{"id":5645,"date":"2019-10-20T17:21:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T15:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/?p=5645"},"modified":"2024-12-30T21:22:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:22:53","slug":"animal-welfare-fairy-godmothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/animal-welfare-fairy-godmothers\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Welfare and her fairy godmothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Updated August 2023<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time there was a princess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was quite furry and partly covered in scales, and also had a beak, and so she was named Animal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her last name was Welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animal Welfare had four fairy godmothers, who all gave her precious gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Fairy Godmothers of Animal Welfare<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The fairy godmothers came from different scientific realms, and they were called Applied Ethology, Veterinary Medicine, Affective Neuroscience and Applied Behaviour Analysis \u2013 and each of them offered priceless, irreplaceable gifts to Animal Welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here\u2019s the twist of this fairy tale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The fairy godmothers all wore unique glasses \u2013 they would each see the world through a different lens; some spectacles were like myopic microscopes, others resembled binoculars. The Godmothers were of different age and nationality, and so didn\u2019t speak the same native language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Fairy Godmothers viewed the world through different lenses<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Also, they didn\u2019t get along very well; whenever they met, there were squabbles. Heated discussions about whose gift contributed the most to Animal Welfare, and whose approach was the most humane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condescending comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eye rolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chance meetings would usually end up with some of them storming off, affronted, frustrated and exasperated at one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animal Welfare was sad, because she loved them all and wanted them to get along better. So she sat down to think about what was at the root of the disagreements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some cases, she realized, the conflict was due to language barriers. The same word would mean vastly different things to the different fairy godmothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some cases, it was due to cultural differences. Things were simply done differently in different scientific realms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in some cases, it was because the fairy godmothers didn\u2019t understand much about the particular gifts of the others. The lenses through which they saw the world were simply too different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And one day, Animal Welfare had had enough. She stomped up to them and said: \u201cListen, I\u2019m tired of your bickering. This conflict isn\u2019t helping me at all \u2013 quite the opposite! Tonight I\u2019m throwing a party, and I invite you to sit down and learn each other\u2019s language, and try on each other\u2019s glasses!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was fabulous food, music and dancing. And the fairy godmothers stayed up all night, learning each others\u2019 languages, laughing over silly misunderstandings because of culture differences, and trying on each other\u2019s glasses. And that night, after some karaoke, dancing and perhaps a bit too much to drink, after learning from each other, they discovered new insights \u2013 new gifts – that they gave to Animal Welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animal Welfare flourished, and grew some mighty new wings thanks to the magic from the synergy of the combined skills of her fairy godmothers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The combined glasses created new prisms<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

And so, they lived happily ever after. Dancing, talking, and marveling at how extraordinarily beautiful the world looked when combining all the spectacles into one big prism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m guessing, if you\u2019ve read this far, that you might be curious what the different fairy godmothers, the different scientific disciplines, all have to contribute to Animal Welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who knows, maybe there\u2019ll be some spectacles you haven\u2019t tried on yet? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I deeply encourage you to examine the other glasses too, if you haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s pick them up and have a look. And I\u2019ll give you fair warning: since I\u2019m an ethologist myself, my world tends to be tinted through those glasses, despite my best efforts to take them off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applied Ethology.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In my mind, the main value of Applied Ethology to Animal Welfare is that it can help us set up optimal environments \u2013 this perspective helps ask the right questions when planning and preparing an area for the arrival of a new animal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As ethologists, we make sweeping generalizations about species or populations of animals, and we make educated guesses how best to care for them in a captive environment. Some of the most important questions that might be asked are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n