Animal Cognition and Parameters to Assess Animal Welfare State

Animal welfare has become a growing concern for society and food production. Consequently, there is an increasing need for reliable parameters to assess animal welfare and to improve animal living conditions. The understanding of animals’ needs and affective states are crucial to the identification of suitable welfare measures. To evaluate animal welfare more accurately, knowledge of animal cognitive needs and abilities is also fundamental. It provides insight into the animals’ general perception of the environment and the processes regulating social interactions with both conspecifics and humans. Cognitive functions are also closely interrelated with affective states, since they are involved in the generation of emotions, but they are also affected by emotions. Recent studies reported that cognition and emotional functioning are lateralised in animal brains.

To date, studies on physical cognition (e.g. categorization, object permanence, reasoning) and social cognition (e.g. individual recognition, communication, social learning) of livestock, companion and laboratory animals are relatively underrepresented. The aim of this Research Topic is to gather scientific data on the cognitive abilities of the animal species living in close contact with humans in order to identify their potential implications on the management and social interactions with other individuals. The influence of affective states on cognitive functions and the underlying brain processing, including the hemispheric specialization for specific functions, are also topics of interest of this Research Topic.

We invite the submission of original research studies, case studies and reviews that explore cognitive functions of livestock, companion and laboratory animals, their relationship with affective states and their practical implication on animal welfare. We invite contributions that identify factors influencing the animal appraisal of the environment and other individuals. We also invite papers exploring the functional brain mechanisms underlying cognition and affective states. We equally encourage the proposal of novel approaches, tools and methodologies to study and assess animal cognitive functions and welfare. Themes could include but are not limited to;

- The influence of cognition and affective states on the adaptive responses to the environmental stressors

- The impact of cognitive functions on management practices

- The identification of novel welfare parameters based on the species-specific cognitive abilities

- The development of new tools for evaluating animal affective state and welfare.