About this Research Topic
Animals that are kept in captivity and/or are used in behavioural studies are limited in many dimensions of their life, such as in their physical and social environment, and diet. Thus, their welfare strongly depends on human care and resource supply. Careful evaluation of housing conditions is required to provide adequate welfare to these animals, however, a broad range of different concepts have been proposed for its assessment. Animal welfare concepts such as e.g. the five-freedoms address ways to ensure welfare of animals and point towards the species’ ecology by incorporating the freedom to express normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind. However, while this and other welfare concepts have their merits and are important improvements for animal welfare, they often lack a full implementation of the species ecology and life history as known from the wild conspecific/ancestors. Thus, when assessing and investigating the welfare of captive animals, ecological considerations such as habitat characteristics, behavioural patterns, social organisation should increasingly be included. Since natural behaviour is also referred to in many animal protection legislations knowledge on species ecology and life history could provide policy makers with the scientific basis for legislation. The benefit of such an approach is better known for the implementation of environmental enrichment (e.g. physical, occupational) which is only effective if it is ecologically suitable for the species and age groups it is intended for. Further, rearing offspring artificially differs largely from conspecifics living under natural conditions (e.g. group composition, feeding, maternal care) and has been linked to the development of abnormal behaviour.
The aim of this Research Topic is to present research related to animal welfare in laboratory, zoo and farm animals, that not only addresses animal welfare, but also approaches of how ecological considerations are incorporated, e.g. allowing captive animals to have a more nature-like and cognitive challenging environment that they can (partly) take control of. Consequently, this Research Topic invites studies that stress the benefit of combining behavioural ecology with animal welfare with all its possibilities, challenges and limitations.
We aim to collect interesting studies that address first steps or fully grown approaches of how behavioural ecology and animal welfare are integrated. We are looking for original studies, reviews, and especially also opinion and perspective papers. This Research Topic invites manuscripts on, but not limited to the following topics:
1.) Maternal care and behavioural development
2.) Heat stress: being in control of taking effective counter measures and animal welfare
3.) Cognition: designing ecologically relevant tasks
4.) Cognitive enrichment to increase animal welfare
5.) Everyday decision-making: the relevance for animal welfare
6.) Multi species housing systems
7.) Empowerment of (farm-) animals
The aim of this Research Topic is to present research related to animal welfare in laboratory, zoo and farm animals, that not only addresses animal welfare, but also approaches of how ecological considerations are incorporated, e.g. allowing captive animals to have a more nature-like and cognitive challenging environment that they can (partly) take control of. Consequently, this Research Topic invites studies that stress the benefit of combining behavioural ecology with animal welfare with all its possibilities, challenges and limitations.
We aim to collect interesting studies that address first steps or fully grown approaches of how behavioural ecology and animal welfare are integrated. We are looking for original studies, reviews, and especially also opinion and perspective papers. This Research Topic invites manuscripts on, but not limited to the following topics:
1.) Maternal care and behavioural development
2.) Heat stress: being in control of taking effective counter measures and animal welfare
3.) Cognition: designing ecologically relevant tasks
4.) Cognitive enrichment to increase animal welfare
5.) Everyday decision-making: the relevance for animal welfare
6.) Multi species housing systems
7.) Empowerment of (farm-) animals
Keywords: Animal Welfare, Behavioural Ecology, Ethology, Well-being, Farm animals, Laboratory animals
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
