Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy
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Unconscious humans, autonomous machines and the difficulty of knowing which animals are sentient
No full textThe framework proposed by Crump et al. still leaves much doubt about whether invertebrates such as crabs are sentient. For example, many complex behaviours - even in humans - occur without sentience. Also, simple machines could easily meet all of Crump et al.’s eight proposed criteria for sentience. Acknowledging the limitations of what we currently know about sentience is important both for formulating legislation correctly and for advancing scientific understanding of this most puzzling of biological phenomena
Slowly but Steadily, Animals are being Replaced in Safety Testing
No full textPeriodically, WellBeing News (WBN) carries a story on using animals to test the safety of chemicals (see May 2021 and December 2021). Advocacy campaigns to switch from animal tests to non-animal alternatives started over a hundred years ago. Public policy initiatives and technological advances leading to the implementation of alternatives began several decades ago. The WBN December 2021 story included an illustration of five selected countries showing animal use in laboratories increased rapidly from 1900 to the mid-1970s and then declined almost as rapidly to around 20-40% of peak laboratory animal use. It should be noted that the technical capacity to create genetically modified organisms (GMO mice) resulted in brief upward blips in laboratory animal numbers in most countries this century. However, animal use is again declining because GMO mice have not provided the expected research discoveries and insights. Instead, the latest focus is on developing so-called “organs-on-a-chip” using human cells grown on silicon wafers to mimic the behavior of human organs. Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and TISSUSE in Berlin are pioneers of this technology
Saving Tigers in America: Part 2
No full textIn the second of three articles, the reasons individuals and organizations keep tigers are examined with the help of three case studies of failed tiger keeping
Human-Wolf Conflict and Wolf Protection
No full textWhile there may be as many as one billion domestic dogs in the world today, estimates of the global population of grey wolves (from whom domestic dogs evolved) put the number at a paltry 200,000-250,000. Once, there were an estimated 2 million wolves in North America alone, but the wolf has long been hated and persecuted by humans. From the 1600s to seventy years ago, those who wanted to eradicate wolves dominated wolf policy, and wolves were hunted out of most of Central Europe and the lower 48 states of the United States of America (USA), with only small relict populations left in northern Minnesota and Michigan. The 1950s through the 1980s were the low point for wolf populations in Europe. In 1984, in an article entitled “The big bad wolf?,” Stephen Mills reported less than 1,000 wolves in Western and Northern Europe. But, as attitudes to carnivores began to change, the number of people supporting wolves grew, leading to increased advocacy on their behalf
Crustacean Pain
No full textThis commentary discusses the target article’s methodology, the relevance of the claim that crustaceans lack a neocortex to the thesis that they feel pain, and the evaluation of the results of some trade-off experiments done with hermit crabs
Nexus Between Animal Welfare, Environment, and Sustainable Development: Resource Document
No full textThis Resource Document has been developed to explore the Nexus (links) between Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. The document includes relevant citations and reports addressing the topics encompassed by the Nexus. It will be maintained as a “living document” (subject to revision) in the WellBeing International Studies Repository. The original document and subsequent revisions will be kept in the Repository to provide a record of the changes
IPCC - Climate Change 2022 - Technical Report
No full texthttps://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/boocov/1032/thumbnail.jp
IPBES 2019. Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
No full texthttps://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/boocov/1026/thumbnail.jp
Cities, Nature and Human Well-being
No full textWilliam H. Whyte (1917-1999) may be best remembered as the author of The Organization Man. This 1956 bestseller described a corporate America in which, he argued, our esteemed sense of rugged individualism had been replaced by a softer ethos of conformity and “groupthink” (Whyte took this term from George Orwell). Amplified through other outlets such as the popular movie The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the image of legions of corporate males complemented by their domestic female home builders came to define the America of the 1950s
Sentience as part of emotional lives
No full textIt is high time to explore the sentience of invertebrate animals, but this topic cannot be discussed without also exploring their emotional lives, including positive emotions. Sentience probably evolved to allow the regulation of emotions by endowing them with feelings