Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1998
Abstract
Animal welfare is a topic often thought to reside outside mainstream biology. The complexity of the methods used to assess welfare (such as health, physiology, immunological state, and behavior) require an understanding of a wide range of biological phenomena. Furthermore, the "welfare" of an animal provides a framework in which a diversity of its responses can be understood as fitness-enhancing mechanisms. Different methods for assessing animal welfare are discussed, with particular emphasis on the role of an animal's own choices and reinforcement mechanisms. No part of biology is as yet able to explain consciousness, but by confronting the possibility that nonhuman animals have conscious experiences of suffering, animal welfare studies force a consideration of even this hardest problem of all biological phenomena in a particularly direct and evolutionary way.
Recommended Citation
Marian Stamp Dawkins, "Evolution and Animal Welfare," The Quarterly Review of Biology 73, no. 3 (Sep., 1998): 305-328. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/420307
