From the individual to the population–and back again? Emphasising the role of the individual in animal welfare science
During the past decades, the study of “animal personalities” has gained increasing importance in the field of behavioural and evolutionary ecology, thereby contributing to a focus shift from the population to the individual in various research disciplines. Against this background, the overall idea of the present review is to transfer the personality concept from behavioural […]
Animal agency, animal awareness and animal welfare
In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from the adaptive/functional point of view, four levels of agency can be distinguished, namely passive/reactive agency (animal being behaviourally passive or […]
Correlates between ear postures and emotional reactivity in a wild type mouse species
Facial expressions have been extensively used to assess emotions in humans and thus could be extended to other species that also display facial movements. In mice both painful and fearful situations have been associated with particular shifts in facial expressions. Like other species, mice frequently show a great inter-individual variability when exposed to emotional situations, […]