Nonhuman Research Articles

Second-Class Animals: Systematic Discrimination of Farm Animals in German Biology Textbooks

ABSTRACT Nonhuman animals are perceived differently depending on their relative use for humans. While companion animals are anthropomorphized and assigned a high moral status, farm animals often do not receive such consideration. To investigate the development of these differing perceptions, we evaluated the depiction of farm and companion animals in German biology textbooks to identify and analyze inherent biases across nonhuman animal species. The varying moral considerations and treatment of nonhuman animals are solely determined by their species membership, reflecting a broader collective orientation toward nonhuman animals referred to as speciesism. Analyzing 35 German biology textbooks, we investigated whether the portrayal of companion animals (dogs and cats) versus farm animals (pigs, cows, and chickens) differentiates between them, manifesting in companion animal speciesism and belief in the emotional and cognitive capacities of animals (belief in animal mind). We developed a set of categories and examined differences in the frequencies of sentence allocation between companion animals and farm animals to test whether speciesism is embedded in German educational materials. The results of our tests indicate significant biases in the representation of companion and farm animals in German biology textbooks. Specifically, companion animals are attributed significantly greater intrinsic value (χ 2 = 102.36, p < 0.001, φ = 0.152), concern (χ 2 = 20.91, p < 0.001, φ = 0.069), and belief in animal mind (χ 2 = 351.22, p < 0.001, φ = 0.269) compared with farm animals. These findings expose speciesist bias in textbooks, where companion animals are portrayed more favorably, while farm animals are depicted with indifference or as mere resources. This raises critical questions about perspectives on nonhuman animals and underscores the need to reevaluate their portrayal in educational materials.

Bioethics transformed: 40years of the value of life.

This article examines the evolution of bioethics over the past four decades since the publication of John Harris' seminal work, "The Value of Life" (1985). It argues that while the core principles articulated by Harris remain relevant, bioethics has undergone significant transformation across four key domains. First, the expanding frontiers of biotechnology have necessitated engagement with complex issues beyond individual clinical ethics. Second, there has been a widening of the circle of moral concern to encompass nonhuman animals, disability rights, and global health equity. Third, bioethics has become increasingly entangled with public policy and governance. Finally, the field has seen substantial academic proliferation and institutionalization. These developments have pushed bioethics to adapt its frameworks and methodologies while maintaining fidelity to foundational principles. This article concludes by considering the future challenges and opportunities for bioethics in an increasingly complex technological and social landscape.

Commodifying compassion: a critical discourse analysis of Spanish zoo, aquarium and animal theme parks’ lobbies

The influence of the zoological park industry on public compassion remains an understudied area that is pivotal to understanding how public relations—specifically persuasive communication—attempts to shape public consent regarding the use of animals in entertainment. This paper addresses this issue by conducting a critical discourse analysis of the main interest groups in Spain’s zoological park industry: AIZA, Grupo Parques Reunidos, and Loro Parque Fundación. The results show that despite these actors’ compassionate self-representations, they use objectifying language, biological hierarchization, and commodification to represent nonhuman animals. In particular, they portray themselves as “advocates” for animal welfare and legitimize their efforts through a process akin to ethics washing. They use thematic elements and emotional engagement to convey the concept of the “modern zoo.” Finally, they strategically acknowledge societal compassion and frame themselves as aligned with current societal values and attitudes. We conclude that the current discursive strategies of the main Spanish zoological park industry lobbies go beyond the typical arguments related to entertainment, science and conservation, instrumentalizing public compassion to justify the captivity, confinement and exhibition of nonhumans.

