WeBuzz by AnimalConcepts: Recent Episodes
AnimalConcepts
Want to learn about animal care and welfare? Interested in science and practice? Interested in education, conservation, and research? Learn and practice self-care & we-care at the institutional level? Learn more from and about all kinds of animal care professionals, managers, and directors? To hear from authors and NGOs? This podcast will share stories, insights, experiences, science, and practices related to animal welfare and care, and the wellbeing of animal care professionals as well as the Earth Charter and SDGs related to planetary wellbeing, and ultimately wellbeing for all. iBuzz is the podcast series by AnimalConcepts featuring animal care and welfare professionals, authors, and many others contributing to the Practical Animal Welfare Science, One Care and Earth Charter and SDGs platforms! Questions you would like to hear answered? These can be submitted via https://animalconcepts.mykajabi.com/contact-us
“I realised this isn’t new, this interconnection, this view of holistic understandings of who we are… back to indigenous cultures” - Sam Crowell
This podcast utilises the audio from the webinar that took place on 30 April 2021 on the Planetary wellbeing platform by AnimalConcepts.
Let us welcome Dr Sam M. Crowell Jr. He is a professor emeritus from California State University, San Bernardino. He founded the MA in Holistic and Integrative Education and is a founding member of the Network in Spirituality and Education. He serves as a faculty member of the Earth Charter Education Center for Sustainable Development and has been engaged in the Earth Charter movement for several years.
Sam informs us how his beginnings with his doctorate in the social foundations of education, influenced his career as a teacher. He enthused about how teaching, allows for collaboration and further learning. Furthermore, he highlights how his indigenous heritage has given influenced his teaching style and sense of identity. They then discuss the influence of culture, both animal and human, and how understanding them could be used to encourage a peaceful future.
“All my relations are our saving grace, it points to the truth that we are all connected. The most important word is ALL, not just those that behave like me, all, every person…” - Sam reading from Richard Wagamese’s book Embers.
The podcast concludes by explaining the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. The eagle represents human technological advancements, the condor represents spirit. The prophecy states that every 500 years their prevalence switches, however, currently, both birds are flying.
Read about Sam Crowell HERE
Read about the Visible and Non-Visible Nature of Collaboration in Education HERE
Find out about the book; Embers by Richard Wagamese HERE
Find out about Sam’s Science and Spirituality course HERE
“Education can change minds, if you can change minds, you can change mindsets, you change the behaviours and change the collective, so it is crucial”. - Alicia
This week’s podcast utilises the audio from the webinar interview led by Alicia Jiménez which took place on the 29th of January 2021 from the AnimalConcepts platform.
Let us welcome Alicia Jiménez, the Director of Programmes at the Earth Charter International Secretariat in Costa Rica. She has been working in the field of conservation and sustainable development since 1998.
The conversation discusses why it is essential to work together to maintain nature. However, this would require a new mindset, through cultural transformation to expand our perception and rethink our values. Education is a key player in this and can influence change. The Earth Charter can be used as a guideline to produce lessons.
The Earth Charter is a working document, containing sixteen principles within four pillars in sixty languages to promote a global impact by teaching a new way to relate to other living beings.
“Across zoos and aquariums, not many people I have spoken to have heard about the Earth Charter. So it is wonderful that we converse together to spread the word, the message and the values”. – Sabrina
Alicia, Irma and Sabrina then discuss the benefits of weaving stories into education especially in a zoo environment to create relatability and therefore teach people how valuable all life is.
“The Earth Charter has a global effect, putting together how we should live on this planet”. - Irma
Read about Alicia Jiménez HERE
Read the Earth Charter preamble HERE
This week’s podcast utilises the audio from the webinar interview led by Irma Verhoeven which took place on the 31st of May 2021 from the AnimalConcepts platform.
Let us welcome Tracey Starke, the founder of the environmental news website Ecolightenment, which brings together positive environmental news from mainstream media, as well as smaller NGOs to highlight the important work these groups are carrying out.
The circular economy is a way of living in harmony with our ecological systems and restoring them. It is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.
The conversation begins by discussing what a circular economy means to them and their industry. Circular economy is a method to live and restore the ecological systems by dealing with waste and keeping materials in use. From this, they examine methods in which to reduce waste within the animal industry, including the importance of stories in promoting change and the outcome of shifting minds.
Read about Ecolightenment HERE
“Crises offer an invitation to do things differently. Embracing this opportunity clearly demands an overhaul of what is considered ‘leadership’ in our society. We need to up our game! What we need are masterful warriors with a crystal clear vision and the ability to incite the necessary inspiration, creativity and faith that catalysis transformational change. We need wise leaders instead of smart managers.” - Rolf Winters
Let us welcome Rolf Winters to WeBuzz. He is an explorer of life, a leadership coach, a public speaker, and Wise Leaders Ltd founder.
Rolf starts by explaining how the meaning of success is fluid and changes every few years, as well as being subjective to the individual and what they had aimed to achieve. He explains how in his profession, he aims to promote the spirit of an individual and groups.
Rolf shares with us about when he and his family lived with a clan of native Americans. They took themselves out of the Western system to live with nature and learn a new perspective of life. This five-year journey, which includes a year of global travelling, taught them to view everyone, no matter the age as equals, and all hold wisdom which we can learn from. Following this, Rolf produced the documentary DOWN to EARTH intending to spread the brilliance of the clan. In later years, he noted that the Earth Charter shares similar visions to the clan.
Critically, Irma and Rolf highlight that being a leader is to serve your community and remain empathetic. He works with corporations around the world to promote change for the betterment of the Earth.
Irma concludes by saying “The wise we get, the more we realise how little we know”.
Find out more about Wise Leaders Ltd. HERE
Find out more about DOWN to EARTH HERE
Find out more about the Wisdom-based Leadership master class HERE
LinkedIn HERE
Become a member HERE
"It’s important to emphasise that a key purpose of the Earth Charter is to expand and deepen a conscious with regards to how we ought to relate not only with ourselves with others but also how we ought to relate with the large living world." - Mirian Vilela
Let us welcome Mirian Vilela who is the Executive Director of the Earth Charter International Secretariat and the Centre for Education for Sustainable Development at the University for Peace (UPEACE). Additionally, Mirian coordinates the UNESCO Chair on Education for Sustainable Development with the Earth Charter.
Mirian first introduces us to her upbringing in Brazil on her father's farm, and how this cultivated a connection to nature.
Irma and Mirian then discuss what is the Earth Charter, how it was born from common human shared values and how the Earth Charter played a key role in Mirian’s life, giving her a voice. They also share the importance of telling stories to promote system thinking to establish relationships with everyone including the Earth.
“Our favourite story is the flight of the hummingbird, it's an inspiration to act on behalf of the world’s limited and precious resources, this is very much in line with the vision of the Earth Charter” – Irma Verhoeven
Mirian concludes by telling us a couple of stories, including one where a relationship formed with the Earth in that instant.
Read about the Earth Charter HERE
Grian A. Cutanda has a PhD in Social Education from the University of Granada (Spain) and a Degree in Psychology from the University of Valencia. He is an author of fiction and essay, with 16 books published, some of them translated into 12 languages, and a number of academic papers and chapters at the request of various universities. To highlight his international bestseller The Gardener, published in English by Thorsons (HarperCollins) in 1998.
Social and environmental activist, Grian has been an organiser and coordinator in different fields within social movements such as the Indignados Movement in Spain, forerunner of the Occupy Movement in 2011; the People’s Climate March in 2014 and the subsequent 2015 climate campaign in Edinburgh (Scotland); and Extinction Rebellion, as co-founder of XR Spain and regional liaison for Latin America in XR International. The impact of his environmental activism reached an international level with a documentary screened at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, The Earth Stories Collection, or How to End Modernism Once and for All (Cutanda, Kendall & Borecky, 2021) and when, in September 2021, he held a 33-day hunger strike as part of the Global Earth Fast campaign organised by Extinction Rebellion from the UK. This made him, along with Karen Killeen, the activist who held his hunger strike against climate change the longest in the world.
Founder of the Avalon Project – Initiative for a Culture of Peace, Grian has been linked to the University of Granada as a researcher. His main research led to the creation of The Earth Stories Collection, a global bank of worldwide traditional stories capable to transmit an ecocentric and systemic worldview, illustrating the different principles and fragments of the Earth Charter. In this line, he is also working, with the partnership of the Earth Charter Secretariat at the United Nations’ University for Peace and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, on spreading these stories through the creation of a global network of storytelling activists, Earth Story Tellers.
Let's welcome Charlotte Corney, the former CEO of the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary in the Isle of Wight and the founder and trustee of the Wildheart Trust.
Charlotte tells us of what it is like growing up in the Isle of Wight Zoo (now the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary), and how agreeing to hand-raise Zia the Tiger cub committed herself to work with animals. She explains the journey from a zoo to a sanctuary, yet emphasises that throughout the sanctuary's history, each animal's life has always mattered.
“One thing, to this day, remains absolutely unshiftable, and that is that individual life matters to each and everyone of our animals, and never ever were our animals a commodity. The animal's life always comes first”.
Each animal in their care acts as an ambassador animal to promote the conservation and protection of animals. Charlotte gives us an example of SERVIVAL, a campaign to ban the breeding of exotic felids, such as Servals, with domestic cats. These ambassador animals contribute a small part to the human experience at the sanctuary, which overall contributes to promoting a change in thinking through empowerment.
“They come in, they learn a few facts that they may have been able to find out on Wikipedia, then they go home. It is not good enough now. We need people to go home now and do something different, think something differently. Make some difference. It is small steps”
Charlotte concludes by telling us the story of her four hand-raised tiger cubs, and how she and the Isle of Wight said goodbye to her last surviving cub Aysha.
Read about the Wildlife Trust HERE
Listen to our podcast with Dr Jane Goodall HERE
“Most people used to say, the Amazon is like the lung of the planet. I say it is like the heart. If you see the Amazon, you can see a heart and all the rivers are like veins. When you clog all these veins, the body is going to collapse. This is happening now."
Let us welcome Dr Fernando Trujillo, a marine biologist who is the Scientific Director of Foundation Omacha, an NGO he established in 1993 to promote the conservation of river species and their ecosystems in South America.
Fernando guides us through his studying history, achieving an MSc in Environmental Sciences (University of Greenwich) and a Doctorate in Zoology (University of Aberdeen) with the ambition of working with marine vertebrates. He was encouraged to work with dolphins in the Amazon. Although nervous, this place became his paradise so built his career around it. Fernando’s PhD allowed him to research Amazon River Dolphin behaviour, and habitat use and develop a technique to count them. From here, he developed the South American River Dolphin Initiative.
“Each tree is an ecosystem, 50 m high, there are hundreds, if not thousands of animals; ants, insects, spiders, frogs, mammals and reptiles. So every time you burn an area, you are killing millions of animals and plants."
Fernando informs us about the importance of the Amazon to the world, and how damaging it will affect everyone. Fernando and Sabrina then discuss the development of Foundation Omacha and its impact. They then discuss the perception of the residents and indigenous people to conservation and how it changed over time.
Throughout Fernando’s career, connections are key in conservation. Connecting indigenous people to wildlife, and westernised people to indigenous to learn from each other and promote change to benefit everyone.
“We need to learn, we need to move forward, we need to be committed to something. It’s important. It’s not a fight of a few people. It’s a fight with everybody. We are all on this amazing blue planet that we all call Earth, and we need to do something”
Read about Omacha HERE
Read about the Amazon River Dolphin HERE
Read about Fernando’s Whitley award HERE and Fernando’s work HERE
“I think one of the things we should do, and that I am experiencing more and more, is that, in order to think differently we have to look to the past, to find out why we are thinking as we are thinking right now”.
Let us welcome Jes Lynning Harfeld, an associate professor of applied ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy at Aalborg University, Denmark. Currently, his research focuses on the connections between animal welfare and ethics in the realm of human-animal interactions and the way that language interacts with thinking and character.
It was not until Jes’s PhD when he came across Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, did he develop an interest in the ethical dilemmas regarding animal welfare. As such, he focused his thesis on the ethical dilemmas of modern agriculture. Querying, what it means to have a find and the different approaches of ethics and how it relates to animals. “Animal welfare understandings as types of interpretations, reading their signals then jumping to conclusions."
Jes and Sabrina then discuss the ethics and the varying interpretations of animal welfare, an intrinsically subjective phenomenon, across different audiences. Jes then, using a couple of his papers, explains the development of animal welfare sciences.
“Making barriers between disciplines is one of the things that is not a good thing for animal welfare science, we have to break down disciplinary boundaries to do even better animal welfare science”
Read about ‘What is animal happiness’ HERE
Read about ‘Rights, solidarity, and the animal welfare state’ HERE
Read about ‘Bearing Witness’ by Class Kirchelle HERE
“That is the real beauty, we often talk about global collaboration for animal welfare, or global collaboration for human wellbeing or for the greater community of life, or the planetary… What makes it so strong, is these different expertise, these different interests, these different talents, these different things that people bring… to effect change and the only way we can do that, is of course, is by doing it together.” - Sabrina Brando
Hummingbird Stories
AnimalConcepts Public Facebook Group
Elephant Care & Wellbeing
“We have a mission to connect people with nature to inspire stewardship for nature through those connections!... An emotional connection with nature through spending time in nature is more important than environmental education for inculcating that sense of stewardship in children… an important part of conversation”. - Suzanne Gendron
Let us welcome Suzanne Gendron, the Director of Sage Advice Consulting and the Former Executive Director of Zoological Operations and Conservation at Ocean Park Hong Kong.
In this episode, Suzanne shares with us the importance of educational opportunities outside of school to promote stewardship through creating a connection to nature.
Suzanne explains how Ocean Park aims to support Asian biodiversity and the strategies it has implemented to achieve this. She highlights crucially how conservation problems are not going to get better without cooperation.
Suzanne then shares some of the educational activities Ocean Park employs to inspire others to take small actions to help conservation species.
Suzanne then shares the work of Sage Advice Consulting, and how she utilises her 40 years to provide valuable insight to facilitate improved animal welfare, conservation and education, thus, positively impacting the conservation of animals.
To conclude, Suzanne shares with us her love of scuba diving and her awe-inspiring dive with Whale Sharks further inspired her love of the sea.
Read about WAZA’s Social Change for Conservation Strategy HERE
Read about Ocean Park’s implemented conservation HERE
Become a member HERE
"Everyone has 1 life. Me, you, and each animal in our care. Let's bring awareness to what seems so obvious, and embody I SEE YOU" - Sabrina Brando
Join Sabrina Brando in thinking about the 1 life we all have. On how we can make a difference, through the methods and approaches we use, patience and loving-kindness.
Sabrina discusses bringing attention to the effect of our language around other animals and nature, and how this can shape the ways we think and act.
She shares some recent insights and experiences with animals and a valuable lesson from Metallica.
Sabrina briefly discusses her perspectives around the 'I SEE YOU' concept she developed. Of bringing together our heart, mind, gut, and senses, and many other important aspects, and to stay connected 'seeing', in the broadest sense, for animals, peoples, and this beautiful planet we share.
Access 24/7 across lifespan information and resources HERE
Watch the EAZA webinar on Back-of-House with Sabrina Brando & Jon Coe HERE
“Every single individual impacts the planet in some way, big or small everyday. Every individual has a role to play”. - Jane Goodall
“If we find the right organisations to collaborate with… and to share values about the sanctity of life, whether it's animal-human, human-animal, we’re all one! And yet, we’re different, so we are responsible for the harm we are causing around the globe”. - Jane Goodall
“Every species of animal and plant has a role to play. It was all connected. It’s like a tapestry of beautiful colours, a living tapestry of life. As a species becomes locally extinct, it is like pulling a thread, from that tapestry, and enough threads are pulled, then that tapestry will hang in tatters, and that ecosystem will collapse, and we have to realise, we are apart of the natural world and not only that, we depend on it for everything”. - Jane Goodall
Let us welcome Dr Jane Goodall DBE, who has worked for nearly 60 years protecting chimpanzees. Her work has led to conservation incorporating the needs of the local people as well as the environment.
In this episode, Jane shares with us the importance of interconnection through finding common ground to improve the effectiveness of conservation strategies.
Jane explains the role of the Jane Goodall Institute and its sanctuaries in helping both the chimps, the environment, and the locals and how it can be used to promote ecotourism.
Jane then explains the importance of networking communities and connecting youth in order to promote positive change for animals and the environment through her programme ‘Roots & Shoots”.
To conclude, Jane gives us reasons for hope and informs us of its importance within the world. She explains how hope is inspiring, and how it spreads easily sparking action. Sparking change.
Learn more about the Jane Goodall Institute HERE
Learn about the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance HERE
Watch Wounda’s release HERE
Become a member HERE
In this episode, we connect with Irma Verhoeven who is a professional educator and a program and partnership development manager with Earth Charter International. Irma will share her insights and experiences on why education plays such an important role in human behaviour changes and empowerment.
Irma shares her experiences of working with Indigenous Peoples, and how this has influenced her work as an educator, including learning from, through and with others.
As a Programme & Partnership Development Manager with Earth Charter International, Irma shares how the Earth Charter can be useful for educational organisations as well as zoos and aquariums.
In concluding the podcast Irma shares her work with World of Walas, as cofounder and education advisor, specifically focussing on educational efforts in relation to more participative and sustainable cities, and how education supports a more just, sustainable, peaceful, and ethical society.
“Changes in how we react with animals… it’s not all about food. The animals are going to get their food anyway, there is so much more to the relationship” - Sabrina 2022
“It’s important that we’re doing research to help animals that are in the wild. I believe a big reason that we have these animals is not for money or entertainment, but it's for education, conservation and research…” - William Winhall
Today we welcome William (Bill) Winhall, the Manager/Principal Consultant at Marine Mammal Care Consulting LLC and who has a very long career in marine mammal care and welfare.
Bill tells us that although he has always had an interest in nature, his first ambitions lay with becoming a professional baseball player. However, due to injuries, he decided to study for a degree in Biological Sciences (Marine). Bill then told us of his career ladder, starting as a Tour Boat Operator at Marine World/Africa USA.
Bill then shares with us how marine mammal training has changed and the importance of collaboration in training with animals and colleagues. He also provided us with many examples, for example, Cocoa the Pilot Whale. Bill also explains the importance of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums inspecting and sharing the best practices to improve care.
Bill also shares with us how understanding animals in captivity is critical in helping animals in the wild to conserve and restore habitats and species.
Bill concludes by sharing stories about training a young dolphin and a young sea lion, explaining the importance of understanding the individual to alter training to fit their needs.
Read about the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums HERE
Read the Polar Bear Care Manual HERE
Become a member HERE
“In this endless discussion [about animal experimentation] we completely forget that animals are used now and they need our attention now.” - Augusto Vitale & Sabrina Brando
Dr Augusto Vitale joins us to share his experience in the study of non-human primate behaviour and welfare. Since 1991 Augusto has worked as a researcher at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome (Italy) dedicating his scientific activity to investigate behaviour, cognition and welfare of non-human primates, with a focus on common marmosets used in neuroscience and biomedical research.
He guides us in discovering the work of ethologists and evolutionary biologists who contributed to unveiling key aspects of animal behaviour and cognitive skills. He passionately illustrates his research on cooperation and describes how studying common marmosets’ behaviour can shed light on the evolution of altruism in humans.
