Most were snatched from the wild as infants, and some bred in a laboratory, and used in medical experiments. Their reactions as they venture into the outside world clearly show that chimps are sentient, emotional beings.

It’s well worth visiting the sanctuary’s website for great photos of the chimps and their individual stories.  How fantastic that these chimps finally have a life worth living!

Mother hens feel empathy for their chicks

Researcher Jo Edgar said: “We found that adult female birds possess at least one of the essential underpinning attributes of ‘empathy’; the ability to be affected by, and share, the emotional state of another.”

The researchers used chickens for this study because in commercial farming, as they pointed out, “chickens will regularly encounter other chickens showing signs of pain or distress due to routine husbandry practices or because of the high levels of conditions such as bone fractures or leg disorders.”

Scientists have also found that hens can anticipate future events based on previous experience, and make judgements accordingly; they have over 30 different calls for clear communication with each other; and chicks can count!  But these abilities and the sentience of hens and chickens are sadly disregarded in commercial farming conditions. Today’s study on hens and empathy gives yet more weight to the urgent need for more humane farming systems, in which animals can carry out their natural behaviours. Animals are sentient beings, and  what happens to them, matters to them.

For information about farm animal welfare and how you can help end factory farming,  please visit Compassion in World Farming.

Sources: 
The foundations of empathy are found in the chicken. University of Bristol press release, issued 9 March 2011. http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2011/7525.html

‘Avian maternal response to chick distress’, J L Edgar, J C Lowe, E S Paul, C J Nicol, published online ahead of print Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 9 March 2011

Once a forager has found pollen or nectar they will return to the hive and perform an elaborate dance on the vertical surface of a honey comb. Karl von Frisch discovered that bees use this dance to communicate the location of food to others in their hive. If the food is relatively far from the hive (as it generally is) the bee will perform a “waggle dance” to communicate two items of information – the distance to and the direction of the food source.

A bee that performs a waggle dance moves in a figure of eight. She waggles her body from side to side and emits a buzzing sound as she moves forward in a straight line, then circles to the right, back to her starting point, waggles ahead again, and then circles to the left and waggles again. This pattern is repeated a number of times.

The duration of the straight run, or “waggle,” tells the other bees how far the nectar or pollen is from the hive. As the distance to the food source increases, the duration of the waggle also increases.

The direction in which the dancing bee faces during the straight portion of her waggle dance indicates the location of the food source in relation to the sun. For example, if the flowers are located 30 degrees to the right of the sun, the dance will be oriented 30 degrees to the right of vertical.

The waggle dance acts as a form of language – the other foragers watch the dancing bee’s movements and receive information about how to get to the food source. They also receive information about what is to be found at the food source through their sense of smell.

How a worker bee communicates the location of food source to other bees in the hive may be one of the most complex forms of social behaviour seen outside of the human race.

Here’s a great video about these amazing bees.

Sources:
Frisch, K.V., (1967). The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Gould, J.L., and Gould, C.G., (1988). The Honey Bee. New York: Scientific American Library, W.H. Freeman

Armed with a snowball

For our special Christmas day post, we found a rather lovely fact about Japanese Macaque monkeys….

Young Macaques have been seen to make and throw snowballs, just like people do! Scientists could find no reason why they would do this, other than simply because it is fun!

Not only that, but back in the 1960s, these Japanese Macaques saw their human counterparts bathing in hot springs, and must have decided that this was a great idea. In the freezing temperatures they endure, a hot tub seems to be a relaxing and enjoyable social occasion.

Just another little similarity between different species – it seems many like to have fun, whether we have fur, feathers or plain old human clothes…

Wishing you a Compassionate Christmas!

Sources:

Uhlenbrook, C. (2008) Animal life the definitive visual guide to animals and their behaviour, Dorling Kindersley, London.
Primate Info Net (2009) [accessed 24 December 09)
BBC Worldwide, Monkeys Relaxing

Credit: Roger Steene

The veined octopus is a truly amazing underwater character. Researchers in Melbourne have discovered that they get up to some surprising antics – using coconut shells.

These octopi collect coconut shells discarded by their human neighbours, gather them under their body and then carry them and walk, rather awkwardly, for up to 20m at a time. The scientists dubbed this as ‘stilt-walking’ due to the unusual way the octopus has to use its legs whilst carrying the shells.

The octopus goes to this considerable effort so he or she has portable ‘armour’. If suddenly under threat the octopus could create instant camouflage and protection by climbing in between two coconut halves.

This is really significant, as use of tools by animals is said to be a sign of higher mental functioning, as is planning for the future. Some people used to believe that only humans had such advanced abilities, but we increasingly find that other animals have so many unsuspected abilities – including a mind of their own. (see Rooks, Pigs).

Here is another shining example of amazing animals and a valuable reminder that animals can have many hidden abilities that we are yet to notice and appreciate.

Watch original video footage here.

ITN coverage:

Source: Finn, J. K., Treganza, T. and Norman, M. D. (2009) Defensive tool use in a coconut – carrying octopus, Current Biology, 19 (23): R1069-R1070.