“Killing in the Name of 3R?” The Ethics of Death in Animal Research

Changing relationships with nonhuman animals have led to important modifications in animal welfare legislations, including the protection of animal life. However, animal research regulations are largely based on welfarist assumptions, neglecting the idea that death can constitute a harm to animals. In this article, four different cases of killing animals in research contexts are identified and discussed against the background of philosophical, societal, and scientific-practical discourses: 1. Animals killed during experimentation, 2. Animals killed before research, 3. “Surplus” animals and 4. “Leftover” animals. The scientific community and, accordingly, animal research regulations such as the internationally acknowledged framework 3R (“Replace”, “Reduce”, “Refine”) tend to aim at the reduction of “surplus” and, to some extent, “leftover” animals, whereas the first two classes are rather neglected. However, the perspective that animal death matters morally is supported by both societal moral intuitions and certain theoretical accounts in animal ethics. Therefore, we suggest the implementation of the 3Rs in regulations, so that they: 1. Make their underlying philosophical position transparent; 2. Are based on a weighing account of animal death; 3. Are applicable to procedures on living and dead animals; 4. Apply the “reduction” principle to procedures on dead animals; 5. Entail that methods using (parts of) dead animals need to be replaced by animal free methods, if possible; 6. Do not suggest replacing research on living animals by research on killed animals; 7. Include all kinds of animals, depending on the respective harm of death; 8. Are applied to the broader context of experimentation, including breeding and the fate of the animals after the experiment.

Planting flowers for the bees: spirituality, emotion, and embodied subjectivities through relational practices of socioecological care

This research highlights the ways by which processes of caring for our environments can contribute to health and well-being for the minded body. Drawing upon rich ethnographic accounts of urban cultivation practices and experiences, this research unfolds in the birthplace of the ‘Healthy City’ concept—Kuching, Malaysia—which is an ethnically diverse city home to Chinese, Malay, and Indigenous groups. Building from situated political ecologies—and more specifically, emotional political ecology and the political ecology of religion—I examine the relational values produced through practices of urban cultivation and related benefits for mind-body-environments. I find spirituality, religion, gender, generation, class, and ethnicity are embodied in socionatural relationships facilitated through urban agriculture. Through affective encounters with non-human animals, spiritual meanings inferred from the materiality of plants, and strengthened socionatural relationships with friends, family, even strangers, and the divine, practices of urban cultivation can nurture minds, bodies, and environments in deeply interconnected ways. This adds to a growing literature that reveals the importance of relational values for well-being and argues that socionatural relationships of care can contribute to a meaningful life. With a careful attention to relational dynamics and differentiated embodied experiences, I show that cultivators engage in the production of ecologies of care that confront neoliberal modes of interacting with themselves and others. Recognizing that care is embodied, situated and political can foster more nuanced understandings of the politics of socioecological transformation.

'Animals Continue to Gather': Animality and the Desubjectification of Feminine Desire in Jennifer's Body

This article examines the depiction of interspecies kinship in the 2009 queer horror-comedy film Jennifer's Body through analysis of the 2007 film script. The article centers on scenes of women and various species of non-human animals gathering to form an ‘interspecies pack’. Through these scenes, Jennifer's Body taps into a significant history of cultural association between feminine desire and interspecies kinship. From the maenads of ancient Greece to the witches of early-modern Europe, to the Disney princesses of the USA, the interspecies pack functions as a powerful evocation of feminine desire within the dominant Western imaginary. This analysis aims to develop frameworks for reading depictions of kinship between women and non-human animals outside the interpretive confines of analogy. This work thereby attends to Patricia MacCormack's ethical injunction to feminist analysis to think ‘the animal’ beyond its use as anthropomorphic representation (2005). The article takes Barbara Creed's psychoanalysis of ‘the monstrous-feminine' as a point of departure and utilizes Deleuze and Guattari's theorization of the pack (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, 26-38; 239-250). The interspecies pack is read as a model for desire that decenters the human(ist) subject. The depiction of women as participants within interspecies packs therefore opens up liberatory possibilities for encountering feminine desire outside its representation as the desire of a human subject. To examine how participation within the interspecies pack decomposes the human(ist) subject, this article focuses on three ways the pack functions. Firstly, as the production of (interspecies and queer) relations outside of naturalized kinship structures. Secondly, as the presence of desire outside of human subjectivity. Thirdly, as the envelopment of the human subject within a metamorphic, fluid dimension of matter that cuts across species.