Augusto also shares with us his work in the EU Expert Working Group responsible for creating guidelines on the protection of animals used in scientific procedures. He discusses the use of animals in experimentation, providing meaningful insight into the current legislation and ethical debate. Augusto concludes by telling us about his strong bond with animals and highlighting the importance of positive human-animal interactions for enhancing captive animal well-being.
“It’s really important to understand what our zoo visitors are seeing, feeling and understanding, because we want them to be a full partner in how we manage and take care of animals” – Jill Mellen
"Our interpretations of what we may think of our own animals at home versus wild animals in our care... We have lots of similar problems... We could bring visitors along in learning to assess the wellbeing of animals and how this can be used with their own animals" - Sabrina Brando
Jill Mellen joins us once again to discuss with Sabrina Brando how the public perceives the welfare of animals housed in a zoo. They explain how understanding this perception is important in the planning of management strategies.
Jill shares with us how zookeepers are the critical mediator in making a positive experience, by taking the time to interact with visitors to divulge knowledge. They remind us how some domestic species share behaviours with many species in the zoo and reminding visitors of this can potentially improve the welfare of their pets.
They discuss how media detachment can alter the narrative of work achieved in zoos, making zoos and aquariums appear that they are not doing right by the animals in their care.
Jill and Sabrina conclude the podcast by offering several suggestions that could be implemented into zoos to increase positive public interactions.
Listen to Jill and Sabrina’s previous conversation HERE
Become a member HERE
“Not everybody is convinced that a zoo can offer these conditions ... in most zoos, there is a great awareness that this is one of their biggest challenges - to give animals a natural environment in which to develop their natural behaviours" - Jan van Hooff
Jan van Hooff joins us once again to share more stories about the chimpanzees, led by Mama, living at the Royal Burgers Zoo. He shares with us more tales of coalition behaviour in primates from his time with Mama and the Arnhem chimps, during a time when there was a great interest regarding the functions of aggression in the life of social animals.
Jan explores the topic of how social groups are formed and maintained, and the importance of giving and taking in forming a community that benefits all members involved. He discusses how coalitions form, supported by the work of his PhD student Frans de Waal. Jan goes on to retell the development of relationships between the Arnhem Zoo chimpanzees, as observed by Frans, and how these observations went on to inform our current understanding of chimpanzee aggression, bonds and reconciliation.
Jan shares fond memories of the chimpanzee matriarch Mama, and her role as a mediator between the males. He shares stories of the tolerance and caring displayed by Mama throughout her life, which he observed directly as he formed bonds with the chimpanzees. We conclude with a beautiful story of recognition and reunion between long-time friends.
Check out Jan van Hooff’s publications HERE
Listen to the previous podcast from Jan HERE
“My focus was to study the social aspect of companion animals and how they change our social relationships with people.” – Lynette Hart
Today we will hear Dr Lynette Hart as she delves into the world of Human-animal interactions, grief counselling and animal behaviour research, which she was happy to be a part of at a time when women with PhDs did not find suitors!
As she tells how Leo Bustad pioneered in talking about the human-animal bond and vulnerable people, she asserts that ‘interaction’ best describes the positive and negative aspects.
She shares her part alongside others in popularising grief counselling for the loss of animals as a valid aspect of the human-animal bond. She tells how addressing grief is important for pet parents, veterinarians, animal laboratory workers and zookeepers.
Listen as Lynette talks about a unique volunteer-based animal behaviour research on flehmen behaviour in ungulates, her work on elephant infrasound communication in collaboration with a geophysicist, collaborations with students to study elephant yawning, elephant-people interactions, elephant-caregiver bonds, effects of household noise on companion animals (inspired by her dog Ginny!).
Excited and intoxicated by this science, Lynette feels the greatest resource of this field is the burning interest and energy that people have in it rather than monetary funds. Look out for some interesting publications coming our way from this amazing mind!
To know more about Elephant-caregiver interaction click HERE
To know more about grief counselling click HERE
To know more about elephant infrasound communication click HERE
Become a member HERE
“If [animals that had been treated poorly] were treated well, they can recover to a mood level just as well as animals that had been treated well all their lives” - Alan McElligott
We welcome Dr Alan McElligott, Associate Professor in Animal Behaviour and Welfare at the City University of Hong Kong, to share the story of his career’s journey - ranging from his childhood on his family’s dairy farm to studying communication in kangaroos.
Dr. Alan shares with us his rationale for studying zoology at University College Cork – a fascination with all animals, large and small. He had hoped to pursue a career in marine biology but found himself once again captivated by the ungulates he grew up with, eventually studying the behaviour of goats. Alan also shares his work on “Unsolvable Problem” with kangaroos, based on work with dogs. This study challenged the idea that “looking back” behaviour was rooted in domestication, as these animals which had never been domesticated actively glanced at human observers during the study when faced with the problem.
We end with a discussion on working with goats at a rescue centre, and Dr. Alan’s work which found that animals who had come from backgrounds where they were not able to feel safe, when treated well in new environments, were able to recover and attain mood levels comparable to animals which had been treated well all their lives.
Take a look at Dr. Alan’s research HERE
Become a member HERE
"Curiosity is key. Ask questions and break them down into smaller components and apply it to a study to create a fundamental understanding... it helps us progress from what we know to more knowledge" - Samantha Ward
Let’s welcome Dr Samantha Ward, a senior lecturer in animal science at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) who also manages the undergraduate bachelor’s degree in zoo animal biology. Furthermore, Sam works within the EAZA Records Working Group, a research advisor for Wild Welfare and is a welfare expert on the Zoo’s Executive Committee as part of Defra.
Sam shares with us how her love of animals came from her childhood through caring for her pets. She specifically reminisces of a goat named ‘Fudge’ which she entered a local race, which got mentioned in the local paper. Through work experience, Sam discovered the veterinary career was not for her. This led her to complete a BSc in Applied Zoology, an MSc in Animal Behaviour and a PhD in Animal Behaviour and Welfare. During this period, Sam had a placement with Professor Vicky Melfi where she discovered her love of hoof stock when working with rhinos. Here she researched whether positive human-animal interactions result in positive behaviour and welfare. This soon progressed into her MSc thesis.
Sam then explains the importance of developing a firm understanding of fundamentals before further research can be undertaken. She provided an example of understanding the basics of animal perceptions of humans to measure it.
Sam clarifies her role as a Zoo Welfare Specialist in Defra. She is proud that her knowledge can help contribute to positive change to legislation. Consequently, improving the welfare of UK based zoos, by changing the minimal standards required to gain a zoo license.
Next, Sam describes how her previous position as a conservation research manager gave her skills in record-keeping on Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS), which was critical for her role within the EAZA Animal record working group. She helps train others to improve recordkeeping, critical to producing insights into health, welfare and conservation across all zoos. Sam then discusses the UK based charity; Wild Welfare which aims to improve the welfare of animals housed in zoos globally. This is accomplished through providing training.
Sam then discusses ‘Zoo Animal Learning and Training’, a book herself, Vicky Melfi and Nicole Dorey had released last year, containing chapters written by many people including Sabrina Brando. It is a book that aims to be both a textbook and provide tips for practical application.
Sam concludes by telling us about how this past year she has moved to a smallholding farm. This enabled her to become self-sufficient and return to her roots of being surrounded by chickens.
Learn about Sam’s research HERE
Learn about BIAZA’s research HERE
Learn about Wild Welfare HERE
Find out about the UK Zoos Expert Committee HERE
Learn about Sam’s book HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
"The toughest part of animal training is that you find your own way, and not following rules. Because, following rules means there is no forward development" - Sven Wieskotten
Let’s welcome Sven Wieskotten for today’s podcast. He is the founding director of Animal and Training.
Sven first reminisces about his childhood bird and how far we have come in terms of animal husbandry. Then his first animal bond during his PhD with a Harbour seal named Henry. Sven noted his first career choice was being a pilot, however, due to unforeseen circumstances, he could not do this. So, he studied his second choice; biology, in 1997 at the Ruhr "University Bochum". During this, he met the founding director of the ‘Marine Science Center’ in Rostock, who introduced the research his team do on Harbour seals to his class. This started his passion, Sven enquired whether he could join their team. After seven weeks of enquiry, the centre got new seals and invited Sven to join.
Sven then describes the centre and its part in the research. He states how the public can view the current behavioural and sensory studies. Additionally, he describes how the public can participate in medical and husbandry training, which means animals will allow strangers to interact with them, promoting stress-free veterinary interactions.
Sven introduces us to non-mammal training such as with octopi, penguins, and fish. Stating how training principles can be utilised cross-species. For example, the two-alternative force choice task, whereby the animal is given to targets and are taught to distinguish between the two by rewarding when the individual interacts with one target over the other.
From here Sven describes his work on trial following, whereby he is working to distinguish the seals' hydrodynamic perception. This is to follow water disturbance trails using their whiskers alone, whilst blindfolded. He then describes the training process required to achieve this, addressing the hurdles of training being reduced motivation. Sven continues by discussing the importance of understanding both the animals and trainers’ individual personalities in terms of the training strategy.
Sven then talks about Akademie für Tiernaturheilkunde (ATN), a German online course provider which educates students internationally.
Sven concludes by telling us the story of an orangutan he witnessed whilst in Borneo at a feeding platform. He was amazed at the animal’s brute strength as he removed a tree seemingly in frustration as a female would not mate.
Find out more about Animal and Training HERE
Find out more about the Marine Science Center HERE
Find out more water trailing HERE
Find out more about Akademie für Tiernaturheilkunde HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
This podcast is dedicated to Dr Hal Markowitz (1934-2013)
"Hal argued that an unnatural stimulus is better than a natural environment with no stimulation." - Autumn Sorrells
Let’s welcome Autumn Sorrell, the Animal Care Director at Elon Musk’s neuro-tech company, Neuralink. She attributes her career to being heavily influenced by the Father of Environmental Enrichment, Dr Hal Markowitz, with whom Autumn worked for the last 10 years of his life. As such, this podcast is the celebration of his life.
Autumn undertook an undergraduate agricultural animal science programme at the University of Missouri, Columbia and graduate work at Purdue University. She was granted a scholarship from the USDA to study livestock behaviour and learned to ask animals questions about their environment and preferences. During her undergrad, Autumn pursued various internships in different zoos, reading journals trying to learn more about the behavioural design of enclosures, including one by Hal. This paper inspired her to contact Hal to complete a PhD under his wing.
Following communications, Autumn discovered Hal was no longer taking students due to an upcoming surgery removing his throat and tongue. Despite this, she still went to his university where she learnt about lab animal husbandry, becoming the husbandry, behaviour and enrichment manager.
Autumn then retells Hal's story, starting with no parental guidance by 14 years of age. He got into an engineering college in Pennsylvania, becoming a full-time engineer in Dougal aircraft company. He noted one part was broken but was dismissed. Following the planes launch, people died, leaving Hal traumatised causing him to leave. He then pursued a PhD in psychology.
Hal then became a student-teacher of experimental psychology at Oregon State, where he met his future Krista. Another student asked Hal to study seals at Washington Park Zoo. Whilst there, Hal recommended himself to be the Director of Education and Research. Eventually, Hal was fired due to his behavioural engineering being unnatural, so was pulled despite their popularity with the public. He argued that an unnatural stimulus is better than a natural environment with no stimulation.
Autumn explained behavioural engineering which aims to return power to the animal by making its environment responsive. Although the term is influential, progress is slow. She referenced its initial popularity with Peter Singer’s book ‘Animal Liberation’ (1975). However, Hal believed little steps are good progress, just keep focusing on what you can do. Additionally, Hal encouraged making connections, as they are critical to the improvement of animal husbandry, making positive progress. Autumn then discusses Hal's latest book; Enriching Animal Lives, which explains how anyone in any animal sector can improve lives.
Autumn then concludes by reminiscing about Hal’s love for opera and symphony, and his love of word games such as scrabble. She also remembered his love of puns and his playful manners.
Listen to Ep69 with Jill Mellen HERE
Remembering Hal Markowitz HERE
List of Hal Markowitz’s books HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Let’s welcome Dr Brice Lefaux for today’s podcast as he takes us around the world to meet with the most endangered species of primates on earth.
It all started with Lily, the family dog. Growing up together, and learning to live with each other was probably the trigger to a life dedicated to animal welfare and conservation. One career option would be becoming a vet, although it wouldn’t be a match to his determination to make a difference.
Not realising at first how zoos could have an impact, Brice still decided to take a position as a Vet and Assistant manager at Bioparc de Doué la Fontaine. After a year, he experienced his first fieldwork in South America with Spider monkeys, a species of which he was studbook keeper back in Europe. There he realised that zoos were undeniable for the sustainability of field research and in-situ conservation actions. He felt a true connection to the wild and his long-standing passion for primates got even stronger.
For 21 years now, he has been active in animal conservation and welfare. He now works in Mulhouse Zoo which he considered being not just a zoo but a Conservation centre.
Today we can share his dedication to conservation, and more specifically primates' conservation through his recently published book Sauvons Les primates (“Let’s save primates” in English). This book targets everyone interested in primates' conservation and highlights unknown species such as Roloway monkeys, gibbons or lemurs that face greater threats than the more notorious great apes. This particular issue is very important to Brice as he reminds us that there is significant bias on financial investment in conservation programs favouring great apes' protection.
Moving on with talking about primates' conservation, he emphasises the fact that zoos have a major role to play in educating people. Without the zoos no one would be talking about these unknown species, except for scientists, so would have limited finance in their conservation programs to help save these species. And once again, he stresses that everything is connected: education, zoos, research, conservation, fundings etc.
Brice continues with a warm acknowledgement of the artist that did all the drawings from his book. He feels true emotions through all illustrations and hopes people will feel it too.
Brice finally concludes by indicating that his work is not only to advertise us on the threats to our biodiversity. He also offers solutions to conserve primate populations. He challenges us to review our way of living and our consumption habits. Changing is saving, and his book is a call for action.
Find out more about Dr Brice Lefaux’s book Sauvons les primates HERE
To find out more about Lemurs’ conservation HERE
To find out more about West african primates conservation HERE
To find out more about Gibbons’ conservation HERE
To find out more about Titi monkeys’ conservation HERE
Become a member HERE
Magnus Wahlberg started out as a physicist and mathematician, even though he was more interested in biology. The thought of experimenting with laboratory animals put him off, and he felt field biology may not be his cup of tea.
Ironically, his voluntary work on marine animal sounds drowned him in fieldwork. He credits his mentors for their stimulating curiosity-driven approach. He had a long emotional journey of self-realisation that studying animals in captivity helps us know more about wild animals and vice versa.
Listen as Magnus tells us about his interesting work on the bioacoustics of marine animals. With many exciting examples, he explains his focus on how animals hear. He explains how captive animals help us test techniques before running field testing on wild animals.
“Would you rather be deaf or blind?” asks Magnus as he explains with relatable analogies. When vision underwater is limited, one has to rely on hearing. He shares how water is a good conductor of sound, making it great for marine mammals to communicate information. He then goes on to explain how despite marine mammals sharing our physiology, they have adapted to living underwater.
Magnus explains that ‘sounds’ can be defined as ‘noise’ or ‘signal’ depending on perspectives. The focal sound will be a ‘signal’ and the sound interfering with this will be ‘noise’. It is difficult, he says, to measure whether a sound is agreeable to an animal or not, since “some sounds are loud but not regarded as noise as they are part of an animal’s repertoire…”
Discussing the effects of noise, Magnus explains that marine animals cope by either moving away or communicating louder (the Lombard effect). However, too much noise can in some cases result in injuries or even death. Singular effects can be ignored but cumulative effects can keep animals in constant stress causing greater harm.
Magnus shares that the construction of wind turbines is noisier than their operation. This issue does cause conflicts between conservation biologists and climate change scientists. Personally, Magnus believes in the positive effect of wind farms which restrict fisheries, creating reserves where biodiversity flourishes.
Magnus focuses on training teachers to inspire students to study natural sciences, believing in exciting individuals to be question-driven with an urge to answer these and solve problems creatively while knowing one’s subject.
Magnus’s facility does 3-lane work, firstly, establishing basic knowledge, secondly, developing gadgets for study and lastly, education and outreach to inspire students and the general public.
Magnus leaves us inspired, concluding with his personal experience with Loke- the great cormorant he tried to train but got trained himself by Loke instead!
Learn more about wind turbine noise and marine animals HERE, effects offshore wind farm and marine wildlife HERE, Gentoo Penguin reaction to underwater sounds HERE, vessel noise and dolphins HERE, and inspirational teaching methods HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Let’s welcome Dr. Kirstin Anderson Hansen for today’s podcast as she takes us on an exciting life journey through her experiences in animal training and bioacoustics of marine animals.
As a 13-year-old, Kirsten encountered her first surreal sighting of swimming killer whales whilst journeying on a bike on the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington State. This set the course as a marine biologist for this Colorado girl, starting from high school to post-doctorate.
Kirstin shares how operant conditioning for communicating with animals is all about, “Teaching animals to be comfortable in the world that they live in!” She explains that training animals in co-operating for their own wellbeing is a priority. It helps showcase the animal’s natural behaviours and individual personalities for public education, she believes.
Although her MSc was related to bioacoustics of mimicry in beluga whales, her PhD involved training a great cormorant named Loke, taking part in an underwater behavioural hearing test to prove birds could hear underwater. The highlight was that against all popular beliefs at the time, Loke was trained with only positive reinforcement to voluntarily take part in the study. Kirstin made it a fun, interesting, challenging and motivating problem-solving task for him.
Kirstin reveals more goodies about Loke and auditory brain responses of wild puffins in the form of brain waves. She stresses the importance of the collaboration between animal welfare scientists, researchers, and animal care personnel for prioritizing positive welfare of research animals.
Kirstin shares more regarding training for husbandry to reduce stress by providing the animal with choice and control to stay in, or leave the task. She expresses that positive reinforcement training of stereotypic, inactive, or subdued animals in zoos, can increase their natural behaviours, behavioural diversity, enclosure use, and social activity. The cherry on the cake, she laughs, is that the guests will stay longer this way which means more funds for zoos. She divulges how this culminated into an animal training course for DAZA, and the challenges she faced in establishing the same for EAZA later on.
The most important message that Kirstin brings is that in operant conditioning, as opposed to the common misconception, the operator is not the trainer but the animal. The animal chooses to act or not, while the trainer is responsible for the animal’s comfort, understanding, and motivation to choose to do the task or tweak the environment if it chooses not to.
To support her argument, Kirstin concludes with an eye-opening story, her experience with a grey seal she was training, that will leave you awestruck at this yet another multifaceted human-animal bond.
Learn more about the behavioural hearing test in great cormorants HERE
Learn more about auditory brain response research in wild puffins HERE
Learn more about training animals for husbandry to reduce stress HERE
Learn more about Dr Kirstin’s work HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Hal Herzog is a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, whose research entails the complex psychology of human-animal interactions for over three decades. These studies have been published in many journals, including Science, Animal Behavior and The American Psychologist to name a few. He also is the author of ‘Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat’ and writes the blog Animals and Us on Psychology Today.
