animal behavior

The study joins a growing body of research focused on how societal factors shape animal behavior, an approach that some believe provides more accurate insights than exploring ecological factors alone.

Abnormal animal behavior is often a sign of infection, like bats flying in the daytime or normally timid creatures interacting with humans.

Kroese noted, "This technology represents an exciting advancement in our ability to study and monitor animal behavior and welfare. By automatically and accurately detecting posture transitions, we can gain valuable insights into the comfort and well-being of dairy cows."

"As far as we know, this is the first assessment of how animal behavior researchers across a range of disciplines think about emotions and consciousness in non-human animals," says Marcela Benítez, assistant professor of anthropology at Emory University and corresponding author of the paper.

They developed a survey of multiple-choice questions, free-form text fields and rating scales and sent it to leading graduate school programs in animal behavior research across disciplines.