Speciesism in natural language processing research

AbstractNatural Language Processing (NLP) research on AI Safety and social bias in AI has focused on safety for humans and social bias against human minorities. However, some AI ethicists have argued that the moral significance of nonhuman animals has been ignored in AI research. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is speciesism, i.e., discrimination against nonhuman animals, in NLP research. First, we explain why nonhuman animals are relevant in NLP research. Next, we survey the findings of existing research on speciesism in NLP researchers, data, and models and further investigate this problem in this study. The findings of this study suggest that speciesism exists within researchers, data, and models, respectively. Specifically, our survey and experiments show that (a) among NLP researchers, even those who study social bias in AI, do not recognize speciesism or speciesist bias; (b) among NLP data, speciesist bias is inherent in the data annotated in the datasets used to evaluate NLP models; (c) OpenAI GPTs, recent NLP models, exhibit speciesist bias by default. Finally, we discuss how we can reduce speciesism in NLP research.

Rethinking Sentience: Invertebrates as Worthy of Moral Consideration

The ethical debate on the moral consideration of non-human animals (hereafter animals) is currently centred on the evidence of sentience in these individuals. Legal protection for vertebrates and cephalopods (and decapods in the UK) has resulted from the recognition of sentience in these animals. Although one should celebrate the significant advances in the legal protection of animals in recent decades, current animal legislation is modulated by an instrumental viewpoint, remaining speciesist and anthropocentric. A sentient being is here understood as one who has the phenomenological experience of awareness, which is the most basic sense of phenomenal consciousness that implies the existence of a subject who is not indifferent to what happens to itself. This paper demonstrates, with reasonable assumptions, that this concept of sentience would apply to many invertebrate species, thus deeming them worthy of increased moral consideration and legal protection. In cases in which sentience cannot be demonstrated clearly, one should assume the precautionary principle and consider the intrinsic value of each animal to designate moral consideration. In considering sentience as the primary condition for moral consideration, science must expand who is recognized as sentient rather than being reductionist. Animal ethics must review to whom the moral consideration should be given. Animal legislation must include legislative innovations and invertebrates in its protective scope. Thereby, a significant improvement in the current political and legislative decisions would be rooted in animal ethics. Opening the ethical perception and broadening the debate are urgent, as moral consideration should be given to all animals.

Harnessing Simple Animal Models to Decode Sleep Mysteries.

Whether it involves human subjects or non-human animals, basic, translational, or clinical sleep research poses significant ethical challenges for researchers and ethical committees alike. Sleep research greatly benefits from using diverse animal models, each offering unique insights into sleep control mechanisms. The fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is a superior genetic model due to its quick generation period, large progenies, and rich genetic tools. Its well-characterized genome and ability to respond to hypnotics and stimulants make it an effective tool for studying sleep genetics and physiological foundations. The nematode (Caenorhabditis elegans) has a simpler neural organization and transparent body, allowing researchers to explore molecular underpinnings of sleep control. Vertebrate models, like zebrafish (Danio rerio), provide insights into circadian rhythm regulation, memory consolidation, and drug effects on sleep. Invertebrate models, like California sea hare (Aplysia californica) and Upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea xamachana), have simpler nervous systems and behave similarly to humans, allowing for the examination of sleep principles without logistical and ethical challenges. Combining vertebrate and invertebrate animal models offers a comprehensive approach to studying sleep, improving our understanding of sleep regulation and potentially leading to new drug discovery processes for sleep disorders and related illnesses.

Without morals in a moral world—the expanding moral circle of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

As video and computer games get increasingly more advanced, the immersive experience for the player of these games also follows this trajectory. In these games, one aspect that has been explored to the greatest extent is that of choice and player agency. Often, these choices and acts are of a moral character, whether it be choosing what to do on an ambiguously formulated questline with multiple branches or how to approach different creatures within the game world. The game The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt provides a case of a game that uses many mechanisms to explore issues related to moral and morality. Through a qualitative textual analysis of the game, this article explores how players are faced with the game’s moral order. Utilizing Singer’s idea of the expanding moral circle, this article explores the game world’s establishing of moral issues, including who and what are included in the expanding circle and in what way this is conveyed within the game. Relying on the dual nature of the gameplay, where players are role-playing as the Witcher Geralt of Rivia as well as experiencing what unfolds in the game in front of a screen, this article discusses how these moral orders–the one in the game world and the one in “real” life—intertwine the moral underpinnings of a digital game. This article also discusses how encounters with non-human animals often leave the player with very few choices regarding which to act, which is not presented as moral issues at all. Furthermore, this article discusses further development of the theoretical framework as a possible vantage point from where to understand morality and how it emanates in different game worlds.