Hal shares with us his love of animals from childhood, specifically reptiles. He quotes collecting reptiles during high school such as the boa constrictor, rat snakes, turtles etc. Hal then goes on to reference how his interest in human-animal interactions formed through his neighbours. They invited Hal to view a cockfighting match, which Hal initially refused. Eventually, Hal agreed due to his rising interest in how viewers perceive the roosters. This interest changed his PhD from snake personality differences to analysing the psychology of humans involved in cockfighting. Following the completion of his PhD, Hal flew to Vancouver, Canada to attend an international theology conference. Whilst at the airport Hal read ‘Animal Liberation’ by Peter Singer. Hal describes initially dismissing Peter’s perception of animal rights but continued to read due to Peter’s arguments being good. Originally, Hal perceived that Peter did not incorporate psychology, believing that logical arguments would not affect humans' treatment of animals. Now, Hal admits the whole book was effective at pulling the heartstrings. Hal then discussed his initial PhD study, working at Gordon Burghardt’s laboratory at the University of Tennessee. The aim was to develop a personality test for baby snakes. This test involved waving his hand in front of the snake to count how many times the snake struck within two minutes. The study demonstrated that siblings from the same litter behaved similarly, with recently fed snakes acting more aggressively as being fully limited their capacity to escape.
Hal defines biological psychology as how biology and evolution impact human behaviour. Hal highlights this term brings about questions regarding what it means to be human. He then goes on to discuss the controversial topic of human attachment to their pets. On one side, biophilia, whereby humans have an innate trait to love all animals. Hal disagrees with this but instead believes animal attachment relates to cultural learning. He noted that the term pet is westernised, referencing a study by Peter Gray which examines 60 human cultures. This study concluded that only five cultures played with their pets. The other cultures used them for work. Hal then explained that in nature, pet-keeping is limited, referencing one occasion where a chimpanzee plays with a bush baby, usually resulting in killing it. Consequently, Hal describes pet-keeping as the thing that separates us from other species.
Hal then discusses the impact of pets on human health. Historically, Erica Friedman in the 1980s concluded that pets increase their owner survival rate following a heart attack by four times more than those who do not own a pet. However, as Hal wrote his book, he discovered that there was an equal amount of papers stating that pets have a negative impact, no impact and a positive impact on the physical and mental health of their owners. This means no solid conclusion can be derived.
In addition, Hal noted that research shows gender differences concerning human-animal interactions are limited. With the data he had, Hal developed an animal attitude scale. He highlighted on extreme ends in America, that females are more likely to be animal activists (people who alter their life to help animals e.g., diet, wardrobe etc.), whereas, males are more likely to be hunters. Hal then discusses the cultural impact of animal care, giving the veterinary profession as an example. Stating how 30 years ago, this career was considered a male role, with current roles now being 60% women. Hal then discusses behavioural alterations of animal activists in regards to animal care and their philosophical orientation.
Hal then reviews how the animal welfare act is incorporated differently globally in terms of animal-based research. Hal considers history important, so shares with us the German Nazi parties progressive animal rights, restricting their use in research. On the other hand, the United States animal care and use committee covers all animals except rats, mice and birds. This means that the majority of animals used in research are not protected.
Hal then elaborates on the animal popularity trends, giving dog breeds as an example. Utilising the 60 million dogs registered with the American Kennel Club from 1926, it was determined that cultural fashion trends greatly affects dog breed popularity as people unconsciously follow trends. Hal referenced the Dalmatians popularity boom following Disney’s 101 Dalmations as an example.
Hal progresses to discuss why some animals humans seem to care more about compared to others, referring frequently to a paper by Burghardt and Herzog Jr; Beyond Conspecifics: Is Brer Rabbit Our Brother? Here he observes how "cuteness" is a key factor in species with conservation programmes, although he noted this changes with cultural perceptions. For example, how the killer whale changed to an orca.
Hal and Sabrina then discuss the recently published 2nd edition of his book; Some we love, some we hate, and some we eat. He wrote the book to be easily understood for the everyday person that aimed to get the public to question what they knew about animals. Hal was surprised by the book's popularity and incorporation into a lot of education courses.
Hal concludes by sharing with us his free blog on Psychology Today that consists of over 150 blogs.
Explore Hal Herzog’s research gate HERE
Listen to iBuzz podcast with Gordon Burghardt HERE
Read the Beyond Conspecifics: Is Brer Rabbit Our Brother? paper HERE
Read the Fashion vs. Function paper HERE
Read the Animals and Us Psychology Today blogs HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
For today’s podcast, we once again welcome back Professor Jan van Hooff to share more of his stories and knowledge surrounding his experiences working with the chimpanzees at Burgers Zoo.
He explains how the large community of chimpanzees he came to work with was unheard of at the time. He draws on his experiences researching the chimpanzees housed in New Mexico by the United States Air Force to encourage and formulate a plan for keeping a colony of chimpanzees in captivity. He explains how, prior to the 1970s, chimpanzees in zoos were traditionally kept alone or in small groups in cages.
Professor van Hooff retells stories of how the colony at Burgers Zoo came to be, and the trials and tribulations of introducing such a large group of chimpanzees to each other. This included the struggle of introducing three adult males to a group of twenty-three adult and adolescent females. He draws particular attention to the oldest female Mama, who Jan explains had adopted the role that would typically be assumed by adult males in chimpanzee colonies.
Jan tells us of his first PhD student, Frans de Waal, and the extensive studies they did together on the Royal Burgers Zoo colony. He shares how they studied coalition behaviours in the chimpanzees and the work that went into Frans de Waal’s book, “Chimpanzee Politics”. He explains how the study of coalition behaviour was very new at the time. He tells us of research that was conducted in crab-eating macaques on top of the work that was done with the Burgers Zoo chimpanzees, and how primate behaviour connects with human behaviour and politics in our day-to-day lives.
We conclude with a story of chimpanzee rivalry and companionship. Jan tells us how two males worked together to succeed the alpha position, and how this behaviour was followed by Jan and Frans – forming the question, why did these two males join together to beat the dominant male? He tells us how the male who joined the coalition wasn’t offered sufficient freedom by the original dominant male, and so he joined with the rival male to achieve more freedom for food and mating rights within the group. He tells us what this research in chimpanzees tells us about power and bargaining in humans and other primates.
Check out Frans de Waal’s book “Chimpanzee Politics” HERE
If you would like to listen to the previous podcasts with Professor Jan van Hooff, click the following links:
First podcast
Second podcast
Third podcast
Learn more about Jan van Hooff HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Dr Jill Mellen worked as the Education and Science Director at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and while now retired from this position, she is still very active in all kinds of projects! She has worked in the zoo and aquatic field for over three decades, with expertise in animal welfare. As such, in 2021, Jill received a lifetime achievement award for her work in animal welfare from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
Jill shares with us that beyond having a dog, her family had no interest in animals. Instead, Jill was inspired by her neighbours Velma and Karen who owned a horse. She went on to university to study for a BSc in Biology then an MSc in Animal Behaviour. Whilst studying, she acquired a job at Miller Park Zoo, Bloomington, Illinois where she worked with children and farm animals. This sparked her passion for zoo-based careers. Progressing from there, after her MSc Jill was hired to participate in environmental engineering and to train and supervise undergraduates at Oregon Zoo. Jill then asked Sabrina how she gained her passion. Sabrina refers to her love of nature and bird watching, despite being allergic. She dropped out of school to work with aquatics and marine mammals. This stirred her love of learning more about animal behaviour. Both Jill and Sabrina discuss how this drive caused them to pursue a PhD.
Jill then discussed working with Hal Markowitz at Oregon Zoo, and how he and the team did not realise how ground-breaking any of their work in environmental enrichment was. She summarised their work as behavioural encouragement through operant conditioning. Jill described one example with Baloo the Mandrill utilising a reaction time video game in which they compete with the public. When Baloo won, he would receive a feed reward. Jill and Sabrina then discussed the controversy of artificial versus natural enrichments. They then continue to discuss the variations of words concerning welfare which could result in miscommunication. So, Jill recommends before each discussion utilising a word, it should be defined in the discussion. This led Sabrina to talk about incorporating different perspectives of people from different industries to benefit the project. Jill also explains the origins and the effectiveness of SPIDER, a scientific framework used to implement and evaluate environmental enrichment.
Jill concludes by emphasising the importance of choice and control in enclosure design, as we have placed them in an enclosure, we have removed a lot of choices. Therefore, it is up to us to provide some back based on their natural history.
Learn about SPIDER HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Having a background in marine mammal training, Tim Sullivan reflects on the impact his different mentors and the thorough coaching that he received has had on his career in caring for marine mammals. Tim reflects on his experience and discusses how the practice of animal training has changed over the years and whether it is logical to ask animals to carry out behaviours that do not come naturally to them.
Tim is a co-founder of the Animal Behaviour Management Alliance and he explains how the organisation got started alongside the benefits it has for collaborative working when training animals. Tim also shares anecdotes on how he has found exposing animals to change early on can help build up their resilience and reduce stress when variations in their routine may be unavoidable. Having a lot of experience in animal training, Tim shares the value of being proactive in animal behaviour management to avoid problematic behaviours, such as stereotypies, from occurring.
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
This podcast is dedicated to Else Poulsen (1955 to 2016)
“Bears just do things for Bear reasons”
Jay Pratte is the Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Education at the Utica Zoo in the state of New York, USA.
Jay shares with us how his interest in animal behaviour initiated in Waterton Park whilst on a high school camping trip. While exploring the environment, Jay walked upon a doe. He approached her slowly with grass, observing her body language and adjusting himself to reduce the chance of her running. Although his father found it confusing, Jay thought this way of behaving was normal and thus carried it with him with his training.
Jays’ family expected him to be a lawyer due to his high grades. Consequently, he studied environmental law at Alberta University. He explained that by chance a friend told him about big cats which were housed outside the city in a roadside zoo, whereby Jay proceeded to volunteer there, shortly followed by employment. During his employment, he further observed that human behaviours cause animals to adjust their behaviours accordingly. As such, Jay changed his studies to behavioural psychology and zoology. From this Jay trained animals for the film industry, then moved to Dallas Zoo working in the ExxonMobil Tiger habitat managing their training programmes. What Jay learnt here, he transferred to his job working with Giant Pandas at Zoo Atlanta, China.
Jay talks about his current effort in shutting down facilities with poor animal welfare alongside groups such as USDA, PETA and HSUS. This starts with a request to change but frequently ends with litigation. Jay references a couple of facilities in which he helped shut down including Wildlife in Need after observations of bear cub abuse.
Jay explained how he entered the zoo world. He described how initially he thought being a vet was the only option. However, following a shadow day at a vet whilst in high school, he determined experiencing the emotional pain of euthanising animals was not a viable career choice for him. Yet, volunteering at the roadside zoo enlightened him on other possibilities. Jay highlights this as a career choice of passion, with not much money. He recommends volunteering to discover if certain careers are for you.
Jay explains his role at Utica Zoo makes him feel valued and make an impact in the lives of both humans and animals by taking the zoo to the next step. Additionally, he appreciates the zoo's position within the local community and how valued it is, in return, Jay helped the local community through many activities including helping students.
Jay then described how he and Else Polsen met at Zoo Atlantica, however, when he moved on, they lost contact. A few years later Else reached out, asking for Jay to do a training session at her conference. During which, they discussed an idea, developing a non-profit group to protect bears and improve their welfare- this is the birth of the Bear Care Group.
Jay remembers Else, describing her as a mentor, good friend and crucial member of the team. He depicted her as a force to be reckoned with. Else was known to help anyway, no matter what their background or situation is, if they wanted to help the bears, she was there. It was this that taught Jay to be open in his work to promote positive change. Jay and Sabrina then discuss the importance of a complementary team, which each bring their skillset and perspectives to reduce confirmation bias and promote change. He described learning so much from her, however, their time was cut short when Else got cancer and passed away. Jay continues to run the Bear Care Group in the way Else would. Jay highlighted how people can support the group, whether it’s a donation, interacting with the social media page or attending a talk. If you want to help bears, any input is critical.
Jay concludes by quoting “Oh, you made contact!” a line spoken by Jamie Lee Curtis in a movie called Fierce Creatures. Jay says that line makes him think of connection, it is this connection that keeps his passion going. Jay then reminisces about a training session he did at Romania Zoo, whereby he trained a previously untrained Brown bear he nicknamed “Borscht”. Jay said that the fact that Borscht came out of hiding, taught to target, open his mouth on command and stand up fully, all within half an hour, thus demonstrating the power of positive reinforcement.
Learn about the Bear Care Group HERE
Learn more about you could support the Bear Care Group HERE
Find out more about Jay Pratte HERE
Learn more about Else Poulsen HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Erna Walraven covers the progression of her career in the animal care sector, from caring for stray dogs to successfully becoming former Senior Curator at Taronga Zoo for twenty years. She strives to encourage members of the public and animal care professionals to be active for animals, the planet and the greater good.
As curator, Erna realised her region was lacking animal welfare positions. She created a position for Taronga Zoo which encompassed training the zoo’s staff about what the term ‘animal welfare’ actually means. This enables staff to create goals in what standards they want to achieve and how success can be measured. Part of this includes allowing animals to have negative experiences or “safe negatives”, whilst ensuring their welfare is not compromised, to give them a life that is as close to what the animal would experience in the wild, such as being outdoors in bad weather. This is so that the animals can make the decisions in their own care as they would outside of captivity. It is important to enrich these innate behaviours so that future generations of animals know how to be independent from humans when they have been released into a sustainable habitat.
In this podcast, Erna provides tips on how she landed her first job in a zoo and explains the inspiration behind her contributions to animal welfare. Her books ‘Wild Leadership’, ‘Wild Fathers’ and ‘Care of Australian Wildlife: For Gardeners, Landholders and Wildlife Carers’ are just some examples of how Erna empowers members of the public to save animals in crises. She explains the importance of communication that leaders have with their employees and how this affects successful working relationships. Erna also discusses her exciting upcoming book which focuses on the power that female animals have in their social groups.
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Tune in for this Saturday's podcast to learn more about animal ethics, philosophy, our relationship to other animals, and empathetic engagement with the more than human world.
Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Science in Society at Wesleyan University where she also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Her work lies at the intersection of ethical and political theory and practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations, e.g. women, people of color, incarcerated people, non-human animals. She is currently working to unpack carceral logics by thinking through a complex set of issues like dignity, self-respect, empathy, disposability, and hope and hopelessness.
Learn more about Lori Gruen HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
David Neale has been the Director of Animals Asia Foundation since 2002.
David shares with us how when he was 14, he saw chimpanzees used as photo props whilst in Majorca, Spain, and how it ignited his passion for animal welfare. Sabrina shares similar memories of seeing Africa Greys, snakes, and a Tiger. She also mentions apps where the public can record these animals to influence change.
David says his study choices were limited, so studied Environmental Science and then a postgraduate in Conservation Biology. After graduating, David worked as an ecologist for a river restoration charity in England, which aimed to restore lost habitats. When David surveyed for European water voles (a species that declined due to pollution, habitat loss and the release of mink), he determined the mink would need to be culled. This introduces an animal welfare element. David did not want to contribute to this, so embarked on a trip to Asia and South America to determine an alternative career.
Whilst travelling, he visited zoos and sanctuaries, reporting his observations to the Born Free Foundation. David shared with us a key moment in Vietnam, where he observed two caged bears, one of which was a cub. He learnt they were destined to be milked for bile at a bear farm. Horrified, he reported this to Born Free who referred him to the recently established Animals Asia Foundation by Jill Robinson. Through communications with Jill, David helped establish Animals Asia in the UK, spending approximately eight years giving talks to all manners of people.
Concurrently, David wanted to contribute to the welfare of farmed animals beyond being a vegan, so he volunteered as a Political Coordinator for the British Hen Welfare Trust. This trust rehomes laying hens after they have stopped being economically viable.
From here David, attended Asia for Animals, a conference of all organisations which occurs every two years to discuss relevant issues and increase collaborations, although this was rare between conferences. David wanted a more long-term collaboration between organisations so established Asia for Animals Coalition. It aims to allow the sharing of information to improve animal welfare. Within the coalition are species-specific working groups.
David introduces us to his blogs on preventing future pandemics through altering the way livestock animals are managed and the consumption of animals both domestic and exotic to be more sustainable. He shares how the covid pandemic has highlighted this to the public.
David continues by sharing his career progression through Animals Asia, by being more hands-on in China. Here he worked with the China Zoo Association to remove circuses within their businesses to improve animal welfare. This change occurred in 2011. Animals Asia then progressed to provide advice and knowledge to further improve welfare in Chinese zoos through workshops.
David shares with us the education programme to instruct the public on the wild behaviour and needs of species and why scenarios such as bear farms are bad for the species. He then mentions their work with the Chinese veterinary medical association, educating their students on how their care can impact their welfare. Animals Asia invested in outside veterinary experts to teach in universities which have resulted in overall improvements.
David then discusses the illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam and working with the Government to set up a sanctuary in Tam Dao National Park for formally farmed bears, and capacity building across centres to improve welfare and knowledge.
David then talks about replacing elephant riding with ethical elephant tourism in Vietnam. This entails guided tours that follow the elephants within their habitat, this benefits all stakeholders including the elephants and creates more income.
David concludes by telling us the story of a 60-year-old elephant, who was rescued by the team from her life of being used for rides. She lived four years within the reserve where she interacted with a wild male elephant and ventured outside the reserve.
Listen to our podcast with Jill Robinson HERE
Read the "eating animals at the zoo" paper HERE
Read about the Asia for Animals Coalition HERE
Read about the Animals Asia HERE
Content warning: This podcast includes descriptive content related to laboratory animals which some listeners may find distressing.
Sally Thompson-Iritani is the Asst. Vice Provost, Animal Care, Outreach & 3Rs and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington. Additionally, she is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional and a Human-Animal Bond Practitioner.
Sally shares with us how her love of animals developed from her love of cats. Despite not being allowed one as a child due to living in a small apartment, she found interacting with them comforting. Through this, Sally’s mum nurtured her understanding of ensuring an animal is provided with all their needs. Sally developed an interest in the care provided to research animals due to her childhood friend's father completing research on mice at a university. This was further developed when she read an article on a neuroscience study that used non-human primates, whereby Sally questioned herself on the methods used to care for these primates. Her mum suggested it could be a possible career choice for Sally.
Sally studied a PhD focusing on how the environment can affect foetal development, primarily concentrating on the effects of methylmercury. She conducted this study using the mouse, as foetal development can only be studied in situ. When Sally finished her studies, she worked in a biotechnology company on therapeutics to develop medications and therapies.
Sally informs us that many measures put in place to protect animals in research are globally universal. This not only ensures the animals are well cared for, but the study outcomes are reliably repeatable. This is regulated and updated through organisations such as ALAC International.
Sabrina and Sally discuss the importance of laboratory animals in developing treatments, and how the resulting outcomes have saved lives. They agree how they are both grateful so aim to improve the welfare of these animals. Sally expands that without laboratory animals, many animals such as those in zoos and in agriculture have received better care due to the development of surgeries, medicines and vaccines.
Sally informs us how animal care during the covid pandemic has been tough for everyone. She quotes the most difficult bit being the lack of social interaction between caregivers during the workday, which was counteracted by using Zoom during lunchtimes.
Sally explains about her work at the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research, and how the organisation is committed to support the biomedical community and inform others of its importance.
Sally talks about human wellbeing and her work as a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional. She explains how compassion fatigue originated in nursing and spread out across all caring roles including laboratory animal caregivers. She describes how the role is mentally and emotionally difficult as carers forge bonds with animals that can be euthanized during a study. Her role involves guiding people through these emotions, providing them coping mechanism tools. Sally then introduces us to research she collaborated with Teresa Schlanser and Peter Rabinowitz on compassion fatigue in satisfaction in US army laboratory animal medicine personnel. It showed the importance of a good support network for improved resilience.
