Learn more about animal behaviour and welfare: For free!

Join the 128,500 other learners who have taken one of our free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and find out about animal welfare and behaviour of chickens, cats and dogs, farm or zoo animals.

There are three MOOCs – all are free (unless you would like to pay for the certificate) and re-run every 4 weeks – ensuring you have the flexibility to start when you want to. Many of the videos have translations in a number of languages including: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and Greek.

Join today and find out about animal welfare and behaviour!

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Topics are covered on a week-by-week basis and include:

1. The appliance of science
2. Ethology
3. Sense and sensibility
4. Living with humans
5. Can we do better?

Animal Behaviour and Welfare MOOC 

Topics are covered on a week-by-week basis and include:

1. What is Animal Welfare and Why Does it Matter?
2. The Truth About Cats and Dogs
3. Down on the Farm
4. Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Chicken Behaviour and Welfare MOOC

Topics are covered on a week-by-week basis and include:

1. Introduction to animal behaviour: domestication, behaviour development and learning, and senses
2. Behaviour patterns of chickens (part 1)
3. Behaviour patterns of chickens (part 2)
4. What is chicken welfare? Defining 'welfare', ethical obligations, and welfare standards

Horse welfare research at JMICAWE

The welfare of horses is sometimes overlooked as they do not fall easily into the category of ‘livestock’ or ‘companion’ animals, and have some unique welfare challenges not faced by other species, such as being ridden and worked. At JMICAWE, we have been concerned with understanding the welfare of horses from a range of different approaches.

We have just published a paper that describes our research to determine what are the more important welfare issues for horses in the UK (funded by the Animal Welfare Foundation of the British Veterinary Association). In this study, we used a ‘Delphi’ technique to gather the opinion of a wide range of experts on what were the biggest issues they perceived for horse welfare. The study found that, in the opinion of experts, horses were at risk of poor welfare from a range of issues including poor biosecurity, lack of owner knowledge of behaviour and welfare issues for horses, a reluctance to euthanise horses when they were suffering, and an inability of owners to recognise pain behaviour in their horses.

These may lead to specific welfare outcomes, the most important of these were considered to be health related, such as obesity, and large worm burdens, and emotional including pain, fear and stress from use and training, and management in ways that did not suit evolved behavioural responses. This paper is freely available to those who might want to learn more about the work here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/4/647

In addition, we currently have three PhD students studying horse welfare. In particular, these studies are tackling issues that our research has shown to be important welfare issues: developing methods to recognise pain and stress in horses, and investigating the knowledge and understanding of different horse-owning communities to horse welfare issues and behaviour. These studies will feed into our educational work to help owners understand horse behaviour and welfare needs, and improve the welfare of this group of animals.

Teaching in the time of Corona

Recent weeks have been turbulent and challenging for us all, and here at the JMICAWE we’ve been reassured by the kind messages from our friends and partners around the world, whilst also working hard to keep providing excellent educational resources to support our students of the Royal (Dick) school of veterinary studies, who are now studying remotely from home. 

Working with our amazing digital education unit, we’ve been able to create a suite of bespoke online animal behaviour and welfare resources for our undergraduate final year veterinary students covering topics from assessing farm animal welfare through to conducting behavioural consultations in general practice. In addition we’ve been working with our postgraduate MSc students to ensure their research projects continue, and source alternate projects where needed for those originally planning to study with our international partners.

Additionally our existing online postgraduate programmes continue as usual - education certainly doesn’t need to stop during the global pandemic, and here at Edinburgh we’re grateful for the expertise of our digital education colleagues, who allow our work to continue during this challenging time.

If you’re interested in trying an online course, please do check out our massive Open Access Online Courses in animal behaviour and welfare https://www.coursera.org/learn/animal-welfare and cat and dog behaviour https://www.coursera.org/learn/cats-and-dogs.

If you’re a vet or vet nurse working internationally, you may be interested in some of our website resources including farm animal welfare videos and a new resource on developing skills in para-vets and vet nurses https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/cpd. We also have online postgraduate programmes - if you are interested please see https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/studying/postgraduate/taught-programmes/online