Signatures of selection with cultural interference

Human evolution is intricately linked with culture, which permeates almost all facets of human life from health and reproduction, to the environments in which we live. Nevertheless, our understanding of the ways in which stably transmitted, evolutionarily relevant human cultural traits might interact with the human genome is incomplete, and methods to detect such interactions are limited. Here, we describe some rules of cultural transmission which could pertain to both humans and cultural nonhuman animals that could lead to the formation and maintenance of stable associations between cultural and genetic traits. Next, we show that, in the presence of such associations, a process analogous to genetic hitchhiking is possible in gene-culture systems. These could leave signatures in the human genome similar to, and perhaps indistinguishable from, those left by selection on genetic traits. Finally, we model selective interference between cultural and genetic traits. We show that selective interference between a cultural trait under selection and a genetic trait under selection can reduce the efficacy of natural selection in the human genome, both in terms of the probability of fixation of beneficial alleles and the dynamics of selective sweeps. We then show that the efficiency of selection at genetic loci can, however, be increased in the presence of strong cultural transmission biases. This implies that the signatures of gene-culture interactions in genetic data may be complex and wide-ranging in gene-culture coevolutionary systems.

Animals and Longtermism

Longtermism should not be wrongly defined as the view that we should act so that the future is as good as possible for human beings and their descendants; rather, longtermists should be concerned with what the long-term future may be like for all sentient beings. This includes nonhuman animals, as different risks of future suffering may afflict them. Indifference toward their interests could lead to the worsening of their use as resources, quantitatively and qualitatively. It could also help expand wild animal suffering, a process that may have already begun.

Automated video-based pain recognition in cats using facial landmarks

Affective states are reflected in the facial expressions of all mammals. Facial behaviors linked to pain have attracted most of the attention so far in non-human animals, leading to the development of numerous instruments for evaluating pain through facial expressions for various animal species. Nevertheless, manual facial expression analysis is susceptible to subjectivity and bias, is labor-intensive and often necessitates specialized expertise and training. This challenge has spurred a growing body of research into automated pain recognition, which has been explored for multiple species, including cats. In our previous studies, we have presented and studied artificial intelligence (AI) pipelines for automated pain recognition in cats using 48 facial landmarks grounded in cats’ facial musculature, as well as an automated detector of these landmarks. However, so far automated recognition of pain in cats used solely static information obtained from hand-picked single images of good quality. This study takes a significant step forward in fully automated pain detection applications by presenting an end-to-end AI pipeline that requires no manual efforts in the selection of suitable images or their landmark annotation. By working with video rather than still images, this new pipeline approach also optimises the temporal dimension of visual information capture in a way that is not practical to preform manually. The presented pipeline reaches over 70% and 66% accuracy respectively in two different cat pain datasets, outperforming previous automated landmark-based approaches using single frames under similar conditions, indicating that dynamics matter in cat pain recognition. We further define metrics for measuring different dimensions of deficiencies in datasets with animal pain faces, and investigate their impact on the performance of the presented pain recognition AI pipeline.

Testosterone mediates life-history trade-offs in female mammals.

Hormones mediate life-history trade-offs. In female mammals, such trade-offs have been studied predominantly in the contexts of oestrogen, progesterone and prolactin. We evaluate the hypothesis that prenatal and postnatal testosterone levels structure and regulate trade-offs in females involving components of reproduction and survival. This hypothesis is predicated on the observation that testosterone confers competition-related and survival-related benefits, but also reproduction-related costs, to female mammals. The hypothesis is supported by field and laboratory data from diverse non-human animals, and data from healthy women. Most broadly, relatively low testosterone level in females has been associated with earlier, faster and higher offspring production, greater attractiveness to males, and reduced dominance or competitiveness, whereas higher testosterone level is associated with delayed and reduced reproduction but increased dominance, status, aggression, and resource accrual. The magnitude of testosterone-mediated trade-offs is expected to depend upon the strength of female-female competition, which represents some function of species-specific ecology, behaviour and mating system. Testosterone-associated trade-offs have, until now, been virtually ignored in studies of female life history, reproductive physiology, evolutionary endocrinology, and female-limited disease, probably due to researcher biases towards conceptualizing androgens as hormones with effects mainly restricted to males.