Sally concludes by explaining the benefits of positive reinforcement training across all animal disciplines. She references how it has been used to train non-human primates within neuroscience to move from their enclosure to the study area. She also mentioned recent work to 'litter train' dairy cattle to excrete in one area to improve waste management.
Learn more about Sally Thompson-Iritani HERE
Link the collaborative research HERE
Watch how non-human primates have been trained HERE
Watch how dairy cattle have been trained HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Elisabetta Palagi is an Associate Professor at the University of Pisa, whose research focuses on social and sexual behaviour, and mechanisms underlining empathy such as rapid facial mimicry and emotional contagion.
Elisabetta shares a short story of growing up on a farm, of chickens and other animals, her early interest in animal behaviour, and a wise lesson by her grandmother.
She shares her start in academia, being a student at the University of Pisa, and completing her PhD in evolutionary biology. After her studies she continued at the University of Pisa, in the role of mammal curator at the museum of natural history, expanding her views on animal behaviour through zoology.
She shares her collaboration with the Pistoia Zoo where she studied lemurs. After great apes, wolves, hyenas, sea lions, and others, both in the wild and under human care.
Elisabetta discusses aspects of her and collaborative research on animal friendships, focusing on individuals, agonistic support, relationship quality, body contact, and cohesiveness.
Elisabetta discusses the importance of comparative research, considering different approaches focussing on social similarities and phylogeny, homologous traits, or evolutionary convergence.
She discusses peace and reconciliation in different species, with specific examples on consolation, concern, comforting each other, egoism, and altruism, in different species.
Elisabetta also shares a great story on breaking the ice and grooming, using a very Italian custom of ‘aperitivo’.
Social play, explanations of immediate and delayed play, rough and tumble play, social tolerance, and adult play, as well as managing xenophobia by playing, and when play is a family business: adult play, hierarchy, and possible stress reduction in common marmosets are covered.
…to celebrate the arrival of food, about 20 minutes before food arrival, chimpanzees increase their grooming behaviour, and in bonobos we found a peak in play behaviour…leaving the animals more relaxed before the food arrives, reducing levels of aggression and solving levels of distrust.”
Elisabetta discusses her collaborative book “The Missing Lemur Link: an Ancestral Step in Human Evolution” and concludes the podcast with a story of her travel to Madagascar and hearing the singing of an Indri and the deep experience of being in this marvellous environment.
University of Pisa
Google Scholar
PLAY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CREATIVE SOCIETIES
Song of the Indri lemur
Becca Hanson is a Founding Principal of Studio Hanson | Roberts. She is a landscape architect with over 44 years of experience.
Becca shares with us how her love of nature started in Cincinnati, Ohio, during her childhood in the woodland behind her home. Here she could interact with nature first-hand by climbing trees, handling animals etc.
Becca started her university career intending to be an architect. However, she realised it was not for her, so took a nine-year sabbatical where she had a child and lived in Europe. During a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens in Wisley in the UK, she saw the rockery. This inspired Becca to finish her degree to construct similar works. Becca then enrolled in the University of Washington to get a BLA in Landscape Architecture and a minor in plant community ecology.
From here Becca got a job with Jones & Jones, who were working to design landscapes for the Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle. The more she worked with zoos, the more she fell in love with the zoo environment and the people within them as they all want to make the world a better place. She also discovered how she loved designing with the web of life in mind; incorporating both the needs of animals, plants and people to ensure everyone’s lives are rich and fulfilling. Becca and Sabrina then discuss how the 24/7 approach is critical in enclosure design as animals could inhabit it for the rest of their lives. Becca then highlights how much expertise is required to ensure everybody’s needs are met within the environment as well as reverberate the message of conservation to leave an impact on visitors.
Becca explains how she and her husband David Roberts set up SH | R in 2003, to devote their professional lives to zoos and aquariums. She explained how SH | R gained traction quickly, becoming international. Becca shared her adoration of learning from different people during her travels, which could be utilised in future designs. Becca goes on to explain the impact of COVID-19 on the studios, and how all projects had to continue online using services such as Zoom.
Becca then provides examples of ‘conservation by design’. She references how Houston Zoo aims to convert basic enclosures to ones focused on welfare and demonstrates the conservation themes of the zoo. Becca mentions the under-construction Galapagos exhibit which aims to highlight to visitors the Galapagos landscapes and unique animals and what can be done to conserve them. Becca further highlights that sustainability is key in conservation by design, by which resources and techniques utilised must reduce the overall footprint. She references as an example, the water in the Hippopotamus exhibit at Werribee Open Range Zoo, Melbourne. Incorporated within the enclosure is one hectare of wetlands which acts as a biofilter. Cleaning the water. Simultaneously, increasing biodiversity through attracting birds, insects, crustaceans etc. She also references how enclosures must be designed to last.
“Designing an enclosure for the flexibility to be able to change things, about keeping staff involved in the lives of animals, and making it a rich and fulfilling life for everyone. So that everybody looks forward to a new day dawning."
Becca then explains her passions lie in how children engage with the zoo environment, with the aim to induce empathy with them and their families as well as encouraging natural play. She states the zoo is more likely to make an impact if they can physically interact rather than just observe. She mentions her love of the Science North, Northern Ontario, Nature Exchange, whereby children exchange items from nature along with knowledge for other natural items.
Becca and Sabrina then discuss the importance of team diversity and budgeting when it comes to landscape design to ensure all plans come to fruition.
Becca then explains the criteria needed to become a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Becca concludes by telling us how a Javan Rice Finch named Fred, who once lived in a cage in a children’s museum, became a big part of office life.
Learn more about the Studio Hanson | Roberts HERE
Learn more about Becca Hanon HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Today on iBuzz we welcome Dr Gordon Bauer, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at New College of Florida. Gordon has investigated animal senses, cognition and behaviour in a wide variety of species such as manatees, bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales and sea turtles.
Gordon opens with one of his first interactions with humpback whales and explains how he became interested in studying animals at a young age with frequent trips to his local zoo. He reflects on how he explored a number of possible career paths before returning to work with animals at the age of 30, a decade after graduating from his B.A. in Psychology.
He describes his work at the University of Hawaii, working in dolphin communication and cognition. He talks about how collaboration with researchers from other fields allowed him to pursue biomagnetism in species including bottlenose dolphins, porpoises and humpback whales. This culminated in his first published article, kickstarting his ongoing and influential career in cetacean research.
Dr Bauer goes on to share his experiences working in the field of conservation with free-living manatees. He explains how it began as a project with one of his students, which aimed to discover whether manatees could be trained to comply with husbandry procedures. What began as a student project eventually grew into a larger initiative, including research into manatees that are struck by boats and how they use their senses to understand their surroundings. It is highlighted that by understanding how manatees experience their world, it will be possible to understand how better to care for and protect these animals in our care and in the wild.
Gordon shares his experiences with training animals, and how training does not always go to plan. He describes an experience of training manatees to open an eye on signal, and hold it open for a veterinary ophthalmologist to examine; he recalls how, after several months of training, it had turned out that the manatees had instead learned to close their eyes and keep them closed. He highlights the importance of understanding how animals behave in creating effective training results; for example, if he had understood that manatees close their eyes when eating, he might have adjusted the reward protocol.
Following on from discussing his own research career, he goes on to reflect on the research work carried out by his own students. This included work on lateralisation in marine mammals, indicating that different individual manatees would have different flipper preferences much like how humans will have a preference for a left or right dominant hand. Gordon stresses the importance of communicating the findings of research to a variety of audiences to ensure science can be put into practice.
Gordon continues with a discussion on animal cognition and acknowledging the learning principles and complex processes that animals display during research. He cites the importance of understanding how the marine environment shapes cognition in marine mammals as we move forward in investigating specific questions for specific species.
We finish with a story about care, and of people engaging with species that are not typically seen as playful - such as sea turtles - and watching animals having fun.
“We had this naive trainer, who had made this major breakthrough with the manatee … the discovery that auditory stimulation kept them relaxed and on their backs.”
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
On today’s podcast, we welcome Terry Maple onto iBuzz to talk to us about his new book, The Life of Willie B., and his impressive lifelong career as a behavioural researcher, wildlife conservationist, professor, author, and zoo director.
Terry tells us of the inspirations behind his latest book, citing the positive changes for animals - particularly great apes - that have occurred in the zoo industry during his career. He talks about his life’s journey to Zoo Atlanta, starting out as an animal social psychologist, and his interest in what made a zoo great. Inspired by his local zoo growing up, San Diego Zoo, he began a 30-year career revitalising and reforming the then-discredited Zoo Atlanta. Through his management, he - alongside a team of “reformers” - was a key driver in turning Zoo Atlanta into the respected facility it is today.
Terry talks about how gorilla management has changed since he started his work with the apes. He explains how, as research into great ape behaviour in the field developed, he set out to utilise this knowledge to reform the management of gorillas under human care. In particular, he celebrates the shift from housing single gorillas by themselves to keeping species-appropriate groups which mimic the family dynamics of groups living in the wild.
Willie B. is remembered by Terry as a remarkable animal, and a demonstration of the importance of providing an environment that replicates the experience they would have in the wild - one that is mentally challenging, but peaceful, with the ability to socialise with their own kind. He tells us of the positive changes he saw in Willie B. after the gorilla, who had lived in a concrete enclosure for two decades, moved to a naturalistic African rainforest inspired exhibit. He celebrates all of the people in the community who came together to stand behind him as he, new to working as a zoo director at the time, spearheaded the construction of what was then considered revolutionary.
Terry also tells us about his involvement with Ivan, a gorilla which was taken from the wild at a young age and kept as a household pet for the first years of his life. Terry explains how disturbing this critical period of Ivan’s social life went on to impact him when he eventually came to live at Zoo Atlanta. Terry explains how the 27 years Ivan spent in isolation, living in a department store in Georgia, led to him struggling to adjust to the company of other gorillas.
Terry concludes the podcast with a reflection on how Willie B. impacted the lives of everyone who met him. Sabrina reads one of the testimonials on the podcast, sharing just one of the many tributes found in the book. Terry shares his personal reflections on his experiences with Willie B., reflecting on how happy he was to be part of something important and helping to change the world for gorillas living in human care.
Terry Maple’s latest book, Atlanta’s Iconic Ape, is available on Amazon HERE
Take a look at the other books authored by Terry Maple HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Samantha Chiew on understanding the effects of animal-visitor interactions, learning from little penguins, and animal welfare policy
Samantha Chiew starts by sharing some of her first memories of connecting with animals at a children’s farm.
With so many other ways to study and work with animals abound, Samantha reflects on different pathways and how she obtained an MSc and joined, like Sabrina, the CAWSEL course in Cambridge.
Samantha shares about her work at the Healesville Sanctuary as a customer service representative, learning about why zoos are so important. Looking at both animal welfare and the visitor experience.
She then pursued a PhD in zoo animal welfare studying penguins and human and visitor interactions. Samantha shares research findings and how outcomes were used to modify environments and regulate the visitor animal interaction. "Findings have increased our understanding of the multifaceted nature of visitor attitudes and have identified some influencing factors on attitudes that can be used to inform the way zoos manage visitor-penguin interactions."
Currently, Samanta is working for the Australian Federal (Commonwealth) Government as a Policy Officer in the Animal Welfare team within the Agricultural Policy Division, with a focus on the field of farm animal welfare. Her work revolves around ensuring that the recommended changes in policy are supported and backed by science.
Samantha concludes the podcast with a story about penguin poo and what she learned from Bandit, a little penguin at Wellington Zoo.
Learn more about Healesville Sanctuary and Zoos Victoria HERE
Visit Dr Chiew’s ResearchGate HERE
Learn more about CAWSEL HERE
View the special issue HERE
Become a PAWS member HERE
This is the 3rd episode with Jan van Hooff in which we continue to follow his stories from England to the Netherlands, back to Burgers' Zoo and the monthly TV program on AVRO TV, called "ZooZoo" from 1964 till 1967 which Jan presented with his brother Antoon. Jan continued on his PhD with the late Professor Dijkgraaf.
Jan shares his involvement in research concerning the socialization of a large group of chimpanzees held at the United States Air Force in 1966. Focusing on not only the physical
but also psychological wellbeing in a group living environment.
He continues with stories of the chimpanzees at Burgers' Zoo and his work with Frans de Waal who was his PhD student. Jan shares historical perspectives on raising chimpanzee babies, the socialisation of the group and stresses that chimpanzees should never be pets!
Hear about chimpanzees on the loose, building boats and ladders and going to the self-service, and a somewhat surprising ending.
Jan discusses natural versus unnatural. "Not natural does not necessarily unnatural."
Listen to the 2nd episode with Jan van Hooff HERE
Learn more about Jan van Hooff HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
The global zoo community has made great efforts and progresses to understanding, promoting, and engaging in the animal welfare and conservation domain. However, there are, among others, various legal, educational, strategical, and operational aspects which affect animal welfare, and which warrant critical analysis, discussions, mitigation, and resolution. This podcast will not only highlight some of the ‘System failures’ as Sabrina Brando has started to call them, root problems that cause some or many symptoms but will also be a call to action. Too often we still deal with symptoms instead of going to the root of the problem, many of which can only be solved by local and a global approach, and multi-disciplinary collaboration.
Working with zoos and aquariums and promoting optimal wellbeing for the many animals in our care, what does such a relationship look like, what are the different distant and proximate aspects related to animal wellbeing are important for us to review and address? What can we do, or do have to start doing to continue making a difference for animals?
This podcast is part of a series of podcasts to be released and is related to a paper with the same tentative title, Reboot: System failures in the zoo and aquarium related domains, that she is currently writing. It is based on her own experiences and observations of working in the animal care and welfare field in zoos and aquariums, and the countless interactions, discussions, and valuable reflections with friends and colleagues for which she is very grateful. So many people have enriched her life and so many animals shared their needs, preferences and stories. Other animals have been and are her teachers too.
The overview in this podcast covers animal welfare in general, care and management specifically, laws, design and architecture and regulated professions. Sabrina highlights the importance of an auto critical approach and reviewing internal and external obstacles and challenges with a focus on opportunities.
The topics discussed within also apply to other fields such as sanctuaries, shelters, companion animals, among others. While there are differences between countries and regions, what is interesting is also the universality of many of the obstacles and challenges. While there are differences there are many more similarities and while working locally is key, there is a need and opportunity to find support and strength through global collaboration.
Sabrina thanks all you out there for caring for animals, doing research, working in the protection of animals and more. The animals need all of us, and we need all of us to continue to make a difference!
Watch the webinar Confronting back of house traditions: Primates as a case study HERE
Become a PAWS member HERE
Jan van Hooff briefly recapped what was previously discussed in episode 44 of iBuzz, saying how he grew up in Burger’s Zoo and studied biology at the University of Biology.
Jan discusses how he initially got his biology kick from working in the institute of Sven Dijkgraaf, who is famous for his input towards the discovery of echolocation in bats during World War II. Jan states that Dijkgraaf himself was inspired by Lazzaro Spallanzani. He observed that bats could still navigate when blinded, but not when their ears are plugged. Building on this Dijkgraaf noted that bats could distinguish different shapes using different calls. Jan also noted that Donald Griffin simultaneously discovered echolocation in bats and dolphins. His work triggered an interest from the Navy, which allowed the development of sonar in submarines.
Jan noted that Dijkgraaf and his team also discovered the use of electroreception in sharks, enabling them to find prey in the sand. This work triggered many physiological discussions, namely the distinction between mind and matter and the dualism between mind and body. Jan stated this debate fascinated him, saying “this work on the sensory mechanism of animals of which we have come from a subjective picture, fascinates me really. This piqued my interest in animal behaviour”.
Jan then went on to say that the writings of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen (the fathers of Ethology; the study of animal behaviour) further inspired him to study animal behaviour. Especially the concept that behaviour is a function of the brain and is, therefore, a measurable concept. Further reading on Charles Darwin book ‘The expression of the emotions in man’ where Darwin wrote about primate expressions, which can be used to inform others of their intentions and feelings. Jan wanted to know more, so approached Niko Tinbergen in the 1960s, who referred him to Desmond Morris, the curator of mammals at London Zoo.
Jan explained that London Zoo was ideal due to the primates being housed in easily viewable cages. This allowed the observations of species-specific expressions. He further noted play behaviours which the primates seemingly enjoyed. In that respect, Jan admits he was different from the objective behaviourists of the time. Jan study progressed from the observation of primates’ expression, by comparing it to that of humans. He had a specific interest in human laughter, a behaviour specific to humans despite the cultural variations.
Jan wraps it up by talking about work at London Zoo, stating that primate behaviours can be treated as taxonomic characteristics which reflects a psychological process. Jan goes on to say that next time he will discuss his return to Burger’s Zoo to work with his brother to update the no longer acceptable animal enclosures.
Listen to the last episode with Jan van Hooff HERE
Learn more about Jan van Hooff HERE
Read about the history of echolocation HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Gregg Tully is the Executive Director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), the largest association of wildlife centres in Africa, with the aim of securing a future for the African primates and their habitats.
Gregg shares with us how he has always had a passion for nature and animals, he just did not know how to obtain a career in that field. Consequently, he went to university to study biology with a major in environmental studies. Soon he identified that he loved teaching older people and believed this way he could share his passion for animals. Gregg understood that this required a PhD, so he earned one in Evolutionary Biology from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2006.
Gregg, alongside his studies, volunteered at the Nepal Youth Foundation. Here, he developed his passion for working for non-profit organisations. Following his PhD, he became the Development Director of the Nepal Youth Foundation. He highlighted his skills in funding proposals and how they helped him to get this job. Missing the animal aspect, Gregg moved to California working in Marketing and Communications at the Marin Humane Society. Here he learnt many skills that would help him in the future including animal shelter management, public communications, and graphic design.
Gregg then returned to Nepal in 2011 and worked as the Development and Communications Manager and acting Executive Director of the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre. Whilst here, he received the Marin Humane Society’s Humanitarian of the Year award for his commitment to animal protection worldwide.
Gregg then introduces us to PASA. He explained how it started as a collaboration between sanctuaries who wanted to share their primate knowledge to improve success and increase their voice internationally. He states that African primates’ main threats are habitat loss, international wildlife trade and the bushmeat crisis. He then goes onto elaborate that PASA’s sanctuaries does more than caring for primates. They form strong local connections to ensure the individual sanctuaries are culturally appropriate. This enables them to educate children on the animals, and the villagers on how to feed their families in a sustainable way.
Gregg also shares PASA’s commitment to member capacity building. This includes training in veterinary care, community, education, fundraising and primate care and welfare. These workshops are decided by the sanctuaries themselves. In doing so, PASA increases their reputation among other conservation organisations. This is crucial as PASA can now influence policy changes within the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species (CITES) to better control trafficking of primates internationally.
Gregg stresses that the primate reintroduction process in Africa is complicated. There are limited ideal habitats remaining, with most already containing wild populations of territorial primates or has high cases of poaching. Additionally, the whole process is lengthy and expensive. It requires planning, long distance travelling, hiring staff, gradual release, and post-release monitoring. Each primate is assessed to determine individual release suitability in relation to their background and behaviours.
Gregg concludes by stressing the importance of connections. He tells a story of when a group of 25 monkeys got ceased from traffickers at Zimbabwe’s borders. PASA has no sanctuaries there, however, through connections they found JACK, a chimpanzee sanctuary. PASA helped JACK to fundraise to make suitable enclosures with the overall aim being their reintroduction.
