Knowledge Transfer
Ethical Eating – Quality of Human Life
If you’re based in the UK, you will have heard about the problems facing our dairy industry due to the plummeting price of milk, and even if you’re not, you’ll have seen me talk about it in the Ethical Eating Introduction. The welfare of our producers is another thorny issue. Read more…
Knowledge Transfer
Salvador Dumbo
I’ve spoken before about how YouTube and the explosion of camera phones has given animal behaviour researchers a a way of quantifying behaviour that is rarely seen, or would once have been thought of as anecdotal. Well here’s a short example of (what looks to be) a very strange behaviour Read more…
Knowledge Transfer
In Defence of Cats
During Badger Fortnight an amazing blog post by climber Craig Armstrong came to my attention – detailing the climbing exploits of him and his cat Millie. I particularly love the comments that express amazement or defend the cats’ loyalty. As you might have guessed by reading this blog, I’m a Read more…
Tea Break
The Selfie Cancer
Have you taken your make-up free selfie yet? Or are you rolling your eyes at the very thought? The split between the two camps is pretty much 50:50 on my Facebook wall. Let me start with this. I am terrified of cancer. There are few diseases that frighten me. As Read more…
Journal Club
The Other
One of my colleagues recently took a sabbatical year and worked with another university’s anthropology department. This week she gave us a fascinating seminar about how anthropologists view human-animal relations and how different it is from the ethologist’s view. I can only simplify what my colleague had already simplified for Read more…
Tea Break
LolCats and Doge, YouTube and Animal Behaviour
In 2013 Nelson & Fijn published an absolutely brilliant paper in Animal Behaviour. It’s called ‘The use of visual media as a tool for investigating animal behaviour‘ and it’s about watching animals on YouTube. I watch a lot of animals on YouTube so I love this paper. It provides a Read more…
Tea Break
Why Do We Care About Animal Welfare?
Every so often, usually late at night or early in the morning, when I’m on a farm and I’m cold and miserable, I wonder why we care about animal welfare. After all, they’re not human. Why do we worry about their lives? Why do we want them to have the Read more…
