Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Horback, Kristina M.
• Fischer, Bob

Titel

The Emotional Lives of Animals

Ist Teil von

• The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics, 2020, p.55-70

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Emotional responses evolved to guide both human and nonhuman animals in achieving survival goals and increase fitness (i.e., seek resources and avoid harm). An individual's emotional state can be deduced from physiological (heart rate, glucocorticoid levels), behavioral (body posture, vocalization, pupil dilation), and cognitive (judgment bias test) indicators. These measurements may provide information about the emotional arousal state (low to high) and valence (positive to negative). Animal welfare science is the study of the biological and psychological state of an animal under human care, such as laboratory, companion, zoo, and farm animals, as it attempts to cope with its environment. Advances in modern science, from psychology to neuroscience, will enhance our ability to recognize emotions in animals, which, in turn, may improve the quality of care given and, perhaps, animal welfare. Emotions in animals can be inferred through physiological measurements, in combination with behavioral measurements and cognitive assessment. In the comparative neuroscience field, some argue for a different set of core emotional affects present in both humans and animals: seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic, and play. Animal welfare researchers analyze vocalizations of captive and wild animals in a variety of contexts as a noninvasive method to evaluate an animal's arousal and affective state.