Learn about PASA HERE and JACK Sanctuary HERE
Learn about CITES HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
When Jill Robinson moved to Hong Kong in 1985, she soon joined the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Her responsibilities for the position back then included many investigative work in live animal markets and animal protection programmes throughout Asia.
There was a time that Jill had the opportunity to visit a bear bile farm and it inspired her to found Animals Asia Foundation with the mission of further improving animal welfare and providing sanctuary for bears rescued from the bear bile industry.
Jill shares some of the practical work of the Animals Asia Foundation, including the collaborations with both local communities and governments. She also explains how and why some of the work is done differently in different countries.
Jill said, “We are all connected. We all have our individual personalities and characters” and she strongly believes that every individual, animal or human, is worthy of respect. One of her philosophies is to work from the ground up and with local officials and communities to bring positive and long-lasting changes for animals. Jill introduced her Dr. Dog and Professor Paws programmes to the audience. While the former focuses on animal therapy, the latter has dogs accompany children with learning disabilities in educational facilities.
Jill continues highlighting the main goals of improving cat and dog welfare and to end cat and dog consumption in China. Jill shares details of the work regarding wild animal welfare, including freeing elephants in the tourism industry.
Jill concludes the podcast with the incredible story of how Animals Asia Foundation spent 8 years of efforts in bringing 101 bears out of a bear farm and to one of their sanctuaries. She invites everyone to join Animals Asia Foundation in helping them build their second sanctuary for bears and further end bear bile industries in Vietnam.
Together we can rescue the last caged bears in Vietnam HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Award-winning animal welfare attorney and author James Gesualdi, works on animal law since 1989. He is the founding Member and former Chair of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Animals and the Law; Founding Co-Chair of the Suffolk County Bar Association Animal Law Committee; and Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section Animal Law Committee.
James has a B.A., magna cum laude, with highest honours in Government by the St. Lawrence University; a M.A., in Political Science by the State University of New York at Stony Brook; and a J.D. with Distinction by the Hofstra University School of Law. He was also a recipient of both the Animals and the Law’s Exemplary Service Award in 2018 and Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law Award in 2019.
James shares his encounter with a well-known performing dolphin, Little Bit, and how this inspired him into serving people and animals through the power of law. He highlights the importance of not only responding to crises in the zoological world, but also finding means to prevent them from re-occurring in the future,“It’s about acting today, not the future” he says. James has written many featured columns on a variety of platforms.
James and Sabrina highlight that collaboration can be vital in creating effective change for animals, caregivers, and the public, as well as understand the importance of reviewing legislation and viewing law as a foundation to build upon when caring for animals.
James also provides key advice for getting into the animal industry through volunteering and collaborative work, whilst covering experiences he has had of this and how this has helped shaped his career. How we can always do better for animals and going the extra mile is covered in his influential book “Excellence beyond compliance” which is coming out in an updated version in the future.
Other inspiring James’ quotes: “There’s no end to the sources of inspiration we can find and we can share with this world” and “What can we do today to advance animal interests, protection and wellbeing?”
Read the American Bar Association Resolution HERE
Read the American Bar Association International law section tort trial and insurance practice section HERE
Read more about the American Bar Association Calls for the Negotiation of an International Animal Welfare Treaty HERE
Read more about the book “Excellence Beyond Compliance: Enhancing Animal Welfare Through the Constructive Use of the Animal Welfare Act” HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Clive Wynne is the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. He is also the Director of Research at Wolf Park in the USA and the author of many books, including his latest ‘Dog is Love’.
Clive is from Britain and he was inspired to study animals while he was studying in London. Later, he went to University of Edinburgh to study for a PhD and further studied animal behaviour and minds, psychology and cognition.
Afterwards, Clive had the opportunity to study the behaviour of marsupials in Australia. Then, he went to University of Florida, where he developed a keen interest in animal-human relationship, especially that of dogs and humans, and he then expanded this context to other canines.
When speaking of his past and current research interests, Clive starts by talking about the issues of animal shelters in the US, and in particular dogs. As the number of euthanasia cases in shelters have decreased in the past few years, dogs and other shelter animals now often live in unsuitable environments with limited resources. Hence, Clive dedicated himself to the research of helping shelter dogs find new homes. He finds it interesting that people who are planning to adopt a dog don’t necessarily know what kind of dog they want. In addition, he also discovered which behaviours that have the greatest impact on the chance of adoption.
Clive shares that there is a lack of knowledge of dogs that are not human pets and emphasised how the understanding of dog-dog social relationship, in for example feral dogs, can benefit the studies in human-dog relationship.
Continuing, Clive states that dogs have exceptional cognition and special ways to understand people, and gives an example of a project that proposed that dogs are the only species known to understand human pointing gestures. Although other past research showed that wolves do not seem to understand pointing gestures like dogs do, the results of Clive’s testing in the Wolf Park indicates differently. Clives states, “The processes of learning are amazingly similar across many different animals. You get different outcomes because different individuals have different experiences in life.”
Moreover, Clive explained how the bonds dogs and other canine species form with humans can definitely act as a kind of social enrichment. However, Clive believes that dogs and other canine species simply see us as social companions.
Clive mentions an example of differential reinforcement of alternative behaviours through the use of remote controlled feeding device to train dogs to reduce their barking while their humans are not at home.
At the end of the podcast, Clive shared some of his future goals. In terms of basic science, he wants to explore and find out more about how dogs view us, their experience with humans and even dog-dog social relationships. On the practical side, he wants to focus on a foster project that aims to not only provide shelter dogs with more opportunities to form social bonds with people but also build a community for both humans and dogs to learn more about each other.
Learn more about Clive Wynne' work HERE
Learn more about Wolf Park HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Dr Marek Špinka is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ethology and Companion Animal Science at the Czech University of Life Sciences and in the Department of Psychology at Charles University in Prague. Marek Špinka shares how he began his career studying animals. He wasn’t like many others who knew that they wanted to study animals at a young age. During his university years, he was inspired by his biology professor who always had thought-provoking questions for the class.
Marek then discusses how his original interests in ethics, philosophy, and human psychology still intersect with comparative psychology and animal ethics, which he teaches at university. He mentions that it is enriching to stop considering animals and humans as separate because we are all animals, just different. During his ethics course, he encourages students to think about their ethical judgements and to consider the other sides of arguments before making these judgements.
Marek moves on to discuss his experiences working for the Welfare Quality Network project with farm animals. He believes this project was a successful attempt to develop protocols to use to assess welfare levels in different farms across the EU. This is an important area of research because all farms are different, and this tool could assist in standardizing a quality level across all farms. The AWARE project was also an EU wide project that aimed at spreading the skills and experience that was developed to relatively new members of the project. With an increase in awareness, stakeholders are propelled to consider all sides, better the lives of animals, and have better dialogue with scientists.
Honing in on his specific research topics, Dr Marek Špinka goes into discussing emotions in pigs and how vocalizations can be linked to how pigs communicate their emotions. He also defines affective states vs moods and social dynamics. He then goes on to discuss animal agency which is a tool to do things for ourselves and to do better while going through life.
Towards the end of the podcast, Marek goes into his favourite research topic: animal play. He had the opportunity to study animal play during two trips which were funded through a Fulbright Scholarship in the USA. He is fascinated by not knowing what play is really for in the animal kingdom. He goes on to discuss reasons for why play behaviour developed in other animals and how it can help in perceiving the world during development.
Marek rounds out the podcast by sharing a personal story of when he was 11-years-old, residing in Czechoslovakia in 1968. He and his family fled to Italy and were unsure about being able to go back home. While he was stuck in a train station with other children, he remembers playing with an escalator. It was not a fun time, however, he always remembers how fun it was to play, bringing it back to how play can build resilience.
“Play is in fact very resilient and important.. and each single inch of space that we give to play, for the animals, helps a lot not only at this moment, but I think for their whole life.”
You can read more about Dr Marek Špinka’s work HERE
You can find more information about the Welfare Quality Network project HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Dr. James Karl Fischer operates the Zoological Lighting Institute (ZLI), a charity dedicated to supporting and advocating for photobiology research in wildlife conservation and animal care.
Dr. Fischer completed advanced degrees in physics and architecture at Wesleyan University and began his career as an architect, serving as a liaison to architects around the globe. He was inspired to found ZLI after a conversation with a zookeeper who wanted to study the effect of lighting on seahorse colouration, when he realised that there was a huge need to provide animal keepers with the necessary support and funding to conduct more comprehensive studies on light and animal behaviour and physiology.
James tells us about how light is central to various aspects of animal life, and how the ZLI supports research into topics including photobiology, sensory ecology and the impact of light on ecosystems. He discusses the way that light influences behaviour and ecology not only in the context of captive animal welfare and the animals we know, but also in the conservation of wildlife.
James goes on to tell us about the importance of light in welfare assessments and the Five Domains model of animal welfare: mental, nutrition, environment, health and behaviour. He explains the challenges of monitoring the mental domain in animal welfare assessments and how measuring light could help animal carers to understand unconscious states in animals. He also explains in detail how light regulates hormones and influences biological processes including digestion, and how light provides the opportunities for animals to make choices.
James explains how the ZLI supports research through fundraising initiatives and by providing the support for researchers to utilise the most appropriate metrics and equipment to conduct vital research into light. He explains how knowledge of light can be used practically in animal care; for example, by reducing exposure to artificial light in animals where this is known to be harmful, and by supplementing UV light to birds who need UV to properly see colouration on conspecifics.
James concludes the podcast by highlighting the importance of natural light and celebrating natural light as a method of reaching out and educating the public on science, physics and animal welfare. He also tells us how the arts can be used to engage and educate people about light, and how the short films produced by ZLI’s Film & Media department aim to raise awareness of this complex topic.
Learn more about the Zoological Lighting Institute HERE
Watch the short film “Fireflies” HERE
Learn more about the different types of work the ZLI carries out HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Craig Saffoe is the Curator of Large Carnivores at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park located in Washington DC. Overall, he has over 27 years working with animals within zoos.
Craig started his career thinking that the only career available in the animal industry, is to become a veterinarian. As such he went to get a degree in Animal Science with a pre-vet track at North Carolina State University. Whilst there he was inspired by a single professor to explore animal husbandry careers. She also helped him to get an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Zoo in 1994. From here, he got hired as an animal keeper and moved through the ranks becoming a curator. Throughout this process, Craig says he “cannot stress enough to the people with whom I work that the most fun part of this career field in my mind is that I feel like I have never stopped learning”.
Craig highlights that during his career he has noticed that the zoological and aquatic industry has minimum ethnic minority representation. He observed that black people are perceived as volunteers through an unconscious bias. He even noticed it in himself when observing others whilst at a conference, which mortified him. Craig said it was this moment that seeded the origins of the Association of Minority Zoo and Aquarium Professionals (AMZAP).
Craig goes on to say that although COVID-19 has caused a lot of devastation, it gave him time to develop AMZAP further as the zoo was closed down. It also allowed him to drum up more support among different zoo professionals including the deputy director of the Smithsonian National Zoo and the Secretary of the Smithsonian, which gave him confidence with his idea. From here, for Craig, ‘I’ became ‘we’. It allowed him to move the idea of AMZAP forward.
Craig divulges the importance of remembering that ‘We Weren’t the First’, by sharing the stories of those who paved the way for the racial and ethnic minorities within the zoological industry. He emphasises that they must have faced so much just getting into the field. They can act as inspirations, encouraging others to express their heritage and be comfortable in themselves to climb the career ladder. AMZAP aims to give advice and tools to help achieve this, in the form of resources and a professional mentor. These mentors are from accredited zoos, aquariums and sanctuaries, which are selected from AMZAPs professional memberships. He further reveals that you do not have to be working in an accredited establishment or be a minority to be an affiliate member. Additionally, AMZAP gains support from organisations by allowing their staff to participate, which in turn gives AMZAP traction.
Craig concludes by saying that it became apparent that AMZAP was working when he received an email from a retired black female animal keeper thanking him for establishing AMZAP, wishing that it was present when she was a keeper.
Learn more about the Association of Minority Zoo and Aquarium Professionals HERE
Learn more about “We Weren’t The First” HERE
Learn more about AnimalConcepts supporting AMZAP HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Luke Harding is the Blue Iguana Conservation Programme Manager at the National Trust for the Cayman Islands. He is a conservation biologist with over 14 years of experience in the conservation sector.
Luke shares with us how his family and early life experiences kindled his particular interest in the conservation breeding and captive management of amphibians and reptiles. Critically, he references his BTEC at Sparsholt College Hampshire as key in kindling his passion for animals. Furthermore, he participated in a two-week work experience at Chester Zoo which increased his passion for Herpetology.
Luke went on to get a degree in Zoology / Animal Biology at Nottingham Trent University, which he completed whilst working in the industry to gain more experience. In doing so, Luke has worked within some of the some of the largest zoos in the UK and gained extensive in situ field experience with flag ship species such as the Mountain Chicken Frog (Leptodactylus fallax) and Golden Mantella Frog (Mantella aurantiaca).
Luke highlights that in situ research shows “the more we think we know, the less we turn out we know”. This indicates the importance of evidence-based husbandry in captive environments, to promote a high standard of welfare for the animals. Similarly, for critically endangered species, ex situ research can inform in situ conservation strategies as most knowledge comes from animals in human care. Luke noted the Mountain Chicken Frog as a key example. As such, Luke and Sabrina discuss the importance of collaboration.
Luke introduces us to his current work managing the conservation of the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana (Cyclura lewisi). He highlights how the Blue Iguana can be used as a symbol of conservation optimism, as the species went from less than 25 to over 1000 in 19 years. He does however emphasise that breeding is not a quick fix, and the threats need to be addressed. This requires cooperation with the locals, here Luke introduces various educational efforts and activities people engage in, and why an appreciation for the native species is important.
Luke reveals the newly constructed Blue Iguana facility, and how evidence-based practice strongly influenced its design, and in turn how the ‘wild’ environment design has affected the enclosed Blue Iguana’s welfare across a 24/7 period. He also describes how the keeper’s workday addresses this 24/7 concept.
Luke also addresses how individual personalities can be used in Blue Iguana conservation strategies, such as to determine individual release suitability and mating compatibility.
Luke concludes by saying, find those moments that make it all worthwhile, as that will help maintain passion and enthusiasm when times are hard.
Learn about the Blue Iguana Conservation programme and how you can get involved HERE
Learn more about the Blue Iguana Garden scheme HERE
Learn more about the 24/7 approach HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Jon has almost 60 decades of experience, and completed over one hundred sixty planning and design projects for eighty-two zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, theme parks, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in thirteen nations on six continents.
Jon shares with us about how fighting elephants at Boston Zoo sparked his thesis idea which would be on Artificial Habitats for Captive Animals. After receiving his undergraduate degree and his master’s degree, it still took Jon 7 years before getting his first project. Jon’s first project was working with Jones & Jones in Seattle, between 1973 – 1983. Together they invented the landscape immersion design at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle with the idea being ‘back to nature’.
Jon went on to found CLR design in Philadelphia, from 1984 – 2004. CLR Design allowed the client to choose the subject of innovation while creating projects and designs. Jon highlights how they work FOR animals WITH people.
In 2004 Jon founded Jon Coe Design, and gives us in depth insights on the projects, including cutting-edge ideas for other firms to develop. A few of many other projects they have completed are Zoos Victoria, Sea World Gold Coast, Bali Safari & Marine Park, Singapore and Kabul Zoo in Afghanistan.
Jon tells us how combined Jones & Jones and CLR design have gained 13 American Zoo & Aquarium Exhibit Awards all while in the USA. Jon highlights a few projects he has completed such as at Louisville Zoo, Zoo Atlanta and how they use animal rotation and activity-based design to design the enclosures. This also includes Treetop Trails Philadelphia with overhead animal trail systems so they move across the zoo freely.
Jon explains the 5 C’s and how it branches from the UK’s 5 freedoms. He tells us that the C’s stand for the animal’s right to: Choice, Control, Complexity and Change to achieve Competence. Jon also shares with us how proper environmental enrichment is the toolbox for achieving behavioural, physical and intellectual competence for animals in human care.
Jon shares with us at the end about his poems and sketches that can be found on his website and how they all started and make him feel. Jon gives a quick insight into collaborative work with Sabrina Brando on the back of house areas in zoos, and a more in-depth webinar on the PAWS platform in June 2021.
Jon ends the podcast with leaving us a closing message and answering the question what the message is, and how in an ideal world how he would reinvent the enclosures in zoos.
View Jon Coe Design website HERE
Read all papers by Jon Coe HERE
View Jon’s Research Gate HERE
View all sketches and poems HERE
Watch the latest webinar between Jon and Sabrina HERE
Become a PAWS member HERE
Dr Francis Cabana is the Assistant Director of Zoology & Wildlife Nutritionist at Wildlife Reserve Singapore and holds an Adjunct Lecturer position at Temasek Polytechnic, and shares his experiences working in different zoo’s and how he found his love for studying wildlife nutrition.
Francis shares how his love for animals started at an incredibly young age, and how his “best mistake” in his life was not having high enough grades to attend vet school. He went on to get his degree in zoology before moving between different zoos and obtaining his MSc and PhD in the UK.
Francis was soon offered an internship in zoo nutrition at Paignton Zoo with his mentor Dr Amy Ploughman. Francis notes that this internship was amazing and that he got to use his knowledge and experiences from research in the wild. Eventually, he became involved with the zoological community and zoos associations.
Francis shares how important bi-weekly body condition scoring is and to weigh animals where possible. He dives deeper into the details of metabolism and on the different digestive systems for different species. As all animals and organisations are different, he stresses that how one size does not fit all.
Francis and Sabrina talk about how Francis became the first-ever wildlife nutritionist at Wildlife Reserve Singapore. Francis explains how he had to try and organise 16,000 different animal diets which did not exist before and the struggle of how hard it is to be a zoo nutritionist as this position is quite rare.
Francis gives us a sneak peek into his current research on Sifakas nutrition and tells us about his research on Red Panda’s and their multicoloured faeces.
Francis shares some of the challenges of providing the appropriate diet to animals in zoos, due to food availability, geographical areas, and whether, therefore, the importance of focusing on needed and key nutrients rather than specific items necessarily.
Francis concludes the podcast with an amazing story involving penguins.
Read more about the body condition score HERE
Read more on Dr Francis Cabanas work HERE
Read more about the Giant Panda microbiome HERE
Become a PAWS member HERE
Jan van Hooff was born in a zoo in 1936. He grew up in Burgers’ Zoo, founded and named after his grandfather Johan Burgers. His grandfather was a butcher and in the meat trade, and also an avid collector of pheasants. Jan shared how the zoo grew as other animals were added to the pheasant collection, like boars, deer and a rescued bear. He also shares some operational details and approaches to zoos in the Netherlands and other European cities in the early 19th century.
Jan shares how his grandfather would travel to Germany for his trade and how I came in contact with the work of Karl Hagenbeck in Hamburg, the winter quarters of the circus animals as displays without bars but using ditches and other barriers that allowed for containment as well as unobstructed viewing. He was fascinated by this design and in 1913 in Arnhem Burgers’ Zoo opened.
Jan shares how his father and mother met, and how his father was a big animal friend, and how he grows up with all the animals in the zoo, also caring for puppies hunting dogs.
On the 10th of May 1940 Jan shares his memories of the start of the WWII, at first the war was far away, and then how the war came closer and closer, starting one of the most difficult periods in the zoo and how they cared as best as possible for the animals until the war was over.
