WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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How Much Money Is Your Pet Worth to You?
Get PDFWhat determines the dollar value of a pet? While we increasingly think of pets as people, from a legal perspective, the dogs and cats in our lives are considered property. Like a used car, it is perfectly legal to buy, sell, or give away a companion animal. But there is a difference between determining the value of a used car and a personal pet
Drug Company Research and Animal Use
Get PDFOver the years, the use of laboratory animals by drug companies and other commercial laboratories has elicited more than its share of criticism. In the late 1970s, animal advocates turned their attention to the testing of cosmetics and personal care products on animals, with particular attention to lethal dose testing in rats and eye irritancy testing in rabbits. In 1980, a campaign against Revlon led to that company funding a research program at Rockefeller University to develop an alternative to eye irritancy testing on rabbits (producing the Neutral Red Test protocol, OECD Test Guideline 432, still widely used today.) Revlon’s initiative was followed by the cosmetic industry funding the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) in 1981. Forty years later, CAAT is still at the forefront of the debate on the use of laboratory animals and is now joined by numerous similar centers promoting alternatives in Europe, Asia and Brazil
Revisiting the Cat Predation Issue
Get PDFLarge ranges in cat predation are primarily due due to the uncertainties in estimating how many owned and unowned domestic cats there are in the United States and how many actually hunt and catch birds. Research indicates it is possible to modify cat predatory behavior but wildlife and cat advocacy groups need to work together to produce successful policy outcomes
Study Finds Therapy Dogs Have No Effect on Anxiety in Teens
Get PDFThe use of therapy dogs has increased and the number of scientific papers examining the impact of therapy dogs on human health has also increased from 19 in 1990 to 698 in 2020. However, why canine therapy works remains something of a mystery. In a recent paper, researchers from Tufts University looked at two mechanisms that might underlie any benefits of canine therapy – social support and the physical contact provided by the dogs. The researchers were confident that teen anxiety would drop in the presence of the dogs but wanted to explore possible mechanisms for such a drop. However, the researchers found that the therapy dogs had no impact whatsoever on teen anxiety among the study participants. The dogs had no effect on self-reported anxiety scores, no effect on heart rate and skin response and no effect on the error rate in the task set for the subjects
Cosmetic Testing on Animals: EU Takes a Step Back
Get PDFThere has been a tension between the European Union\u27s ban on the marketing of cosmetics that have been tested on animals (passed in 2013) and the directive mandating the development of safety data for industrial chemicals (passed in 2007). This tension has now come out into the open as the European Chemicals Agency has requested a company to perform animal tests on two chemicals that are used only in cosmetics
The impacts of a nature-based mentorship program on students’ self-regulation: Harnessing the anticipation effect
Get PDFSelf-regulation is essential to youths’ long-term mental well-being and healthy functioning and positive anticipation of future events may support healthy emotional regulation. Green Chimneys, a school in New York that serves students with special education needs and psychosocial challenges, offers its students weekly one-on-one nature-based mentoring sessions with school staff. We used a modified version of the State Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (S-DERS) to explore how these sessions impacted students’ emotional regulation both before and after their sessions. Results indicated that students’ behavior may improve in the 1-4 hours prior to participation. Further research is needed to test these findings
Urban Wildlife in New York City
Get PDFNew Yorkers celebrate and enjoy a “surprising” renaissance of wildlife. Coyotes have been observed in Central Park, and beavers, salamanders, and leopard frogs have been seen in Staten Island, bobcat, mink, and fox have appeared in the Bronx (including a new species of leopard frog), and sea turtles and a baby seal have turned up in Queens. Wild creatures that have not been recorded in the Big Apple for “decades” are returning and making it home.
These returns are not just good news; it is excellent news. Any time a major metropolitan area can celebrate the return of an extirpated wild species, it demonstrates that the quality of its environment is improving and moving in a positive direction. As a growing body of scientific literature now indicates beyond refute, nature in the city is good for the health and well-being of its people, making every incremental advance toward greener relevant and significant
Global Dog Campaign Case Studies: Kabul, Afghanistan; Chennai, India; Heredia, Costa Rica
Get PDFThree case studies in which WBI partners are addressing dog homelessness in Kabul, Chennai, and Costa Rica are described. In Kabul, Mayhew Afghanistan persuaded the Kabul municipality to stop culling dogs and then launched a rabies vaccination and dog sterilization project. Approximately 80,000 rabies vaccines have been administered to the estimated 40,000 dogs in Kabul, and 20,000 have been sterilized. Cases of human rabies and dog bites have both declined since the project was launched in mid-2017. In Chennai, the Blue Cross of India conceived the idea of surgical sterilization (Animal Birth Control) as a humane method of managing homeless dogs back in 1964. In 1995, the municipal authorities allowed them to launch an ABC program in a section of the city. It proved so successful it was expanded to be city-wide. The number of human rabies cases dropped from around 120 to zero in fifteen years. In Costa Rica, AHPPA began increasing sterilizations in 2006 and is now carrying out almost 30,000 a year. Over the same period, the percentage of owned dogs sleeping indoors at night has increased from 27% to 66%, and the percentage of households with at least one sterilized dog jumped from 18% to 62%
Saving Tigers in America:- Part 1
No full textIn the first of three articles, WBI President Andrew Rowan describes the history of how America arrived at the point where it has twice as many tigers as there are wild tigers in the rest of the world
Back to the Future
Get PDFAlthough our current challenges can seem overwhelming, we need to remind ourselves that we must also focus on creating a sustainable world for the future. Questions to ask include how can we invest in technological innovations that help build and maintain a sustainable world while moving away from approaches that focus on economic growth to the detriment of the the plant\u27s future. Focused attention should be directed to energy, land use, population, and consumption