Julian K. Finn^{1, 2,} , Tom Tregenza^3, and Mark D. Norman¹

Animal welfare consultant Heather Pickett has written a special article for our animal sentience pages. It’s a fascinating  read  about  horses’ behaviour, cognitive abilities (such as ‘thinking’) and welfare needs.  Horses have remarkably complex social lives; with membership of a herd being of ultimate importance to them and sometimes roaming for up to 80km in one day. They are great diplomats, able to resolve many conflicts in order to keep the herd together.

Self reflection. Copyright Compassion/ Ed Posposil

Mares often form lifetime relationships, spending most of their time together. Their foals often become good friends too as a result. They have remarkable memory skills and have even been shown to understand that a 3-D image can be shown in a photograph. For example, horses had been trained to have a ‘favourite’ object (for example a soft toy or a frisbee), using treats as positive reinforcement. Then they were shown photos of a range of things, including their ‘favoured toy’, and more often than not they would choose the photo of that toy. In a similar experiment (Stone 2009), horses were found to be able to tell the difference between photos of people, even identical twins!

Domesticated horses are often kept stabled alone and fed on concentrated food that is eaten quickly, rather than grazing the whole day as they would do in more natural conditions. These factors sometimes lead to destructive behaviours such as weaving, biting the stable doors and pacing. The occurrence of these unnatural behaviours illustrates that horses, just like many other animals, need an environment that more closely fits their needs and fully takes into account their sentience and intelligence.

Download the full article Pickett, H. (2009) ‘Horses: Their Behaviour, Mental Abilities and Welfare’. animalsentience.com
Shorter version also available

Reference: Stone, S. M. (2009) Human facial discrimination in horses: can they tell us apart?  Animal Cognition, Online first.

Fishcount.org.uk is an engaging new website created to increase awareness of the plight of fish caught for food, and to promote workable solutions for the future.

It is estimated that approximately 1-3 trillion fish are caught every year. The methods used in most fishing ventures have the potential to cause profound distress to fish and therefore more humane alternatives are proposed.

Fish farming is on the increase. Given that conditions for farmed fish too often cause suffering, it is essential that such systems are designed to pay full regard to the welfare of fish.

The evidence for fish sentience draws on wide and varied sources, from scientific studies to a really interesting film of Comet the goldfish (see clip below) who has learned to perform tricks. He can play football, fetch hoops just like a dog, swim through a tunnel or a slalom…the list goes on!

We are given a deep insight into the experience of caught fish and shown the welfare shortfalls in modern fishing techniques. These include rapid and damaging decompression when pulled in trawl nets from deep in the sea, which often results in the rupture of internal organs; being left to suffocate on ice until they die; and in the case of long line fishing they sometimes hang for days before they are ‘landed’, condemning them to a slow death and vulnerable to attack by predators. We can see how much distress these experiences could cause to a sentient being.

Some people have traditionally thought that fish do not suffer pain and distress in that the same way as land-based animals and humans. But increasingly, science now suggests that this is not the case, and that fish and indeed other underwater creatures such as crabs have the potential for pain and emotional experiences, just as we do. This clearly has enormous implications for the treatment of the fish that are caught for our tables. Fishing techniques to date have only focused on speed and quantity of catching , and have not considered the suffering of those creatures  who are caught.

Fish farming is on the increase. Given that conditions for farmed fish too often cause suffering, it is essential that such systems are designed to pay full regard to the welfare of fish. Fish are amazing animals with intrinsic value, and with our  increasing understanding of their sentience, change is urgently needed.

Visit www.fishcount.org.uk

Team players. Image courtesy of Tim Vickers

Source:
Drea, C. M., Carter, A. N. (2009)
Co-operative problem solving in a social carnivore
Animal Behaviour, 78: 967-977.

This helping is not just reserved for other chimps too – in a previous study by Warneken, chimps were also witnessed helping humans in a similar task and handing a stick to them on request. Videos of both of these experiments can be found below.

Chimp helps human- scroll down the page, and play the first video in the list.

Sources:
Yamamoto, S., Humle, T.,Tanaka, M. (2009)
Chimpanzees Help Each Other upon Request
PLoS ONE, 4(10): e7416

Warneken, F., Hare, B., Melis, A. P., Hanus, D., Tomasello, M.
Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children
PLoS Biol 5(7): e184

Socialising in the village square. (c) Compassion in World Farming/Chi Keung Wong

Pigs are very chatty, communicating with grunts, squeals, snarls and snorts, champing their jaws and clacking their teeth. Sows have a special call for their piglets when it’s time for the piglets to suckle. Sows and piglets keep contact with each other and with their mother by squeals and grunts. If piglets are separated from Mum, they squeal for her. Scientists found that sows responded more strongly to the desperate squeals from cold, hungry piglets than they did  to calls from larger, more well-fed piglets.

Animals can also understand each other’s language. For example, some animals can understand the meaning of another’s alarm call.

Dogs and humans have a long history of living together. While dogs are often quick are picking up what humans are saying – perhaps by the tone of voice rather than by all the actual words – we humans often seem to struggle to understand dog ‘bark language.’ In this really interesting video, courtesy of the social networking site Petstreet ,  dog communication expert John Rogerson helps us decipher what our furry friends are wanting to tell us.