Jan shares how he started studying biology at the University of Biology. He wanted to study zoology and animal behaviour and inspired by Darwin’s books including facial expressions, emotions, and principles of antithesis. Jan shares how his connection with a drill shaped his career and study interests. He shares how he became interested in ethology and studying with Niko Tinbergen and what he will share in his next podcast.
Learn more about Jan van Hooff HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Listen to the podcast on your favourite player or head straight to Buzzsprout HERE
Dr Amy Plowman who is the head of conservation with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, is part of the European Nutrition Group, and was at the Paignton Zoo and Wild Planet Trust for over 2 decades.
Amy shares how she came to study animal nutrition and remarks on the importance of diets in promoting optimal welfare. She gives some practical examples of nutritional problems and how she started looking at sugars and carbohydrates in the animal’s diets.
Amy explains different types of nutrients and deepens the conservation by sharing about the diverse adaptations for digestion in different types of animals. She talks about the cultivated food grown for humans than in most zoos is given to the animals due to availability and otherwise high costs and challenges accessing certain foods year-round. Amy discusses diseases related to certain diets and some solutions.
Amy shares a variety of her research on nutrition, as well as the use of thermal cameras and conservation, sharing on also on the prevalence of obesity, stereotypic behaviours, and behavioural effects of types of diets.
Sabrina and Amy discuss the challenges of zoo nutrition and also pellets and other prepared diets. She mentions the improvements in behaviour thanks to changes in diets, and solutions to the problems found.
Amy talks about the importance of collaboration in the nutrition field between academics, vets, feed companies, and others, and concludes with a funny story of animals mating.
Learn more about Amy’s research HERE
Learn more about the Bumblebee Conservation Trust HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Suzy Deurinck is from the Netherlands and is the owner of the horse consultancy company Deurinck Paardengedrag & Welzijn (horse behaviour and welfare).
Suzy shares she is not as the typical horse lady. She tells us how she started being interested in horses, talks about her academic career and her MSc in Animal Science, wanting to help changing the odd training methods in horses.
Suzy introduces her thesis work in dog training and welfare, and how head and neck posture affecting horse welfare. She talks about her data collection and her research findings.
Suzy brings a nice story of a magical connection with Joy, a horse she care for very much, and gives some other examples of connection between animals and humans.
Suzy talks about her work running the consulting company, analyzing training videos, facial expressions, and other horse behaviours, trying to help and guide people in everyday situations and social skills, and the use of positive reinforcement. Suzy explains some misconceptions in horse training, caring and riding.
Sabrina and Suzy discuss horse welfare seminar they worked on together, including the adaptation of a related 24/7 horse welfare workshop, preferences in horses, and the importance of choice and control, and some practical examples such as a semi-autonomous stable design.
Suzy shares information about a training program she is developing for horse professionals and concludes the podcast with a nice story of her guinea pig, enjoying time together.
Read more about her consultancy company and contact Suzy HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Geoff Hosey is an Honorary professor at the University of Bolton in the UK. His experience of undertaking research and supervising students has mostly been in behavioural biology, animal welfare and primatology, and he is still involved in research on zoo animal welfare, particularly about human-animal relationships in the zoo.
Geoff shares how he started studying animals and animal welfare and explains what behavioural biology is. He suggests new students to starting an academic career to do research in this field and encourages zoos and other animal facilities to do more research in general.
Geoff shares aspects of his academic work, which he mostly conducted at Bolton University, teaching behavioural biology and supervising many different research projects on wild and captive animals across a variety of species. Geoff talks about his work comparing behaviours of wild lemurs in Madagascar and in captivity and he shares some nice primate stories.
He shares insights from the studies of the human-animal interaction conducted, the different effects of zoo visitors on animal behaviour, and the importance of good records to shed light on these interactions. Geoff discusses with Sabrina their shared research on marine mammals in captivity and his books Zoo Animals and Anthrozoology. To conclude, he shares a research story about racing cockroaches.
Download the BIAZA Research Handbook HERE
Find his book “Zoo Animals: Behaviour, Management and Welfare” HERE & “Anthrozoology: Human-Animal Interactions in Domesticated and Wild Animals” HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Sarah van Herpt is a senior bear team manager at Animals Asia in Vietnam, and she shares the work Animals Asia is doing and how they are working to improve the welfare of animals in captivity. In addition, they are working towards ending the dog-meat trade and ending bear farming.
Sarah shares with us the daily routine of observation, feeding, and enrichment with the bears at the sanctuary. She explains all about the dens and bear houses in the facilities, the choice the bears have, and open access for the animals.
Sarah talks about different behaviours at night, sleeping habits, secret friendships, and the different personalities the bears have and helps us understand what a happy bear looks like and how they mimic the faces of others when playing. She explains the different types of friendships found in the groups.
Sarah provides some background on sun bears and moon bears, differences in biology, and care in captivity. She speaks about the interaction between them, the introduction to the groups, and the process of healing. Sarah concludes the podcast with some beautiful bear enrichment stories.
Learn more about Animals Asia HERE or on Facebook
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Dr Steve Unwin, Lecturer in Biosystems and Environmental Change at the University of Birmingham School of Biosciences in the UK, is a European specialist in Zoo Health Management.
Steve starts introducing how he became into the field of veterinary science and conservation, his work in zoos and other facilities and his time as a veterinary officer and clinical manager at Chester Zoo. Steve thinks that conservation is not about animals, is but about people, and he highlights the importance of storytelling for conservation purposes.
Steve shares his involvement with the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance veterinary programme, through which he also worked together with Sabrina. Steve is not only working with African primates but also with orangutans through the Orangutan Veterinary Advisory Group. He remarks on the importance of capacity building of local primate and wildlife veterinarians, scientists and conservation managers.
Steve explains the differences between the One Health and the One Welfare approach and how it is key to work as an extensive network together. Sabrina and Steve discuss about the need for collaboration between veterinarians and other animal welfare or behaviour experts to get the best for the animals, and their interest in human wellbeing, the wellbeing of people caring for animals and its interconnectedness.
Steve finishes with a story about animals being released back into the wild and one of his first surgery where he learned an important and lifelong message.
Learn more about PASA HERE
Learn more about OVAG HERE
Learn more about One Health and One Welfare HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Gordon Burghardt is an Alumni Distinguished Service Professor in the Psychology, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology departments at the University of Tennessee in the USA, with more than 50 years of experience in the field.
Gordon gives a short overview of his work and research interests, having worked with all kinds of animals and collaborated with people all around the world. He talks about his last research project studying behaviour in black bears' dens and cubs.
Gordon shares some stories of the learning repertoire of reptiles, individuality and personality differences in reptiles, and the behaviour of snakes right at birth. He also shares other work in social behaviour and learning with spiders, fish, turtles, and stingrays.
Sabrina and Gordon talk about critical anthropomorphism, a place for emotions in behaviour system research, and comparative psychology using animal models to understand humans.
Gordon expresses his opinion on the ethical treatment of animals and the controlled deprivation of animals in captivity, sharing some examples of practical work.
Sabrina and Gordon exchange ideas of environmental enrichment, and cognitive complexity in reptiles and amphibians.
To finish, Gordon talks about his passion and research of play in non-mammals, what is it, the origins of studying play, the criteria to identify playing behaviours, and these studies applied in zoos.
Learn more about Gordon’s research HERE
Read his paper on Behaviour in American Black Bear Dens HERE
Read his full paper on Play in fishes, frogs and reptiles HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
John Webster is Professor Emeritus and former Head of the Veterinary School at Bristol University. He studied veterinary science as he wanted to help animals. He is also a founding member of the Farm Animal Welfare Council and first propounded the ‘Five Freedoms’ as a standard for defining the elements of good welfare in domestic animals.
John highlights the importance of animal welfare science for veterinarians and talks about the insights of the animals. He discusses how "sentient animals do not live only in the present” and how having emotions matters in addition to understanding the duty we have of looking at animals' minds.
Sabrina and John discuss the constant endeavor to act according to what is right, not simply that which is regulated, and what we perceive to be the right decision for the animals.
John explains to us the ethics and politics of animal welfare, and our moral duty to minimize any distress that comes from our actions while giving them a life worth living.
John dives into the topics of his books ‘Animal Welfare: A Cool Eye Towards Eden’, ‘Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden’, and his forthcoming book on animal sentience seen through a Buddhism lens.
John talks about the meat and dairy crisis, the unsustainability of it, its impacts, and the need for reducing consumption. Sabrina shares the importance of applying this to zoos and aquariums for animal welfare and from an environmental sustainability perspective.
John discusses the Cordelia Principle, a rat is a rat, and concludes with a story of Griselda, a neighbourhood chicken who came to visit.
Find John’s books HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Daniel Mills is a professor at the University of Lincoln in the UK. He currently consults at the University Animal Behaviour Clinic. In 2020 he was recognized by Stanford University as part of the top 2% of all scientists globally.
Daniel dives into his research world of problem behaviour, and his studies to understand individual differences in animals that reflect emotions. He remarks that animals are often not using human mechanisms to solve problems, rather they do it their own way and we have to understand that in order to assess animals’ emotions more systematically.
He tells the story of how he started in the field of animal behaviour and talks about his career as a veterinarian while being involved in different research with dogs and horses. His greatest piece of advice to get there is to ask questions, explore and be curious. Daniel and Sabrina discuss what it means to be scientific or have a scientific attitude. He also shares how information can come from lots of different sources, including Victorian books!
Daniel shares his findings during his Ph.D. with repetitive behaviours in horses and some other interesting studies on the left gaze bias in domestic dogs. For Daniel, the key to understanding animals is observation and careful reflection.
Daniel talks about welfare, wellbeing and behaviour in dogs and ways of making choice and control meaningful for the animals. He shares some of his latest findings in human-animal relationships and interactions during the COVID-19 lockdown phase in the UK and finishes with a childhood story.
Find out more about Daniel and his research HERE
Learn more about the Animal Behaviour Clinic HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Dr Mendl is a professor of animal behaviour and welfare at the Bristol Veterinary School, University of Bristol. His research focuses on cognition, emotion, development, individuality and social behaviour in domestic animals.
Mike starts by introducing his background and giving some alternative options to start in the research field of animal behaviour and welfare aside from doing a PhD, postdoc, or fellowship. He then dives into the background of how he is working together with his collaborators studying emotions, welfare and cognition in animals. He presents the methods used to understand what animals are experiencing, and cognitive bias as an indicator of animal emotion and welfare.
Mike talks about his multiple research studies with different species of domestic animals, rats, and even bees, and the challenges of knowing whether emotion and affective states are consciously experienced in other species. Mike shares his results of a study of lateralized behaviour as an indicator of affective states in dairy cows, with the animals in a negative state predicted to be more likely to process novel or unexpected information using the right hemisphere of their brain. This leads Sabrina and Mike to discuss the concept of novelty and environmental enrichment, training with enrichment devices, rewards, and how this might also affect the right hemisphere activity in the brain.
Mike shares his work studying 'trap and release' effects on the small pig-like animal, the peccary, which is considered a pest animal in Brazil. Using a cognitive bias approach, the aim of this work was to understand the welfare implications and potential negative effects caused by trapping and release on the animals.
Finally, Mikes discusses his work in understanding how animals live in the present, how their memories may work and how they may plan for the future. He shares how knowing more about this “mental time travel” in animals can have a lot of beneficial captive management implications.
Find out more about studying Animal Welfare and Behaviour at the University of Bristol
Read the The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Gerry Creighton did not want to be anywhere else than at the zoo, working with and caring for animals, rising through the ranks to Zoo Operations Manager for animals and grounds in 2009. He worked at the Dublin Zoo, also together with his dad, for over 36 years.
Gerry shares how he worked as a trainee keeper, before becoming a full-time zookeeper and Team Leader responsible for large apes, carnivores and elephants for nearly ten years before becoming Zoo Operations Manager for animals and grounds in 2009.
Gerry shares details of the gorilla and mangabey habitat, will giant trees and natural vegetation, allowing the animals to browse as the seasons unfold. About the importance of natural substrates and activities that animals can engage in.
Gerry’s career has spanned several decades of exciting development, during which time Dublin Zoo has transformed from its Victorian beginnings in 1831 into a modern, vital and progressive European centre for conservation, education and animal husbandry.
Today the elephant facility is state of the art, and Gerry mentions that he is happy that is already outdated too, as there is always room for improvement, it is an ever-evolving process. He shares how many of the care efforts have and are tweaked through scientific input, how habitat features are adapted, food distributed, and more, depending on the animals' needs and preferences.
Gerry talks about a wide variety of topics related to elephant care, how to deal with different social structures, how to move to different management styles, and the importance to acknowledge role models and elephants learning from elephants.
Today Gerry operates through his own consulting company Global Elephant Care, a frequently invited speaker and holds an advisory role acting as elephant care and welfare consultant for many international zoos within Europe, Asia and North America.
Contact Gerry Creighton at Global Elephant Care gerry@globalelephantcare.com and on Facebook HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Ron Kagan is the Chief Executive Officer of the Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) in the USA.
Ron starts talking about his start in the zoo field and how he ended up in his current position and suggests for people starting out in the field to seek both academic studies and practical experience.
Ron shares with us a little about his first studies on pheromones in animal communication and thermoregulation in mammals.
He discusses the program he helped create at Michigan State University for people who want to go into the profession. It was the first Bachelor of Science degree offered in Applied Zoo Science anywhere.
Ron dives into the DZS’s Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics. Here, the current body of knowledge on animal welfare and ethics is freely accessible on-line for all zoo professionals. The center also engages in non-invasive research, convenes symposiums of experts, holds welfare workshops and recognizes advances in animal welfare and ethics through awards.
Sabrina and Ron discuss the differences between animal care and animal welfare and the importance of “giving” choice and control back to captive animals.
Ron tells us about the responsibility a zoo has to help and rescue animals from bad conditions. He shares one of the dozens of success stories on how they became a sanctuary, rescuing hundreds of exotic animals (like a polar bear from a circus and lions from a junkyard).
Ron remarks on the important role of zoos, making sure that they are sanctuaries, and that zoo animals can thrive. This is also shared in his contribution to the book ‘Increasing Legal Rights for Zoo Animals: Justice on the Ark’. He tells us his perspective of the management of “surplus” animals, and some of the other challenges of zoo animal welfare.
To finish, Ron looks ahead predicting a positive future for zoos and aquariums in the coming years.
Read his paper on “A Universal Animal Welfare Framework for Zoos” HERE
Learn more about the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics HERE
Read more about his contribution to the book “Increasing Legal Rights for Zoo Animals: Justice on the Ark” HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Joanne Thomas is the Animal Care Manager at Wellington Zoo Trust (WZT) in New Zealand. Joanne shares her background, and big passion and love that is animal welfare.
She started volunteering in a wide variety of places around the world to gain experience, working with a wide variety of species for over 30 years.
For Joanne, the key is always being open and prepared to learn, and how animals are our teachers too.
Joanne talks about all her experience from agriculture and farming, to sanctuaries and zoos around the world. Despite all the challenging aspects of working in sanctuaries, she highlights that sometimes having a hard job, is a rewarding job.
Joanne shares how she ended up in the position of Animal Care Manager, and how much she loves the WZT values, with their passion and commitment to always ‘Punch above your weight every day. She dives into the philosophy of animal care and welfare at WZT, including looking after everything and everyone in the environment, so animals and people can flourish.
Joanne highlights the importance of strategic and operational plans for animal welfare programs. She explains how they have used the Five Domains model, from day-to-day care to long-term plans and in strategic and operational planning.
She shares different examples of the ‘Happy animals' interpretation activities they have around the zoo for the community and visitors, how to engage them with the animals, and how they share the Five Domains model with the visitors.
Joanne also talks about the conservation projects in collaboration with the Department of Conservation in New Zealand, such as with threatened species including the Wellington green gecko.
To conclude Joanne tells a success story of a tiger and the transformation of his welfare at the WZT. Sabrina and Joanne discuss the importance of the stories of the animals as teachers guiding care, the resilience and flexibility of the animals, and the importance of being prepared to change, learn and never give up on the animals.
Learn more about the conservation projects at Wellington Zoo Trust HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Dr. Monica Battini is a Research Fellow at the Department of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences in Milan, Italy, where she also received her PhD in animal welfare.
Monica shares experiences about her previous work researching welfare quality and welfare assessment protocols for different farming species, animal emotions, and communication among others. She dives into two European projects: Welfare Quality® (WQ) and Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN).
In WQ, protocols for cattle, pigs and poultry (broiler and hens) were developed and I collected data for the development of the protocol for dairy cows. In AWIN, protocols were developed for small ruminants, equids and turkeys and she co-authored the protocol for goats.
Her advice to become an animal welfare scientist is to be curious, strong, and keep to achieving goals during the journey.
Monica talks about the importance of considering good welfare for farm animals, looking at positive indicators and the Five Domains model. She highlights the moral duty we have as humans to raise animals in a good way. Monica explains in depth what animal welfare indicators are, how to classify them, and how to use them for assessment with farm animals.
Sabrina and Monica discuss how the lack of negative welfare conditions does not necessarily mean that animals are in good welfare and have a good quality of life. She talks about a life worth living for animals, the challenges involved, choice and control, and possibilities of mitigating negative effects with positive opportunities.
Monica shares how the research team used the Five Domains model in their research with different species and explains many examples of promising indicators, including how to identify them for positive welfare states. Monica gives some examples of adult and juvenile goats and different indicators.
To conclude, she remarks on the importance of creating a good relationship with the farmers, to collaborate, to learn from their knowledge, work on improvements, and building bridging science into practice.
Find more about Monica HERE
Learn more about the European AWIN project HERE
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Dr. Rebecca Ledger is an animal behaviour and animal welfare scientist from Vancouver. Part of her work focuses on using behavioural assessments to assess animal welfare, and she has worked in the management of shelter dogs. She is regularly retained by humane societies, pet owners, and the Crown and Defence counsel across Canada to provide expert opinion in legal cases involving animal cruelty and animal behaviour.
Rebecca shares with us her rich background of experiences, her different jobs for universities, her consulting company, and the many years as a columnist, bringing animal welfare science to the general public. She enjoys teaching the most and talking to laymen scientific audiences about animal science. Rebecca talks about her studies and research mostly in companion animals, primarily dogs, with some cases revolving around cats.
Rebecca introduces us to her work as an animal expert in court, how she started, and some cases involving animal suffering. She states that suffering can be demonstrated in court animals can suffer even without physical evidence, and she proves that with her work and through the use of the Five Domains model. She shares how she started using the Five Domains model in court, and how she applied it to many different species for assessing suffering in cases of animal cruelty.
Rebecca explains the value and importance of the Five Domains Model and how it allows us to assess animal welfare in a comprehensive way.
Sabrina and Rebecca discuss how she deals with the sentient argument and the negation of anthropomorphic speculation.
Rebecca concludes with a success story of justice, of Oscar, a cat case suffering from breathlessness and the positive outcome for him, and hopefully for many other cats in the future through the precedence it set.
Learn more about Rebecca HERE
Read the full paper of Forensic Use of the Five Domains Model for Assessing Suffering in Cases of Animal Cruelty
Become a member of PAWS HERE
Nicolas de Graaff has worked in the zoo industry for over 20 years and now he is the Accreditation Manager with the Zoo and Aquarium Association in Australia.
In this episode, Nicolas shares how he got started in the zoo field and how he came to the ZAA position, by being always flexible, open-minded, and working with his passion, joy, and commitment.
Nicolas brings to mind two rewarding and achieving histories about primates and recalls how all the experiences are a good way to learn from each other and together improve.
