Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy
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Health and Nature, A Walk in the Park
No full textNature promotes mental and physical health, but we do not fully understand how
Vultures in India & Bats in USA: Impact on Animal Welfare & Human Health
No full textDiscover how declining vultures in India and bats in the USA impact human health, ecosystems, and the economy, revealing crucial wildlife-environment links
Ending Cage Farming in the EU: The Fight for Animal Welfare
No full textCompassion in World Farming\u27s End the Cage Age campaign sought to eliminate cages for farmed animals in the EU. Despite setbacks, a 2024 consensus promises a phase-out of caged animal farming, benefiting animals, farmers, and the environment
Donald Griffin: A visionary in science and consciousness
No full textCarolyn Ristau’s (2024) timely biography reviews Donald Griffin’s pioneering ideas with depth and historical perspective, describing Griffin’s approach to science, his openness to interdisciplinary insights, and his bold stance on consciousness. Ristau’s work highlights Griffin’s relevance to contemporary debates on consciousness and natural selection
Bird Flu Infections in U.S. Dairy Herds Raise Human Health Concerns as Cases Rise
No full textA recent CDC study highlights human bird flu infections among U.S. dairy workers, signaling broader transmission risks. With outbreaks across 15 states, experts warn that the bird flu virus, H5N1, could evolve, increasing potential human-to-human transmission risks
Animals in Conflict – Part II: Animal Protection Organizations; Conflict and Disaster Response Work
No full textAnimals were commonly overlooked in disaster responses in the 20th century but that is changing in the 21st
Birds, Bats and Minds. Tales of a Revolutionary Scientist: Donald R. Griffin. Volume One
No full textIn 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
The Food Waste Challenge
No full textThe world wastes an extraordinary quantity of food, but the issue has begun to be addressed
Is Love of Nature in Our Genes?
No full textIs biophilia a universal human instinct or a trait on which people differ
An individuals-oriented approach to conservation
No full textIndividual cognitive and emotional differences in personality among animals, along with differences in their behavioral traits, are increasingly important in conservation efforts. It is not only more effective but more ethical to take both collective and individual perspectives into account in both research and practice