Behavior Quiz 4

What are ethical frameworks?

Guidelines that allow us to look at issues in a systematic way & apply ethical reasoning to those issues

Why discuss ethics?

• At some point need to decide what is acceptable & unacceptable in terms of animal use & treatment

• Are our goals to prevent pain, disease, & suffering?

• To create pleasure, positive emotions, & the opportunity to live natural lives?

• Ethics helps us make these decisions

What are the 3 approaches to assessing ethics?

1.) Virtue-oriented ethical theories

2.) Action-oriented ethical theories

3.) Value-based ethical theories

**we will focus on 1 & 2

What is virtue-oriented ethics?

• “Morality” is what matters

  • Kindness, generosity, loyalty, compassion, fairness, etc.

• Socrates & Aristotle are best known for these ideas

• People will act the way that they “should” only if they already have these “virtuous” dispositions of character, not bc you are following pre-set rules or laws

• Being virtuous person will automatically make us act better & be better people

• Particularly important way to view ethics as a veterinarian & animal caretaker

  • People expect veterinarians to be moral, virtuous people — it’s why they are one of the most trusted professions, even more than physicians

  • Often laws & rules in practice can be contradictory to your internal moral standards

  • Pro & a con for us ;(

What is action-oriented ethics?

• All about consequences of our action & how we act, rather than how we should inherently be

• Considers concepts like outcomes, duty, & obligation

  • Ex: utilitarianism, deontology

What is utilitarianism?

• Look at the consequences of one’s actions to determine whether they are right or wrong

• Consequentialism: only the consequences are what matter when decisions are made — a defining feature of utilitarianism

• Maximize the good, minimize the bad

• “For the greater good”

• Most common approach to animal ethics

  • Most utilitarians recognize that animals feel pain

  • Do not restrict their moral calculations to what benefits only human welfare

• Jeremy Bentham & Peter Singer

  • “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

  • It would be speciesist, according to Peter Singer, to only consider the outcomes in relation to humans

What is deontology?

• Immanuel Kant — 18th-century German philospher

• Some moral obligations override how much good may be produced in the future & are universally important

• Future consequences are not the only source of your moral duties

  • Those duties or obligations take precedent & always take precedent

• Includes moral belief that animals should not be used or killed for human purposes, regardless of the overall benefit to humans

• Variations of this theory:

  • We have a moral obligation to our pets & do not consume those species

  • We have an obligation to preserve the “wildness” of certain species & it is wrong to keep them in captivity

What is the difference between utilitarianism vs deontology?

• Burning building with 2 people in it:

  • A scientist that has the answer for how to cure cancer

  • Your mother

• Ultilarian would save the scientist

  • The greater good for more people is all that matters

• Deonologist would save their mother

  • You have a moral duty that outweighs the potential good that would be done in the future

What is abolitionism in terms of animal rights?

Opposition to all animal use by humans because all sentient beings have the right to not be treated as property

What are moral rights in terms of animal rights?

• Inherent in a being simply bc they exist & is part of what it is to be a “being”

• Tom Regan (modern American philosopher & pioneer of animal rights) — all sentient beings have a basic moral right to life & respectful treatment

• Direct opposition to utilitarianism — animals cannot be a “means to an end”

What are legal rights in terms of animal rights?

• Backed by legislation

• Offenses punishable by law

What is guardianship & personhood?

• "Guardianship” rather than “ownership”

  • AVMA opposes this term

  • Creates confusion about responsibilities

  • By law requires the “guardian” to pursue any & all treatments for their “ward”

  • Makes it impossible to buy/sell livestock

  • Makes it impossible to elect procedures such as euthanasia or spaying/neutering

• “Personhood” — legal backing of rights, like the right to life & right to not be “imprisoned”

Stereotypic Behavior

• A repetitive, unchanging behavior pattern that has no function or obvious goal

• If highly motivated behaviors are prevented, stereotypic behaviors can develop

• Generally seen as “bad” behaviors

• Act as a way to cope with stressful circumstances

  • Preventing them from performing stereotypes can result in worse welfare since no longer able to cope

• Always happens when held captive or in human-controlled setting

Stereotypic Behaviors: Cribbing / Crib-biting

• Can harm horse’s teeth, is annoying, & has been associated with colic

  • More specifically, large intestine colic

• Associated with feeding & husbandry

• Not a behavior that is seen in wild horses unless they are kept in captivity

• There are devices to prevent cribbing

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 1

• Constant exposure to a stimulus (or lack of a stimulus) leads to the repetitive nature of the behavior

• Ex:

  • Barren cage — always faced with lack of enrichmentHow Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 1

  • Stall door — acts as physical barrier, preventing them from getting something

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 2

• Lack of consummation — can’t reach goal & obtain it

• Stuck in appetitive phase, never in reward phase

• Having access to a resource does not mean that feeling of completion or satisfaction has been achieved

  • Idea of not being able to go through full process to get that reward, making the animal not feel satisfied