Shape and texture biases in dogs’ generalization of trained objects

Shape bias, the tendency to link the meaning of words to the shape of objects, is a widely investigated phenomenon, but the extent to which it is linked to vocabulary acquisition and/or to tool using is controversial. Understanding how non-human animals generalize the properties of objects can provide insights into the evolutionary processes and cognitive mechanisms that influence this bias. We investigated object generalization in dogs, focusing on their tendency to attend to shape or texture in a two-way choice task. We analyzed data of thirty-five dogs that were successfully trained to discriminate a target object among distractors and retrieve it to their owner. In subsequent testing, dogs chose between objects similar to the target in either shape or texture. Results showed that dogs first approached objects of similar shape, but then predominantly chose objects of similar texture. This suggests a reliance on visual cues for initial assessment and tactile cues for final discrimination. Our findings highlight the influence of perceptual modalities on object generalization in dogs, showing that, before object manipulation, they seem to show a shape bias but, once they make physical contact with the objects, they rather rely on texture to generalize. This study contributes to our understanding of generalization in a non-verbal and non-tool using species and opens avenues for comparative investigations into the relationship between vocabulary acquisition, tool using and biases in object generalization.

Benthamís Project of Applied Ethics, c. 1780: Part I, A Penal Code

Benthamís An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (IPML) was originally intended to introduce a utilitarian penal code. Such a code would apply the principle of utility to the task of designing a system of criminal law. Part I, Section I of this two-part paper gives an overview of IPML, in which the basic moral assumptions of utilitarianism are presented, and the central concept of mischief is emphasised. The principle of utility favors making into criminal offences actions that are mischievous and profitable to punish. Section II discusses Chapter XVI of IPML. This chapter is a taxonomy of possible offences and the penal code would explain which acts in the taxonomy are mischievous and profitable to punish. This chapter also suggests how Bentham was beginning to see the need for other utilitarian legal codes. Section III discusses Benthamís concept of a ëcatechism of reasonsí to be included in the code, which would explain to the citizenry why each action in the code is mischievous. Section IV discusses two important sets of manuscripts that illustrate the reasoning that was to accompany the code. The first briefly treats the offence of cruelty to animals and expands on the thinking in the famous footnote to Chapter XVII that argues that non-human animals can be treated wrongly, while the second examines the remarkable treatment of ëpaederastyí, that is, consensual sex between adult males. IPML does not mention paederasty, although several passages are relevant to it. These passages suggest that paederasty is not mischievous. The manuscripts expand on these suggestions, and explicitly argue that paederasty ought not to be an offence. Several new issues are discussed, such as the effect of paederasty on population size. In the subsequent Part II of this paper, Benthamís treatment of punishment in IPML, The Rationale of Punishment, and the penal code will be discussed.

What are the Short and Long-Term Impacts of Animal Assisted Interventions on the Therapy Animals?

Abstract Animal assisted interventions (AAIs) are practices used for human wellbeing, whereby interactions with non-human animals are used for therapeutic purposes. AAIs can be offered clinically, to those suffering physical or mental illness; those who have a learning disability or neurodevelopmental disorder; people requiring occupational therapy or enrichment in settings such as prisons and nursing homes, and as an adjunct to formal education in classrooms. Whilst some AAIs are low risk, AAI animals can be placed in emotionally challenging situations, or even situations where they may be at physical risk. At present, there is a paucity of literature examining the welfare of AAI animals, and the practice remains unregulated. This paper therefore discusses the potential welfare issues for animals used in ‘animal assisted interventions’, and suggests how those issues could be addressed.

