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Thousands of animals are housed in captive conditions worldwide, often to the detriment of their mental well-being. Scientists at Queen's Animal Behaviour Centre have spent the last 20 years developing new ways of improving the psychological welfare of animals housed in captivity. Their research has shown that classical music and scents such as lavender in dog shelters calms the animals, and that shielding zoo-housed gorillas from visitors with camouflage netting over the viewing windows, prevents great apes from becoming agitated. The impact of this research extends to guidelines and regulations set by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council. Commercial impact includes CDs of music composed specifically for dogs, now widely available to buy on the open market, and being utilised in 1700+ rescue shelters and by over 150,000 pet owners around the globe.
Impact: Policy / animal welfare / economic. European Directives on Animal Welfare have been changed to improve animal comfort during transport. Our research has provided a basis for establishing comfort/discomfort at an objective, physiological level through response modelling and the quantitative assessment of the effects of thermal conditions. The definition of optimum transport environments has underpinned improved transport vehicle design and operation and formed the basis of the development of regulations for improved animal welfare.
Significance: ~60 billion animals are transported world-wide each year.
Beneficiaries: EU policy makers (leading to revised Directives), UK Government departments (especially Defra), and animals during transport.
Attribution: Prof. Mitchell (SRUC).
Reach: All EU Member States, Canada, and the US.
The mouse is the most important laboratory animal used worldwide in biomedical research and for regulatory testing of products. Research at the University of Liverpool by Prof Hurst has led to a change in the methods universally recommended for routine handling of mice to minimize a well- recognized problem that handling can create high anxiety, stress and a risk of animals biting the handler. This has impacts for animal welfare, for practitioners, and for reliability in a broad range of research and testing using mice (e.g. in the pharmaceuticals industry) where responses can be confounded by uncontrolled anxiety responses. Mouse handling guidelines have been changed and are being implemented in animal research facilities.
Professor Hutchinson's team has pursued research into movement of large land animals, and how they have evolved under biomechanical constraints, such as gravity, which dominate their lifestyles. Their findings relating to elephants and to dinosaurs, applying physics, maths and computer science to study the natural world, have captured the public's imagination through a variety of engagement activities. The work has contributed to several major documentaries and interactive museum exhibits, (with Professor Hutchinson consulting), as well as featuring in a substantial number of print and online news stories. The research has had practical applications in foot health and welfare of elephants in captivity and, through examining constraints of growth on anatomy, has also led to applications in health of broiler chickens.
Impact: Policy, Animal Health and Welfare: Improved sow and piglet welfare and recommendations and codes of practice for farrowing and lactation systems that better meet sow and piglet needs.
Significance: Farrowing crates restrict sow movements interfering with natural sow behaviour and increasing psychological distress. Used predominantly to protect piglets, SRUC research demonstrated that piglet survival improved in loose-housed environments, undermining crate use.
Beneficiaries: Farmers, sows and piglets, the general public
Attribution: Drs Baxter and Jarvis, Professors Lawrence and Roehe (SRUC). Research collaboration was with Prof Sandra Edwards, University of Newcastle.
Reach: International legislative bans on farrowing crates; voluntary industry uptake of non-crate systems; EU recommendations/legislation on housing at farrowing, guidelines for keeping pigs (e.g. RSPCA Freedom Food).
Research undertaken at Strathclyde during 2006-2009 produced a decision support platform combining artificial intelligence with low power wireless sensor technology, which was capable of alerting farm staff to animal conditions requiring human intervention. ETS Ltd, a privately owned University Spin-out company was founded in 2009 to develop and market the new technology, and now employs 7 full time staff. Since 2010 more than 250 farms in the UK and Europe have adopted the technology, enabling them to reduce operating costs, maximise milk revenue, with an estimated increase of £10k per 100 cows per annum. The new technology has also improved the performance of other existing businesses and has helped retain jobs in the supply chain in Scotland.
The use and treatment of animals in the provision of our food, clothing and other raw materials, as well as in the areas of medical research, sport and entertainment, polarises public opinion and provokes extreme views. Research by Professor Robert Garner on the ethics and politics of animal protection has provided a springboard for political debate and decision making both in the UK and internationally. In particular, Garner's work has impacted upon the debate within the animal protection movement, and has helped to shape aspects of government policy on animal welfare issues in general, most notably on the UK Government's approach to the issue of whaling, and DEFRA's approach to the ethics of using wild animals in circuses.
Research carried out by Professor Donald Broom at the Centre for Animal Welfare and Anthrozoology at the University of Cambridge has had a significant impact on the policy and practice surrounding farm animal welfare in the UK and beyond. Work on sow housing, calf housing, laying-hen housing, farm animal transport and other scientific work on animal welfare has led to legislation, binding codes of practice and changes in animal production and management methods in the United Kingdom and other European Union countries and many other countries around the world. In the EU, each year this affects 16 million sows, 6.5 million calves, 320 million hens and 6 billion animals that are being transported.
This case study details the impact of Marvin's ethnographic anthropological research into human-animal relations, which places animals in cultural and historical context. This work has been foundational for the establishment of the new field of human-animal studies and has led to impact in three distinct areas. Through publications and direct public engagement, this work has had an impact on public understanding of the wolf, and on a body working for its conservation. The process of research and subsequent dissemination of publications on foxhunting has provoked debate and influenced the understanding of foxhunting groups. Finally, through a collaborative approach, research on the public exhibition of animals by taxidermists and in zoos has enhanced the preservation and creative presentation of cultural heritage.
Series of images from animal behaviour studies contain vast quantities of complex and highly valuable data. Extracting the value from this scientific data often requires expert annotation. This is frequently an intuitive process based on experience gained through years of training to make important decisions. Experts are rare, expensive and hard to train so the iBehave project at the University of Edinburgh (2006-2009) sought to reverse this model and deliver systems that learned to mimic expert annotation of video data. This effort resulted in a new spinout from the School of Informatics, a software company called Actual Analytics Ltd (Actual). Founded in 2010, Actual delivers innovative software solutions for behaviour analytics which use machine learning algorithms to process video data of laboratory animals to improve the accuracy of the experimental process and reduce the need to use animals in scientific research.