Nicolas introduces us to the implementation of animal welfare and legislation in Australia and New Zealand. He talks about his work facilitating the development and implementation of the ZAA Accreditation Program, which is primarily focused on the promotion of ‘positive’ welfare and based on the Five Domains Model.
Nicolas presents the ZAA Accreditation program talking about the animal welfare assessments applying the Five Domains Model, details of the assessment, approach, and focus, and how ZAA supports their members through workshops, training, etc.
Sabrina and Nicolas discuss the importance of asking questions, working in collaboration with others, and being supportive.
Nicolas concludes the podcast with two successful and important stories that were possible just asking questions and highlighting that we should not only focus on what the standard of the environment should be but mainly focus on the experience the animal is having.
Learn more about Nicolas Graaff role in ZAA HERE
Learn more about the Animal Welfare work done in ZAA HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
Today's podcast is a combination of different animal welfare scientists from around the world, giving their perspectives, insights, and visions on animal welfare assessments. This podcast will feature:
- Dr. Elizabeth Herrelko, Animal Welfare and Research Manager at Smithsonian's National Zoo
- Dr. Katherine Cronin, Senior Animal Welfare Scientist at Lincoln Park Zoo
- Daren Minier, Assistant Director, Animal Care, Conservation, and Research at Conservation Society of California - Oakland Zoo
- Dr. Eduardo Fernandez, Senior Lecturer of Animal Behaviour, Welfare, and Ethics, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, the University of Adelaide
- Dr. Samantha Ward, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science at Nottingham Trent University
- Dr. Jason Watters, Executive Vice President of Wellness and Animal Behavior at San Francisco Zoological Society
- Dr. Stephanie Allard, Vice President, Animal Care and Welfare at National Aquarium
- Sabrina Brando, Director of AnimalConcepts & PAWS
This is the first of many more multi-speaker podcasts to come, featuring experts & practitioners in animal care and welfare.
Be at your best to achieve excellence in animal care and welfare. The first online platform combining human and animal wellbeing science and practice. Get the education and tools you need so you and your animals can flourish. Become a member today!
Professor Hannah-Buchanan-Smith is the head of the Behaviour and Evolution Research Group, and Director of Human Animal Interaction Research Group in Psychology, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK.
Hannah introduces us to her work, the importance of understanding how animals have evolved, their capacities, and adaptations. She emphasizes that it is key to learn about how animals live in the wild to provide good captive conditions. She shares highlights from her research career such as why animals live in mixed-species groups, research on comparative colour vision, and animal welfare studies.
Hannah describes some early life experiences and encourages you to persevere in reaching your goals and not to give up. She tells us what she finds rewarding and keeps her motivated in her job.
Hannah and Sabrina discuss the important distinction between care and welfare. Hannah talks about continuous animal welfare assessments, and she presents in detail different approaches. For her, the key aspects of good animal welfare assessments are validity, reliability, and feasibility. She also describes some challenges faced in designing and implementing animal welfare assessments with a variety of species, and in different contexts.
Hannah shares different research topics she works on, such as the use of the facial expression to assess welfare in mammals, personality in animals, the challenges and benefits of mixed-species living exhibitions, predictability, and the psychology of control.
To conclude, both Hannah and Sabrina remark on the importance of collaboration in science and practice.
Learn more about Hannah’s work HERE
Learn more about the Behaviour and Evolution Research Group HERE
Learn more about the Master's degree in Human Animal Interactions at the University of Stirling, Scotland HERE
Find out more on the Marmoset Care Website HERE
Find out more on Paws for Progress - the dog rehabilitation program - improving the lives of people and animals HERE
Read her paper with Sabrina Brando on Animal Welfare 24/7 HERE
Read her paper with Bassett on “Effects of predictability on the welfare of captive animals” HERE
Become a member of PAWS now HERE
In this episode Amanda Embury, whose career has spanned over 40 years in the fields of animal welfare and species management, shares insights on ongoing animal welfare assessments, teamwork and continuous improvements.
Amanda shares how she started her work in zoos, her study comparing behaviour of wild and zoo gibbons, and ongoing interest in enrichment and behaviour of zoo animals. She gives insights of her work in her current role as Senior Manager Animal Welfare and Life Sciences which leads the team that provides strategic directions for animal welfare, species planning, animal behaviour, training and enrichment.
This includes developing policies and key strategic documents such as frameworks for animal welfare and species planning, and tools to help assess practices including an Animal Welfare Survey and Species Assessment Tool.
Amanda shares snippets of the ongoing process of developing and maintaining an animal care and welfare program, founded on a code specifying criteria for decision-making, and the importance of continues improvements, doing the research, and continuing to ask questions.
She highlights the many ways Zoos Victoria supports and encourages teamwork and bring all stakeholders together for animals.
Throughout the podcast Amanda shares different projects and animal stories, from birds and gibbons, to looking at risks, and a focus on opportunities for promoting predominantly positive animal welfare.
Learn more about Zoos Victoria HERE.
Learn more about published work via:
- 2015 – Animal Welfare at Zoos Victoria – written 6 years ago, provides a historic perspective to Zoos Victoria’s approach, significant advances have occurred since then, see pp85-91
- 2018 – Animal Welfare Risk Assessment for Zoos
- Zoos Victoria’s Code of Animal Welfare and Ethics
- Recent Zoos Victoria Research publications, see https://www.zoo.org.au/fightingextinction/research-and-publications/publications/
- Zoo and Aquarium Association (Australasia) Welfare-based Accreditation Program
- Five Domains model, 2020 Version by Mellor et al
- Wildlife Wellness Master Class, for PAWS members enter promo code “LEAP15” on checkout for a 15% discount.
In this episode, Dr. Jason Wark, an Animal Welfare Scientist in Lincoln Park Zoo’s Animal Welfare Science Program shares details and stories of how he and a wider team, manages and develops the ZooMonitor app.
Jason talks about his career and how he started in the zoo world. Jason describes the history of ZooMonitor – which was the brainchild of Dr. Megan Ross (iBuzz podcast #22) and was developed by Lincoln Park Zoo. It has grown as a data collection tool for recording and analysing behaviour to infer the welfare of animals.
Jason details many features of ZooMonitor including who is it for, and how to use it. He also gives us different examples of research that have been done thanks to this software, which is also available on mobile devices. Jason highlights the flexibility of this app for behavioural recording and different taxa. He thinks ZooMonitor has grown so quickly due to the accessibility and the increased attention to evaluating welfare and specifically animal-based measures.
Jason remarks on the importance of an evidence-based approach and data collection and gives advice for institutions looking to start a behaviour monitoring program.
Jason shares some examples of successful projects with the use of ZooMonitor, how he would like it to evolve, and concludes with a positive animal story.
Get access to ZooMonitor and learn more HERE
Learn more about Lincoln Park Zoo’s Animal Welfare Science Program HERE
Read published research describing the ZooMonitor app HERE and HERE
Robert Young is a Professor at University of Salford, at the School of Science, Engineering and Environment, and also a Chair in Wildlife Conservation. He has hundreds of publications in Wildlife Conservation, Animal Welfare, Animal Behaviour, Zoos and Anthropogenic Impacts.
Throughout the podcast, Rob talks about decades of research with over 50 species, on different continents, covering a wide variety of topics, studying animals both in the wild and in captivity.
Rob started his research during his Ph.D. on foraging behaviour in pigs and enrichment activities. He shares amazing and detailed stories of his projects in Brazil, including preparing animals for reintroduction into the wild, first studies in referential communication, vision and behaviour in primates, and sound pollution, among others!
Rob discusses with Sabrina the importance of learning and studying animals in the wild and applying that knowledge to improve the care of animals in zoos and other facilities where animals are housed under human care. He remarks on the importance of being proactive and global collaborations.
Rob talks about different aspects of conducting research, wonderful discoveries done, and improvements made. He discusses the significance of care versus welfare, and inputs versus outputs in relation to animal welfare assessments. In addition, he shares examples of studies he has conducted in zoos, including the benefits of acoustic and video monitoring for animal welfare assessments. Rob also shares some of the challenges he faced, as research is not always easy.
Sabrina and Rob discuss mental wellbeing and animal welfare, and he gives some tips for people who want to do animal welfare research. Rob recommends taking advantage of technology and tools for research, such as using records and CCTV for information sourcing. Rob says, “It is easier to avoid a problem than is to solve the problem”.
Rob concludes the podcast with a nice story about improved animal wellbeing.
Read more about Professor Robert Young HERE
Find his book in Environmental enrichment for Captive animals HERE
Dr. Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is C.H. Candler Professor of primate behaviour in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory. Frans is the author of many books of which he discusses during this podcast.
Frans discusses the attribution of emotion and morality to animals, which is still a subject of debate among animal scientists. For many, empathy and emotion have been thought of as a distinctly human experience.
Frans compares feelings and emotions and shares with us different stories and experiences to illustrate emotional capacities in chimpanzees, bonobos, and other animals. He remarks that emotions can be found everywhere in the animal kingdom.
Frans and Sabrina share their thoughts on how scientists and academics should be interpreting their work for broader audiences and how we can get science into practical resources to make animals' lives better under human care.
Frans (together with Dr. Jennifer Pokorny) was awarded the 2013 Ig Nobel Prize in anatomy, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends!
Frans encourages new scientists to do innovative research into animal emotions that will help us better their emotional capacities.
With his decades of experience observing animals, how they behave and how they treat each other, Frans guarantees ample evidence that emotion exists everywhere in the animal kingdom, and that morality is not a uniquely human trait.
Find here the books he mentions in the podcast: Chimpanzee Politics (1982), Mama’s last hug (2019), and more.
Find more about the paper winner of the Ig Nobel prize HERE
Dr. Megan Ross is a visionary institutional director focused on all strategic, operational, and programmatic initiatives at Lincoln Park Zoo (LPZ). She is also the first female zoo director in the 150-year history of the zoo. Megan is an expert in zoo and aquarium ethics, a published scientist, and a committed environmentalist.
Megan talks about how she started in the zoo community many decades ago when she met Terry Maple. Throughout her time in the zoo, she has done research in several fields, and she discusses her studies with flamingos, as well as her research on ultra-violet light in birds when she was working as a bird curator.
Megan encourages people who are interested in a zoo career to say yes to (almost) all challenges, to try new things, and seek out advice from others respected in the field. Sabrina and Megan discuss the detail of honesty with yourself as a key point, and how it can help you achieve your goals, and enjoy what you are doing. Megan shares how this stance helped her find out what type of career she wanted.
Megan shares some of the extensive research programs LPZ has in-situ and ex-situ. About the behaviour and cognitive projects with great apes, projects involving protecting wild animals in the cities, and the conservation projects they have in different areas around the world. She remarks on the significant roles the zoos and aquariums have today, and the importance of local and global collaboration, in a respectful and integrated manner.
Megan describes the welfare program at the Lincoln Park Zoo through a holistic approach and she shares with us a practical example with goats, on how small changes can make huge impacts.
In conclusion, Megan shares success stories in animal care and welfare, and conservation science.
Read more about Dr. Megan Ross and her work HERE
Learn more about Lincoln Zoo Park and their conservation projects HERE
Terry Maple on animal welfare at the hand of science
Dr. Terry L. Maple is an animal behaviourist and wildlife conservationist known for his visionary leadership in revitalizing Zoo Atlanta as the director. Aside from being Professor Emeritus, he is the founder of the Center for Conservation & Behavior, and the Founding Editor of the journal Zoo Biology among many other things from his long career.
Terry shares with us how he transformed Zoo Atlanta in a build for change towards research and improvement for the welfare of the animals. He describes how he applied his knowledge in psychology for turning around and creating wellness-inspired habitats for animals.
Over the years, much of his work has been published in more than 12 books!
Dr. Maple has written much related to zoo biology, in addition to many other scientific publications. He dives deeper into some of his books and his experiences like “Great Apes and Humans: The Ethics of Coexistence”, “Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare and Wildlife Conservation” or “Beyond Animal Welfare: The Art and Science of Wellness”.
Terry discusses the evolution of welfare in zoos in the USA and how science contributed to these changes and legislation. He believes the key to animal welfare is science. As founding editor of Zoo Biology Journal, Terry mentions that in order for good science to continue, the best scientists have to be editors of these journals. He ultimately hopes a woman will soon lead the journal.
Lastly, Terry encourages young people to take a look in this field, as the zoo world is getting better and better.
Find out more about Terry and his work HERE
Read an interview with Terry HERE
Find all his books HERE
Listen to the podcast on your favourite player or head straight to Buzzsprout HERE.
Con Slobodchikoff is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Northern Arizona University, and co-founder and CEO of Zoolingua, a company that is using artificial intelligence technology to decode animal communication. Also known for writing the book “Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals”.
Con shares with us his story on how he became interested in animal languages invites and encourages us to keep an open mind in our theories to understand it.
He shares his studies on defence behaviours in beetles, and later on about his work on prairie dogs, finding these animals to have a rich social life, including demonstrating that also nonrelatives could form part of a social group.
Sabrina and Con discuss the differences between communication and language, and about his books, “Chasing Doctor Dolittle” and “Prairie dogs”, both based on language abilities and communication in animal societies.
Con refutes the idea that animals don’t have thoughts and cannot communicate, and he will explain his revolutionary view on the non-existent gap between other animals and ourselves. He also mentions the idea that language extends to a variety of senses, instead of being single-sensory.
He dives deeper into why studying animal languages is so difficult, and the importance sounds can have for animal caregivers in animal care and welfare programs. Con also points out how language studies can be carried out in zoos or aquariums.
To conclude Con shares a nice story that shows thinking ability in prairie dogs.
To find more about Prairie Dogs: America's Meerkats – Language CLICK HERE
To read his book Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) CLICK HERE
For more information about his company Zoolingua, CLICK HERE
Saskia Verbruggen is an experienced animal trainer from the Netherlands, with a long career training marine mammals as well as birds of prey. She founded her own consultancy company Animal Training Roundeurope.
When she started her career, she enjoyed learning to train pinnipeds through positive reinforcement. Saskia shares with us her personal stories of the sea lions she cared for, learning that animals should have a choice in participating or not in a training session.
Saskia talks about the importance of giving animals the option to choose, and using positive reinforcement training, a common way of training with marine mammals, with birds of prey, rewarding them when they cooperate.
She discusses with Sabrina the complexity and quality of the habitats of the zoo she works in, trying to make them as natural as possible. She describes with detail the aviaries, and remarks that a key part for the birds is having different types of habitats, thus promoting optimal welfare.
Saskia shares how they give choice to the birds who participate in the public presentations, they can opt-out if they want, and the educational messages they convey during these flight demonstrations.
Saskia shares some of the challenges of working in a diverse team and highlights how wonderful is to work with people from different backgrounds bringing different strengths to the table and together doing their best for the animals.
Saskia and Sabrina discuss why some facilities do not house or work with certain species when they feel they cannot promote optimal welfare for the animals, and the different ways weight management of the birds, and other animals can and should be approached.
To conclude Saskia shares a wonderful story of Amy, about relationships and bonds with the animals. “As soon as they get more freedom, they are just choosing to come to us. They want to cooperate and love to work with us".
Learn more about Landgoed Hoenderdaell
Learn more about Animal training Roundeurope
In this episode Mirian Vilela guides us through the importance of sustainable development. She is originally from Brazil, but now she works in Costa Rica as the Executive Director of the Earth Charter International Secretariat and Earth Charter Center on Education for Sustainable Development. She is also a professor in the University for Peace teaching in the areas of Sustainable Development, Environmental Governance, and Education for Sustainable Development.
Mirian discusses the Earth Charter document that articulates values and principles for a more sustainable, compassionate world, explaining the document’s vision that inspires a global movement for a better world and social justice with ecological integrity. “I fell in love with the work of the Earth Charter because of the possibility to meet people from all regions of the world,” Mirian comments, highlighting the truly inclusive nature of the movement.
She presents the Earth Charter Center on Education for Sustainable Development and shines a spotlight on, “the importance of education as a main driver for social transformation,” and the need to cultivate this thinking around global issues. She describes the courses for young leaders, educators and professionals to develop research in training between sustainability, values and education. Education is fundamental, and at its core we must have a base for contributing to the wellbeing of society.
Mirian also discusses the relevance of individual actions and how they truly do generate an impact. She believes that the more knowledge we have, the more of a sense of responsibility to care for others and for the common good we should have. Aditionally, she talks about the Earth Charter’s theme for this year "Turning consciousness into action” and comments on previous years.
Applying this Earth Charter vision to the natural world, she suggests to move away from the anthropocentric overview to a more ecocentric view. This vision can also be applied in animals, to see things in a more horizontal way, not in domination of other living beings. In conclusion, she inspires us with messages about transformative education and shares some practical examples.
Find out more about Mirian and the Earth Charter HERE.
We are delighted to welcome Mark Kingston Jones on this next episode of the iBuzz podcast! Mark is a co-founder of Team Building With Bite, which aims to increase cohesion and animal welfare by having teams come together to build enrichment devices. He is also the workshop Coordinator for The Shape of Enrichment, a non-profit dedicated to promoting environmental enrichment around the world. The organisation is based on two key founding principles: goal-based and holistic welfare programmes.
Having always wanted to work with animals, Mark originally planned to become a keeper, but a desire to pursue research sent him down the path of education. Throughout his time in the field, he has seen environmental enrichment shift from being thought of as simply toys and extras to being an integral part of animal welfare. By creating behavioural opportunities and giving animals some choice and control in deciding if and how they want to interact with a change in their environment (such as feeding devices, changes in physical habitat, sensory opportunities, etc.) we strive to cover all of an animals’ wants and needs in human care and provide them with holistic welfare.
Mark highlights that goal-based programmes are crucial to interpreting success. Defining what you hope to achieve with enrichment and setting general and/or specific goals will determine how you assess enrichment and the decisions you make in your programmes. There is no one-size-fits-all enrichment, so in all programmes there must be a focus on the animals themselves (both as individuals and, if applicable, as members of their group) to make informed decisions. Monitoring is key for all new programmes because animals are often surprising in how they respond to enrichment.
Mark also discusses the importance of caring for animals 24/7 across lifespan and tailoring environmental enrichment to support animals at all stages of their lives. Looking at safety, he stresses the need to make the best decision from the animals’ point of view and measure the risks against the benefits.
In conclusion, Mark shares some stories about enrichment, luck, and overcoming limitations, reminding us that limitations can appear in many forms, from institutional to in our own minds.
Read more about Team Building With Bite HERE!
Support them on Patreon HERE!
Read more about The Shape of Enrichment HERE!
In this episode, we are joined by Margo DeMello (PhD, Cultural Anthropology, UC Davis), Assistant Professor at Carroll College in the Anthrozoology Program. Margo has also been an adjunct professor in the Canisius College Anthrozoology program, she directed the Human-Animal Studies program at the Animals & Society Institute for 15 years, and she is the immediate past president of House Rabbit Society. She has published over a dozen books, most within the field of human-animal studies and body studies, and dozens of articles and book chapters.
To introduce us to her work and field, Margo explains the field of anthrozoology, the study of human-animal relationships, and what goes into pursuing a degree. She describes it as a lens through which we can look at other species in a way that challenges anthropocentrism and recognises that humans and animals have always been interlinked.