Analyzing Resources and Programming for At-Risk Youth with Nonhuman Companion Animals in the Canadian Context: A Scoping Review

Youth facing homelessness, specifically those who own nonhuman companion animals (NCAs), are an understudied population with little published literature examining the evidence-informed supports that exist within their communities. Accordingly, a scoping review was conducted to address the question: (a) what community supports exist in Canada for youth experiencing homelessness and their animal companions, and (b) what gaps in both supporting youth and/or supporting their animal companions exist amongst the organizations providing these initiatives? Academic articles published between January 2010 and August 2022 were reviewed. Three databases were searched for relevant articles: PubMed, Web of Science, and EBSCOhost. This search returned 546 articles, of which 56 sources satisfied the inclusion criteria. Data was then extracted and analyzed using a thematic analysis framework. The following themes were uncovered using deductive reasoning: lack of support for marginalized youth (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and two-spirit [LGBTQ2S+] youth, etc.), negative experiences with the shelter system, and need for harm reduction-focused services. NCA ownership was a less frequently studied theme and only appeared in two of the 56 studies. This scoping review aims to identify gaps in the literature and encourage further research on the existing community-based programming within Canada for youth facing homelessness with animal companions.

Evolutionary origins of temporal discounting: Modeling how time and uncertainty constrain optimal decision-making strategies across taxa.

The propensity of humans and non-human animals to discount future returns for short-term benefits is well established. This contrasts with the ability of organisms to unfold complex developmental sequences over months or years efficiently. Research has focused on various descriptive and predictive parameters of 'temporal discounting' in behavior, and researchers have proposed models to explain temporal preference in terms of fitness-maximizing outcomes. Still, the underlying ultimate cause of this phenomenon has not been deeply explored across taxa. Here, we propose an ultimate (i.e., evolutionary) causal explanation for the selection of temporal discounting largely conserved across taxa. We propose that preference for a short-term reward (e.g., heightened impulsivity) often is less than optimal and likely is the product of constraints imposed on natural selection with respect to predicting events in a temporal framework in the context of future uncertainty. Using a simple Newtonian model for time across a fitness landscape in which movement by organisms is only possible in one direction, we examine several factors that influence the ability of an organism to choose a distant reward over a more temporally proximate reward: including the temporal distance of the far reward, the relative value of the distant reward, and the effect of uncertainty about the value and presence of the distant reward. Our results indicate that an organism may choose a more distant reward, but only if it is not too far into the future and has a substantially higher-value fitness payoff relative to the short-term reward. Notably, any uncertainty about the distant reward made it extremely unlikely for an organism to choose the delayed reward strategy compared to choosing a closer reward, even if the distant reward had a much higher payoff because events that are uncertain are only partially visible to natural selection pressures. The results help explain why natural selection is constrained to promote more optimal behavioral strategies and why it has difficulty selecting a distant reward over a lower-value short-term reward. The degree of uncertainty is an especially salient ecological variable in promoting and preferencing short-term behavioral strategies across taxa. These results further help illustrate why, from an ultimate causal perspective, human and non-human taxa have difficulty making more optimal long-term decisions.

Unveiling the Other: Animals, Oppression, and Visual Culture through Nanook of the North

This article critically examines early 20th-century exploration cinema, focusing onthe portrayal of nonhuman animals and indigenous peoples, using Nanook of theNorth (1922) as a representative example. The study highlights how these films,emerging during a period of intense Western exploration, established enduringvisual conventions that depicted nonhuman animals and indigenous humans ascultural Others. By moving beyond the aesthetic achievements of these films,such as Robert Flaherty's innovative use of long shots, the article brings attentionto the ethical concerns related to speciesism and anthropocentrism that haveoften been overlooked. It explores how the exploitation of nonhuman animalsboth on-screen and behind the scenes reflects broader speciesist powerdynamics, while also challenging the dichotomy between culture and nature asseen in indigenous hunting and gathering societies. The article argues for a reexaminationof these films through a multicultural and intersectional lens,bridging the gap between cinema studies and critical animal and media studies,and ultimately seeks to raise public awareness about the protection of animalrights by emphasizing the sentience and moral consideration due to nonhumananimals.