Animal Welfare Day 2019

Exploring Animal Sentience for World Animal Day 

World Animal Day falls on 4^th October each year and its purpose is to improve animal welfare standards around the globe, through celebrating the lives of animals. The mission of World Animal Day is to make the world a better place for animals, which fits very well with the JMICAWE mission and aims. Every two years, with our partner SRUC, JMICAWE have been involved in helping to organise an event around this date, to celebrate animal welfare. This year, we also linked up with our BioResearch vets to cover animals used in science as well as other animals. As our theme this year we focused on ‘Animal sentience and emotions’ and why that is so important in our thinking about animal welfare. We were delighted to be able to welcome 200 staff and students from local campuses to the event.

We began with a morning of talks from researchers from SRUC, the French research institute (INRA) and University of Newcastle. Our first speaker, Professor Francoise Wemelsfelder from SRUC, reminded us about animal ethics and why sentience and emotions should be at the forefront of our thinking and assessments of animal welfare. Next Professor Marie Haskell (SRUC) showed us the fascinating abilities of farm animals to recognise emotions in faces, and why faces are so important for animals.

 Professor Marie Haskell (SRUC) defines emotions

We then had a series of presentations on positive emotions in animals – such as play, positive engagement, contentment and use of enrichment. Dr Belinda Vigors shared the outcomes of some of her work in exploring these concepts with farmers, and it was great to see how important farmers felt these positive emotions were to the lives of farmed animals. Professor Alistair Lawrence then expanded on the theme of positive animal welfare, including showing a wonderful video of rats engaging in hide-and-seek play with researchers – what a great thing to be able to call work! A visiting researcher, Dr Vincent Bombail from INRA, then continued this theme with a talk about tickling rats and assessing their vocal responses. Finally our morning programme ended with a talk by Dr Matt Leach of Newcastle University about the very important emotion of pain and how it can be recognised in animals.

As is becoming a tradition with these events we had a long lunch break to allow delegates to network and find out more about animal welfare research including the use of 3D video imaging to detect animal behaviour on farm, training tools for farmers on body condition scoring of cows, and a peek at the new large animal imagining facility, including MRI. For the afternoon we had a really interesting talk from about the use of animals in science from Elliott Lilley of RSPCA and concluded with a panel discussion on animal sentience and how that might affect use of animals in science. 

Overall the feedback on the event was very positive, and we look forward to organising the next one in 2021! 

Positive Emotions in Horses; ISES Conference 2015 Canada

This August, JMICAWE Centre Director, Professor Nat Waran was invited to speak at the UBC in Vancouver, at the 11th International Society for Equitation Science Conference. This was the first time that the conference has taken place in Canada and there was a good turn out of around 170 delegates from various parts of the world. This included three students who have been studying equine behaviour and welfare through the Edinburgh online programmes.

The Conference theme was about breaking barriers and bridging gaps- between scientists and riders/coaches, and the practical demonstrations by internationally acclaimed riders and trainers in a range of disciplines provided the opportunity to look at the application of an evidence based approach to a range of equestrian disciplines.

 

Professor Waran gave her talk on the second day, addressing the issue of whether its possible to determine if a horse is a happy athlete. This complemented some great presentations covering diverse topics such as; equine stress behaviours in therapy horses, problems with use of the whip in horse-racing and physiological and behavioural responses of horses to wither scratching when under saddle.

The International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) was founded in 2007 by a group of scientists, psychologists, veterinarians, and animal behaviourists united in their desire to promote equine well-being through promoting an evidence-based, scientific approach in horse training and to ensure that the techniques used are based on what we know about horse behaviour and learning, as well as being effective.

Prof Waran is a co-founder of the field of equitation science, and the very first workshop was held in Edinburgh at the veterinary school in 2004, and a successful international conference in 2012. The next ISES conference will be held in Saumur in France in June 2016.

 

You can read more about this year's conference via the following link;

Pet Therapy: Scientists delving into what makes a healthy and happy horse