Fall 2023 Methods Workshop
In Fall 2023, Wild Animal Initiative hosted a five-part virtual workshop series on methods in wild animal welfare science. The program was free and covered an introduction to wild animal welfare, guidance on measuring wild animal welfare, guidance on creating and validating new measures, and a walkthrough exercise in which participants designed a wild animal welfare study. Selected talks from the workshops are shared here.
Workshop 2 | November 6, 2023How to Measure Animal Welfare
This session introduced participants to establish methods and frameworks for measuring animal welfare, as they are currently used for domesticated and captive animals. Dr. Janire Castellano Bueno provided a historical overview of animal welfare, from the Roman Era through today. Professor Saskia Arndt introduced DAWCon, the Dynamic Animal Welfare Concept, which describes welfare as the animal’s ability to cope and adapt. Dr. Gareth Arnott provided a case study of incorporating the 3Rs in the study design of his animal contest research.
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Dr. Janire Castellano Bueno is the Outreach Manager at Wild Animal Initiative. She received her PhD in Animal Welfare and Affective Neuroscience from the University of Newcastle, where she focused on the assessment of the long-term welfare of laboratory macaques using a multidisciplinary approach. She has extensive experience in primate welfare and behavior, as well as in statistical modeling.
Saskia Arndt
DAWCon – The Dynamic Animal Welfare Concept: A Guideline to Assess, Safeguard, and Promote Animal Welfare
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Saskia Arndt is a Professor of Animal Behavior in the Division of Animals in Science and Society in the Population Health Sciences Department at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the development and translation of behavior-related animal welfare concepts, methods, and insights into domesticated and managed animals. She received a PhD at the University of Cologne in ethology and has worked at high-ranking research institutions including the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in the USA and the German Primate Center in Germany.
Gareth Arnott
Considering Animal Welfare in Study Designs: A Worked Example Using Animal Contest Research
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Dr. Gareth Arnott is a Reader of Animal Behavior and Welfare at the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University in Belfast. His research focuses on animal contest behavior, using predictions derived from game theory to better understand information-gathering and decision-making processes underlying aggressive interactions in animals. He has also published on applied animal welfare problems associated with aggression. He is currently the academic leader of the Animal Welfare Research Network, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Additional information
Event Accessibility and Inclusivity Guide
Contact
Grey Fernandez, event coordinator
grey.fernandez@wildanimalinitiative.org