Contributed by Alina Lilova
I am writing an article about recent discoveries in the field of animal welfare and animal psychology. The wealth of new information is staggering; scientific papers are being churned out by the dozen every month. I just have to pick out a few juicy bits here and there: nothing easier than that. And yet, the moment came when I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait a minute. What if people find this silly? You know, the way you shrug your shoulders at the millionth newspaper article which proclaims that 2+2=4 and calls it science?”
A pause for reflection is in order, then. I have to admit that in animal welfare science, a lot of the new evidence hardly amounts to a discovery but is mere validation of truths we know intuitively – or knew once but have forgotten in our post-industrial age. It is a little sad that we need statistical measurements of heart rates and cortisol levels to accept that cows have friends in their herd and get stressed when the farmer separates them, as reported in the Daily Mail. Another study which measured the heart rates of dairy cows showed that when one cow licks the face of another, the effect is profoundly calming.1
Unnecessary? Maybe so, but the fact is that modern-day people, who consume meat and dairy at unprecedented rates, need to re-learn such simple facts of animal existence. Last year, I went to the cinema to see Emmanuel Gras’s documentary Bovines – a film with no music or words – and I was mesmerised by how blissful a cow could look when her friend was massaging her face with her thick tongue. There was no difference between that so-called “beef cattle” and my street dog Tracy, who could fall asleep during a belly rub, and myself, who will melt like warm butter if anyone plays with my hair. And, as much as the licking, grazing and apple-picking were cute to watch, the documentary left me deeply troubled when it ended with the mother cows mooing in distressed chorus when their calves were taken away. Their anxiety was obvious, and heart-breaking.
Licking and disruption of social bonds – precisely the two things those research projects studied… Why all the science then? Can’t we just get more people to watch films or, better yet, go out in the fields (while cows can still be found in fields) and observe? Unfortunately, the industry stakeholders have powerful lobbies, and in the current zeitgeist “hard facts” seem to fare better than common knowledge or intuition when animal defenders appeal to lawmaking bodies for change. That’s also how the EU supposedly reaches its decisions. Consider their Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare, for example:
This independent Scientific Committee gives the Commission high quality scientific advice on animal health and animal welfare issues. The Committee considers all available and up-to-date scientific data and evidence and provides the Commission with a sound scientific basis for the drafting of legislation and other proposals.
The scientific method has another practical value in contemporary animal protection: it is good at yielding numbers. When an animal welfare problem is also a production problem, such as feather pecking in barn and free-range hens, the farmers may want the problem “quantified” in order to decide if it will be profitable to do something to solve it. How many hens die in these aggressive incidents that wouldn’t otherwise die in the battery cage (or, post 1-1-2012, the “enriched cage”)? If there is a solution to reduce deaths without going back to the cage system, what does it cost – and just how effective is it?
Anyone who looks at a flock of content house chickens can notice things they have that most of their commercially-farmed relatives, even the free-range ones, do not. Not only more space, but space filled with stuff: grass and litter to explore, suitable nests (hens are very picky about them), perches to feel safe, a rooster – harem bodyguard … And – if allowed to roam around freely – bushes and trees. Domestic chickens evolved from the wild jungle fowl, and to this day they need to feel the safety of the “jungle,” the way you and I need clothes in public even when the weather is fine.
A few years ago, McDonalds UK required all of its egg suppliers to plant trees for their laying hens. Then last year, scientists published the results of a project done in collaboration with McDonalds, which showed how much the birds’ injuries were reduced in proportion to the canopy cover. The more shady trees, the better, it turned out – in terms that even the profit-minded businessman would understand. In contrast, merely increasing space was not very effective.2
Instead of a conclusion, I think it worthy to mention that sometimes behavioural research does yield results that are curious and counter-intuitive (to some people at least)… even when the subject is a familiar domesticated species. An article published last spring revealed that with dog training, repetition is not necessarily the mother of learning. Dogs who are trained by the ‘crash course’ method, daily and/or in more than one training session per day, learn the task more slowly than dogs who are trained at a more leisurely pace – just once or twice a week, and not more than once a day. It appears that their minds need enough time – including nights full of dreaming – to process the new knowledge in peace…3
Journal sources:
1 Laister, Simone; Barbara Stockinger, Anna-Maria Regnera, Karin Zengera, Ute Knierim and Christoph Winckler (2011). “Social licking in dairy cattle—Effects on heart rate in performers and receivers.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 130: 81-90.
2 Bright, A., Brass, D., Clachan, J., Drake, K.A. and A.D. Joret (2011). “Canopy cover is correlated with reduced injurious feather pecking in commercial flocks of free-range laying hens.” Animal Welfare 20: 329-338.
3 Demand, Helle; Jan Ladewig, Thorsten J.S. Balsby and Torben Dabelsteen (2011). “The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 133: 228– 234.
Tags: Animal Welfare Science, cows, dog training, feather pecking, laying hens, social licking
Lovely stuff Alina