scientific “journals of his animal observations; and as a teenager enticing others to join him in banding thousands of birds for his migration studies. He creates a very local scientific society with its own “professional publication about nature in Cape Cod.. As a teenager, he has his first publication in a bona fide professional scientific journal. The reserved New England culture and tales of his impressive ancestors all influence the young Griffin.
As Harvard undergraduates, he and his friend, Robert Galambos, make the stupendous discovery that bats emit ultrasonic sounds and start their quest to discover why? Later, war-related studies at Harvard allow Griffin to learn about radar and instrumentation that become essential to his future echolocation research.
His first faculty position at Cornell and then at Harvard provide improved finances to support his wife and growing family and to continue his work on avian navigation and bat sonar. To track the birds, he learns to fly. To his astonishment, he discovers that bats use echolocation to find and capture tiny insects, not just to navigate. However, there are few believers in these discoveries. Following the path of von Humboldt in Venezuela, he discovers birds that echolocate. He becomes embroiled in controversy: not only about bats’ echolocation abilities, but also, for lack of definitive evidence, his resistance to accepting animals’ magnetic sensing. But the field of echolocation blossoms. His many musings and discoveries find further verification in modern research.https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/ebooks/1031/thumbnail.jp
Attempting to answer the question of animal awareness
Get PDFIt was as a graduate student that I first encountered the work of both Donald Griffin and Carolyn Ristau. Griffin\u27s The Question of Animal Awareness (1976) and Animal Minds (2001) helped a budding animal-minds researcher appreciate both the possibilities of studying non-human animal consciousness and the struggle that such an undertaking would face. Now Ristau\u27s (2024a,b) timely biography helps explain how Griffin became the figure in animal cognition that he is
What is it like to be a cognitive ethologist?
Get PDFDonald Griffin not only made the study of animal minds acceptable for scientific investigation but the work of the cognitive ethologists that he inspired made animals and their lives fascinating and accessible to the greater public. The scrupulously detailed examination of his life and work by Ristau ensures that this history will always be there to respect his work and his legac
What is it like to be a diplomat? Reflections on Donald Griffin and emotion
Get PDFThis commentary addresses three aspects of Donald Griffin’s work: (1) his thoughts beyond cognition, on emotion; (2) his views on the earliest origins of mind, including primitive forms of consciousness; and (3) his diplomatic use of memorable phrases to facilitate change