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 3

• Increases in frequency & duration until it becomes fully developed

  • Almost like they try to perfect it & once they do, that is all they do

  • Essentially become hyper focused on the stereotypic behavior

• Spend a significant amount of active time performing the stereotypic behavior (50-80%)

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 4

• Will eventually become an invariable pattern that does not change between repetitions

  • Constantly repeating same exact pattern

• Can be very complex, especially in carnivores

  • “Route-tracing”

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 5

• Become “emancipated”

• Where stereotypic behaviors occur in response to many different stimuli, & eventually to the point that they may occur when the stimulus isn’t even present

How Stereotypic Behaviors Develop: Step 6

• Longer the stereotypic behavior goes on, the more difficult it becomes to eliminate

• Doesn’t necessarily mean in a state of negative/poor welfare — just at some point the behavior developed bc it was stressed

What is the purpose of a stereotypic behavior?

• Coping hypothesis

• Pathology hypothesis

**most likely combination of both

“Coping” Hypothesis

• The “purpose” of a stereotypic behavior is to allow an animal to cope with consistently negative welfare

• Two ways this may work:

  • Stereotypic behavior serves as an internal reward mechanism where endorphins are released when stereotypic behavior is performed

  • Behavior helps an animal cope with a negative situation or environment by doing something positive (buffering GI pH, or “staying busy”)

    • Fills up their time with something else & gives them something else to focus on

“Pathology” Hypothesis

• A normal brain relies on feedback mechanisms to tell it when a goal has been achieved

  • A certain level of neurotransmitter or hormone is reached, & the process of obtaining the goal/resource stops

• When that mechanism fails due to inability to achieve that goal, or due to dysfunction, the brain continues on a consummatory loop

  • Nothing is stopping it

• Stereotypic behaviors have been experimentally induced pharmacologically, forcing these loops to perpetuate

Types of Stereotypic Behaviors in Different Species

• Oral

  • Cribbing — horses

  • Tongue-rolling — cattle

  • Feed-tossing — cattle

  • Wool-chewing — sheep

  • Bar-biting — rodents & pigs

  • Vacuum/sham chewing — pigs (not actually chewing on anything)

• Locomotor

  • Swaying/head bobbing — elephants, bears, large carnivores

  • Pacing — large cats, bears, carnivores

  • Route-tracing — polar bears

  • Wheel-running — mice

  • Jumping/looping — mice

  • Circling — mice

Wheel-Running in Rodents

• Complicated

• Can be both stereotypic & non-stereotypic

• Features that make it a normal behavior:

  • Can stop the behavior when interrupted

  • Have an otherwise enriched environment

  • Occurs immediately upon provision of the wheel & explores it

• Features can make it stereotypic:

  • Repetitive

  • “Functionless” — performing compulsively, not out of desire to exercise

  • SSRI administration (ex: Prozac) will stop the behavior

Why do oral stereotypic behaviors develop?

• Reduced gut fill

• Reduced time spent foraging

• Reduced time spent feeding/eating

• High concentrate / low pH gut environment

Why do locomotor stereotypic behaviors develop?

• Motivation to forage?

• Motivation to explore?

• Ranging behavior / being generally active?

• Motivation to escape?

• Motivation to approach members of the same species?

• Motivation to patrol territory?

Environmental Enrichment

• Meaningful change to an animal’s environment that has positive consequences, & therefore an improved life / enhanced animal welfare

• Replicate the opportunities that animals would have in their natural environment to have natural behavioral expressions

What is not enrichment?

• Providing “stuff,” especially if it’s the wrong stuff

• Must understand an animal’s motivation to perform certain behaviors to have effective enrichment

• No one-size-fits-all solution — should be individualized

Food-based Enrichment

• Hidden food → foraging opportunities

• Food that is low calorie that needs to be worked for

  • Harder it is to get, more calories used up, more likely to be deficient in calorie intake

• Not limit-feeding

Physical Enrichment

• Beams, platforms

• Ponds

• Hiding spots

• Brush

Sensory Enrichment

• Visual — ex: having a window

• Audio

• Olfactory — ex: dog going on sensory walk to just sniff

• Tactile — ex: snakes in box of rice moving around

Social Enrichment

• Cage-mates

• Herd-mates

• Parent/offspring

Cognitive Enrichment

• Puzzle feeders

  • Take care that either you monitor food intake closely, or not allow this to be the only form of food

Displacement Behavior

• Type of abnormal behavior

• A normal behavior that is performed at an inappropriate time or in a different way

• Ex:

  • Cat grooming itself between should blades when stressed

  • Dog grabbing toy when excited

Vacuum Behavior

• Type of abnormal behavior

• Behavior performed in absence of the stimulus that typically initiates it

• Ex:

  • Hens will go through the dust-bathing motions without dust present

  • Sham chewing sows will make a repetitive chewing motion without food in their mouths

Redirected Behavior

• Type of abnormal behavior

• A behavior that is directed toward an inappropriate target

• Ex:

  • Chicken feather pecking

  • Pig tail biting