Title:

A Comparison of Welfare Considerations Among Captive Animals

The welfare of captive animals in both zoos and research labs is an essential yet often overlooked aspect of their care. Welfare can be broadly defined as the ethical responsibility to provide for an animal’s physical and mental needs. For some people, welfare is seen as a core part of the humane treatment of animals. For those who use animals in their research, welfare also matters because an uncomfortable animal is not at its physiological or behavioral optimum. In this thesis, I focus on the significance of the welfare of captive animals in research settings ranging from laboratories to zoos. Failing to consider an animal’s welfare may impact research results and ultimately render them unreproducible because an animal that is stressed by an inadequate environment will function poorly. This challenge can be addressed by incorporating “comfort factors” into husbandry and experimental design. Comfort factors can be as simple as the availability of nesting material or enrichment activities, yet they have a significant impact on a study and the progression of that research. Failure to incorporate comfort factors could potentially inhibit biomedical research which uses lab animals, or obstruct conservation efforts that depend on individuals housed in a zoo. My thesis will use an extended review of literature to examine foundational and recent findings in several areas: establishing the value of the field of animal welfare science, focusing on the value of implementing adequate standards of care for captive animals in research, and emphasizing the role of basic zoological knowledge in developing those standards.

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