ANIMAL WELFARE
Animal Welfare
Animal welfare science is used to define how an animal is coping with the conditions and environment where it lives. Animal welfare takes into consideration actual feelings and sensations experienced by the individual, and refers to the animal’s psychological well-being.
There are a myriad of factors that influence how an individual is feeling. Some of these include the food eaten (is it tasty, satisfying, nutritionally appropriate?) and how it’s offered (can the animal engage in natural feeding behaviors?), the level of physical and emotional comfort experienced, the ability to carry out natural behaviors reflective of a normal activity budget for the species, the opportunity to make choices about multiple aspects of everyday life, the perception of control, appropriate social groupings, and physical health and body condition.
Good captive animal care aims to minimize the frequency and intensity of an animal experiencing negative feelings (states) while promoting the experience of positive feelings (states).
The Difference between Animal Health and Animal Welfare
It can be easy to confuse animal health and animal welfare. Historically animal health was a principle mechanism by which animal welfare was measured, as were parameters such as whether or not the animal was eating and breeding, and its body condition. However, as our understanding of the science of animal welfare has grown, we now must consider (in addition to health) much more than these simpler measures because they don’t reflect the complete picture of how the animal is feeling and coping and whether or not he or she is thriving.
Good physical health does not automatically equate to good mental health. Consider the range of needs a species and/or individual may have – An appropriate environment that promotes a diversity of behavioral opportunities, socialization choices, self-care and maintenance, mental stimulation and problem solving, appropriate physical activity, seasonal and life-stage needs, and the list goes on – Animals can be physically healthy yet still suffer due to a lack of choices which support mental and behavioral health. When evaluating an animal’s welfare, species-specific and individual needs must be determined and assessed for the cumulative impact and complete picture of animal welfare.
Thriving Not Surviving!
Best practices of animal care and management involve creating environments in which animals can thrive, not just survive. Every animal should have the opportunity to live a good life that’s worth living! Functionally, this means captive environments must facilitate and promote rewarding experiences, specific to that individual and species, that yield positive feelings of contentment and satisfaction while minimizing, either by reduced exposure or providing the opportunity to cope, mitigate or escape, negative experiences that could result in feelings such as fear, frustration, or exposure to chronic or inescapable stressors can yield abnormal behaviors, apathy, aggression,
No animal will solely have positive experiences throughout its entire life; stressors occur in everyone’s life . . . it is how one manages or deals with such stressors that will indicate healthy or unhealthy behavioral and psychological coping mechanisms. To examine the balance between negative and positive experiences an animal experiences, and how that individual copes with these, a Quality of Life (QoL) evaluation is useful. QoL is located in the objective realm at the intersection of an individual’s needs and what external resources are available – although keep in mind that access to resources does not necessarily correlate with wellbeing if the individual cannot or does not make use of these. Wellbeing and thriving result from an individual’s ability to use and engage with available resources, which in turn leads to the experience of satisfaction and control resulting from making meaningful choices.
A captive environment should offer comfort and security which enables animals to feel safe enough so they can act upon provided choices and challenges. These choices and challenges facilitate natural, normal and rewarding behaviors as well as allow healthy coping with stressors. Therefore, the “3 Cs of Animal Welfare” are Comfort, Choice, and Control.
The 3 C’s of Animal Welfare
Comfort
Comfort encompasses many aspects of a captive animal’s daily life – schedule, opportunities, encounters with other animals and people, and is reflected in the care that’s provided. Comfort involves individual preferences but must also meet species’ requirements. Appropriately comfortable environments (for the individual and species) facilitate basic biological function and natural behaviors while offering opportunities for satisfying, pleasurable behaviors and encouraging investigation and engagement within the environment. This occurs when a range of inputs are provided, some of which include:
- Feelings of satisfaction from a proper social environment
- A physical environment that accommodates natural locomotion patterns, resting and refuge options, and stimulates investigation and curiosity
- Appropriate climatic ranges (temperature, humidity, deep shade to light) that promote self maintenance and thermoregulation
- Nutritious and varied diet offered in an appropriate manner
- Safety – physical and mental, including comprehensive health care
Choice
Ever noticed the moment you shut a door, your cat or dog suddenly wants to go through it? Then when it’s opened they don’t go through! The shut door removes the choice of where to be, and even though your pet opted not to move, the open door offered a choice. Studies show that having a choice can be more important than using that choice. For example, captive animals offered access different spaces within their environments show positive responses such as decreased abnormal behaviors, increased natural behaviors, and are more relaxed. Choices enable an animal to react to and engage with the environment. Restricting agency by not providing choices results in frustration.
Inherently captivity offers fewer choices than wild living, therefore providing options to captive animals is crucial for good welfare. Some types of choices include: variety of foods, mates and social groupings, use of 3-D space within the enclosure, water flow direction and rate, and nesting or substrate materials (for DIY nest building). Read more in Enrichment section.
Despite the correlation between positive animal welfare and choice, there remain practices in captive facilities worldwide that restrict agency and eliminate autonomy. This is most commonly seen where daily variety is limited or where inputs are predictable and unvarying.
Animals moving from a restricted or unvarying setting to one with choices may lack the confidence and agency to engage with with choices, therefore patience and understanding are required to help an individual develop these skills to realize autonomy.
Control
Control results from making choices and delivers some change – An animal chooses to behave in a particular way which creates some change or alteration of or within the environment. It is this animal-environment interface where we want to see an individual make choices and thus enabling control.
Control opportunities can be provided in a purposeful way or with a particular goal in mind which will deliberately and proactively create a change. Or in complex, dynamic captive environments, the animals acts with more autonomy, making choices that cause a consequential change associated with the action or choice.
Increasing control and agency comes from the provision of meaningful choices that the individual(s) find motivating, interesting and worthy of their efforts. Their engagement allows them to derive feelings of satisfaction.
Consider this:
When visiting a facility housing wild animals (zoo, aquarium, sanctuary, or rescue center), look to see if animals have access to all enclosure spaces. Locking animals into one space diminishes environmental choices and results in a loss of agency, which can lead to feelings of extreme frustration and welfare compromise.