After working with the Animals & Society Institute for 15 years, Margo shares the main focuses of the organisation: exploring the question of violence in human-animal relationships, helping students and faculty to find and build the field, and using the field’s literature to shape policy about animals. Additionally, Margo tells us about another important organisation in her life, the House Rabbit Society, and how their work helped transform rabbits from a somewhat third class pet kept outside with limited medical care and companionship to being widely considered worthy of respect and compassion.
Margo has written many books on animals, and shares insights with us from several of her works. Her textbook, Animals & Society, was written to ensure the field was sustainable and had the resources it needed to succeed and grow. Why Animals Matter, written together with Erin E. Wiliams, is an overview of the issues facing animals and the main areas where humans and animals coexist, covering animals in entertainment, hunting and relationships with wildlife, meat consumption, and pets. Speaking for Animals questions who has the right to advocate for who, and what the implications are for everyone else.
Lastly, Margo tells us a bit about her book Mourning Animals that examines who gets to be mourned, how it is done with respect to cultural practices, and who doesn’t get to be mourned. in the animal care field death is unfortunately encountered regularly as the years go by and there isn’t always space for feelings of grief when we lose animals. Luckily, the field is shifting, and many beautiful rituals are emerging to help not only humans but the animals left behind to mourn their loved ones. Speaking to animal care professionals, Margo recommends reaching out to others when mourning an animal and having people to talk to who care about you and also care about animals so you can honestly express how you’re feeling.
For more info on Anthrozoology:
Society & Animals
Anthrozoös
Exeter’s PhD
Jorg Massen, assistant professor of animal ecology at Utrecht University and editorial board member at Animals, joins us in this next episode of the iBuzz podcast. Jorg talks in-depth about a topic we can all appreciate – friendships among animals.
He begins by sharing a bit about his background and PhD-work studying friendship in macaques, where he found that the concept of friendship between macaques is, in principle, actually the same as it is between humans in terms of how they maintain friendships and what fitness benefits (i.e. survival and reproduction) they gain from these relationships.
Jorg went on to study several different species, including chimpanzees, common marmosets, and a number of corvids. His findings suggest that some animals do make an active choice in their friendships and tend to befriend individuals with similar characteristics, likely because their behaviour is more predictable. Moreover, animals who have friends and more meaningful relationships tend to live longer, so there are tangible welfare implications for being in good company.
Additionally, Jorg discusses the field’s current methods for evaluating self-awareness, such as the mirror self-recognition test, and highlights the need for a far greater number of methods that take into consideration how various animals experience and perceive the world around them.
How can one conduct experimental research with animals without harm to welfare? Jorg always creates situations in which animals can choose to partake, but they never have to. Often, he finds these experiments are actually enriching for animals, as cognitive challenges are a crucial component of positive welfare that many animals are eager to explore.
Jorg concludes with how to apply this knowledge of animal friendships in welfare, highlighting the importance of ensuring social animals have large enough groups in which to explore relationships and choose their friends.
Learn more about Jorg on his website here!
We are delighted to be joined by Al Kordowski in this episode of the iBuzz podcast! Al is an animal behaviour and training practitioner who has trained with 125 different species over the course of his influential career. Though his work training animals has spanned from marine mammals to service dogs to hawks, his number one goal with every animal is the same: building a trusting relationship.
In our episode, Al begins by sharing with us the evolution of the animal training world from using adverse methods to using positive reinforcement and providing animals with as much choice and control as possible. When he started working as a professional animal trainer, methods for providing veterinary care were far less developed than they are today. Thanks to hard work, it is now commonplace to teach husbandry behaviour to animals, making care safer for both the animal and the animal care professional and further developing their relationship.
To make animal training the best experience for the animals, Al points out the need for a common language to avoid confusion between animals and trainers. Additionally, he highlights the need for creating a balance of types of sessions (play, learning, exercise, socialisation, relationship), as well as the need for each trainer to consider their own faults in the training process and to recognise when they need help to avoid frustrating both themselves and the animals.
Al dives into some personal anecdotes that highlight the importance of relationships with animals and shows how, through a small change in training, rather than being a “walking food station” he becomes a walking opportunity for something that is going to enrich the animals’ lives.
After decades of animal training work, Al still learns something new every single day. He says this attitude towards learning is essential not just to animal care professionals, but to animals as well. Trainers should not work with their animals to establish followers, but life-long learners. Al clarifies that though some skills can be mastered, a true master always wants to learn more.
In looking to the future, Al points out that it is vital to consider past information and to create a mix of both science and application. The future animal trainer is both a skilled training practitioner and behaviour analyst. He hopes that the animal care community will never lose focus on the importance of an effective training program for the success of an animal welfare program.
In this episode the father of animal welfare, Donald Broom, Emeritus Professor of Animal Welfare at Cambridge University, Department of Veterinary Medicine and St Catharine's College, takes us on a journey through the emergence of animal welfare as a scientific field and discusses its role in the world today.
Donald is a long-standing pillar of the animal welfare community, having been Chairman or Vice Chairman of EU Scientific Committees on Animal Welfare 1990 – 2012. His many contributions to the field include scientific assessment of animal welfare, cognitive abilities of animals, ethics of animal usage, the evolution of morality, and sustainable farming. He has published over 360 refereed papers and eleven books including:
"The Evolution of Morality and religion" (2003 CUP)
“Sentience and Animal Welfare” (2014 CABI)
"Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare, 5th edition" (2015 CABI)
“Tourism and Animal Welfare” (2018 CABI)
“Stress and Animal Welfare: Key Issues in the Biology of Humans and Other Animals”, 2nd edn (2019 Springer)
In our podcast today, Donald shares his experience in the field starting at a time when the scientific community viewed animal welfare as unmeasurable and the greater community viewed animals as machines. He walks us through his work at Cambridge where he raised funds to do scientific work on animal welfare and to develop it as a scientific subject area, and where he became the world’s first ever professor of animal welfare in 1986. Not only did he help to catalyse this scientific shift, but he also witnessed the shift of people starting to think of animals as individuals and not machines, as “we” is now coming to mean all of us sentient beings, not just “we humans”.
Donald shares with us some of the successes that have emerged from animal welfare science, and impresses the need to continue research in all aspects of welfare, particularly on learning studies to give animals more control of their lives. In the modern world, and especially in 2020 as we are confronted with COVID-19, Donald highlights the moral duty that “we the humans have to do something about we the sentient animals” to ensure welfare for all. Together, we can create a world where all we sentient beings are happy and healthy.
More info on Donald Broom is available HERE.
Jessica Dolce is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Educator via the Green Cross of Traumatology, receiving her training through The Figley Institute and Tend Academy. She brings seventeen years of experience working with and for companion animals to her online classes, workshops, and coaching.
Jessica is an adjunct faculty member at The Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida and has worked with organizations such as the ASPCA, Maine Medical Center, Maine Department of Agriculture, Southern Maine Community College, and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.
Jessica shares her personal stories of connecting with dogs and how she came to work in her education and communication company with
Jessica discusses the importance of focusing on healthy boundaries and letting go, and taking good care of oneself, and reaching out for support.
Jessica zooms in on the individual aspects of care and self-care, as well as the need of being heard and seen, and being validated of the experiences and the risks of the job. Jessica also discusses the aspects of providing support and resources.
Identifying and understanding on an institutional level, and to focus on risk and resilience assessments, and shifting to by identifying occupational hazards and mitigating these, to decrease risk, and increase resilience.
Jessica and Sabrina discuss similarities and differences between different animal care facilities and the need for psychological safety in the workplace.
Jessica is the founder of the Compassion in Balance Program which is a year-long, online resilience-building educational program created specifically for animal welfare organizations.
Find out more about Jessica and her company HERE
De eerste Nederlandse podcast is met Dr. Ineke van Herwijnen!
Ineke van Herwijnen behaalde haar Master Nutrition and Health aan Wageningen University (Nederland) met een specialisatie in gezondheidspreventie in 2001. Terwijl ze werkte als communicatiemanager bij een grote multinational, begon ze haar carrière in hondentraining en welzijn, wat leidde tot haar werkzaam bij de Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging voor Hondenbescherming.
Ineke is opgeleid tot hondentrainer, tester en therapeut en heeft ruime ervaring op het gebied van hondenbezit en welzijn.
Ineke neemt ons mee naar de aanleiding van haar promotieonderzoek onderwerp en welke onderzoeksvraag er centraal stond.
Opvoedstijlen en visies van dieren en waarom deze belangrijk zijn voor mensen die honden hebben maar ook instructeurs en gedragstherapeuten en specifiek hoe deze van toepassing zijn op de houder-hond relatie wordt besproken en toegelicht.
Ineke verteld natuurlijk weer een paar mooie hondenverhalen en deelt haar ideeën voor vervolgstappen voor onderzoek en educatieve mogelijkheden.
Meer informatie en contact opnemen met Ineke kan HIER
Jim Guenter is the CEO of Species360
Jim has led Species360 since 2015. Before joining our organization, he served in technology leadership roles for major US corporations including Target.com, Best Buy, and Accenture, in computer systems and sciences. Jim also served 5 years in the US Army.
Species360 is a non-profit organisation and works with over 1200 member institutions worldwide, including aquariums, zoos, wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centers, governments, universities and colleges, and others. The member community curates and shares husbandry, welfare, medical, and population data for animals in their care, using a software system called Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS).
A special module called Care and Welfare allows animal care professionals to record and communicate the welfare of animals in their care, watching the trends over time, being able to monitor different characteristics. From moving around the enclosure, how they interact with other animals and care staff, and more.
The Species360 team is comprised of animal care and aquatics professionals, software engineers, and member support and training representatives. Species360 also has a team of conservation scientists, called the Species360 Conservation Science Alliance, who work in partnership with the IUCN, CITES, and other organisations. This team, based in Denmark and including a network of universities and research organisations around the world, is focused on how to use global data for species conservation.
Jim shares success stories of the Species360 team and success stories of zoos and aquariums members, as well zoo associations, that have used for ZIMS for species conservation, and a newer development in collaboration with the IUCN Red List.
Carl Safina is an author and ecologist and founder of The Safina Center, fusing scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. Carl Safina's writing about the living world has won a MacArthur “genius” prize, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals.
Carl and talks about 'making a case for life on Earth', how people can help, what is at stake, and how we can make a difference for nature. Stories are what makes information stick, what the Safina Centre does is storytelling and story-making.
Carl talks about his books and the creative spirit of The Safina Center as an original blend of science, art, and literature in the form of books and articles, scientific research, photography, films, sound-art, and spoken words.
Carl shares stories about protecting seabirds, fisheries management, and about animals being able who they are supposed to be, including the animals we eat.
Carl says asking 'what is the meaning of life' is the wrong question, it is asking 'where is the meaning in life', which beautifully connects to animal experiences too.
Carl talks about being on a team, and to play, to take action. Everyone is 'just one person', what can you do, how can you make a difference and take action to affect change. Who do you want to be? What is it that you can do? Are you doing the right thing?
To Carl hope is the understanding that things can get better, and how things can get better. To be empowered, to feel empowered, and the power of hope. "Facts alone can't save the world. Hearts can. Hearts must. We're working to make sure that hearts do."
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Find out more about The Safina Center
Erika Fleury is an author and the Program Director of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (NAPSA), and an unofficial primatologist, and loves to talk about primates!
As Program Director Erika works on a lot of different topics, from legislation, addressing primates not being suitable as pets, grant writing, workshops, and the international animal community, from zoos to legislators, students, and members of the public.
Erika shares what makes a true sanctuary, the different animals who live and found a new home, from cows, tigers, to other primates, about the necessary protocols and procedures to maintain sustainable care and welfare of animals in NAPSA sanctuaries.
Erika highlights how some so-called 'sanctuaries' are not engaging in ethical practices such as breeding and selling primates to the public.
Erika talks about how important it is to explore and use your talents, and how this can benefit primates. It is also important to ask questions like: Do you want to move to a rural area, and are you willing to work hard. Check out the NAPSA volunteer and paid positions are available, to learn more about working with primates, and animal welfare and protection.
Erika is the author of the book: Monkey Business: A History Of Nonhuman Primate Rights examines the diverse issues involved with accepting mankind's closest relative into its ever-expanding circle of ethical consideration. Erika talks affectionately and inspirationally about the amazing women who established primate sanctuaries. Erika's second book is coming out soon!
Erika shares the story on Chimpanzees in Need, now appealing to the entire world to secure a sustained future 42 remaining chimpanzees.
Erika highlights the importance of continued collaboration and conversations, we get further by collaborating - focussing on the things that unite us. To make small incremental changes for primates and others now, which can also help us to unite and work together, even if we have different perspectives.
In conclusion, Erika shares a beautiful story on resilience and having faith in the universe.
Dr. David Shepherdson is a biologist with a long and distinguished career in zoo animal welfare and conservation. David was inspired by Tinbergen, Durrell, and Lorentz, and completed a Ph.D. in ethology, on the European badgers in England.
David got a job at the London Zoo in the late '80 with a renewed interest in animal welfare, ignited by the work and book by the late Hal Markowitz, 'behavioral enrichment at the zoo'. Working on zoo animal welfare, and specifically the psychological and behavioural needs.
David moved to the Oregon Zoo where he had a long career working with many different scientists, care staff, and students, conducting multi-institutional studies, covering topics such as environmental enrichment, stereotypic behaviour, and together with other experts, on the physiology and other measures for different animal welfare assessments. Including studies on space use of elephants, daily walking distances, environmental and social factors, and welfare indicators.
David interacted with the American Zoo Association and the larger zoo world, was part of the establishment of the AZA animal welfare committee, and affecting change for animals globally.
David also mentioned the importance of understanding the history of the topic of animal welfare, where concepts and thinking came from, including work by biologist Heini Hediger and Dr. Terry Maple, and how many ideas, thinking, and concepts that have already been written about, which can be revisited and used today.
David discusses how we have seen a massive paradigm shift in how we think of animal minds, as the idea of animal thinking and minds since the mid-'80s, how it has changed our ideas and treatment of animals.
Conservation work is key, including the work on local species, and species recovery activities, and David shares his work with frogs, turtles, California condor, and many other species, with many of these projects still ongoing. David highlights the necessary web of collaboration with all kinds of organisations and experts, and the unique position of zoos and aquariums reaching a wider audience through social media, education programs, and other educational activities, also known as social marketing. 'Grabbing people by their emotions, and changing their opinions, as the future of the world as we know it depends on it."
Finally, David also highlights the importance of good relationships between caregivers and animals, that care staff is central to questions of animal welfare, and their insights into animal welfare.
David shares a wonderful story about a Golden eagle and we discuss that maybe, maybe, there might be an updated version of Second Nature?
Learn more about the Oregon Zoo
Learn more about the book Second Nature, edited Shepherdson, Mellen, and Hutchins.
In this episode, Jen Feuerstein shares her long experience and knowledge of caring and working for our fellow animals in a wide variety of settings, from sanctuaries, research facilities, to zoos and shelters. Jen is currently the Director of Human Resources at the Humane Society Naples. Formerly Manager of Administration at Project Chimps (2016-2018) and Sanctuary Director at Save the Chimps (2003 – 2015).
Jen has spent a lot of time observing all kinds of primates and other species, looking at the details such as "Is their hair standing on end, what are they looking at?" and learning about their social life, their preferences, and listening to what trying to communicate. Besides her work in the USA, Jen has traveled to Europe and Africa to share through lectures, workshops, and seminars, and highlights the importance of learning from other people, having mentors, asking lots of questions, and hearing lots of different stories, strategies, and experiences.
Listen to this podcast to hear the beautiful stories Jen shares about non-verbal communication with other species, exchanging a screwdriver for an ...., to give other beings a chance by supporting them, and how you know there is a happy chimpanzee nearby!
Short bio:
Jen Feuerstein is a biologist with over 25 years’ experience in the behaviour, care, and socialization of captive non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees. A graduate of Kalamazoo College, Jen has worked with prosimians, monkeys, and great apes in the zoo, laboratory, and sanctuary settings, and was fortunate to be mentored for many years by the late Dr. Carole Noon, founder of Save the Chimps, Inc.
She co-founded the Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group (LPAG) and the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (NAPSA) and has donated her time as an educator for the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA). In recent years Jen has shifted to administrative roles within the animal protection community and currently serves as Director of Human Resources for Humane Society Naples, a shelter and service organization for companion animals.
Dr. Balcombe about the inner lives of fishes, cognition, and relationship with other animals!
Dr. Jonathan Balcombe describes himself as a synthesizer, someone who pulls together research and practical information to correct or expand our often underestimated views and treatments of animals, including the often invisible, unliked, and unpopular animals.
Jonathan shares his insights and stories about fishes cognition, being a machiavellian, play, human-fishes interaction, social dynamics, behaviour, recognition, memory, and emotions.
For more information on Dr. Jonathan Balcombe please visit his WEBSITE
Short bio: Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist with a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior. His books include Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows--a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages. His next book, all about flies, will be published November 2020 by Penguin Books. Jonathan does professional editing for aspiring and established authors, and he has taught a course in animal sentience for the Viridis Graduate Institute. He has given hundreds of public lectures and media appearances about his work. He lives in Belleville, Ontario where in his spare time he enjoys biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the neighborhood squirrels.
Today's episode is with Karen Fifield MNZM, the Chief Executive of Wellington Zoo in New Zealand, who shares the philosophy, experiences and insights of the zoo on animal welfare and care. About what leading zoos and aquariums are doing for animal welfare today.
The importance of social media to bring people with us to understand the work we are doing in zoos, as well as the importance of transparent messages, focusing on the visitor experience, and how we can work together with the staff and the public for animals and conservation.
Karen discussed the opportunities we have regarding animal welfare, as well as potential tensions with other goals such as conservation, education, research, and recreation, and animal welfare being the basis and being fundamental to all other programs. And the importance of continuous improvement, to do the research and ask 'Could we do this better?' To be thinking all the time, to do the best we can, to know that we have it right through continuous research, collaborations with experts university, and others to gain insights and have constructive and in-depth conversations. To work together and to have research and information to back up our animal care programs, including designing new habitats.
Karen shares her views on naming animals, their personality, starting from the basis of love, animal's personal stories, like Sunny the giraffe, how storytelling is key, and how together we can do something to make the planet a better place for animals.
Learn more about the Wellington Zoo, connect with the zoo on Facebook, Twitter, wonderful photos on Instagram, and videos on YouTube!
In this episode Heidi Quine, Bear & Vet Team Director Vietnam Animal Asia, talks about the work of Animals Asia, about bears, rescue, change, more bears, & hope!
How do you go about rescuing a bear, what happens on a farm and why? What is Animals Asia doing and how? Who are the bears at the sanctuaries, and how does the care staff work for them, managing over 200 bears!
Animals Asia's national and international heroes in the veterinary department and bear care specialists are working hand in hand with Government Partners to end the farming of bears in Vietnam.
Heidi shares a beautiful story of her favourite bear, Tuan, and how they rescued him from a farm, and to see him now in the sanctuary, it is everything that is right in the world, and his best friend Valerie.
Heidi also shares a beautiful story about James, and how she connected with him inspired by the work of the late Else Poulsen, asking "What are you trying to tell me bear? What do you need me to know?"
And then there are the cute sun bears! Let's not forget about Sassy and Layla, and their connection, about "how bears rescue us and each other"!
Happy people = Happy bears
With a heart full of hope Heidi shares the work of Animals, the groundswell of change coming, and action you can take!
Listen in and get a dose of Bearapy!
To find out more about the work from Animals Asia please visit:
Animals Asia Website
Animals Asia Facebook
Animals Asia Twitter
Animals Asia YouTube
In this episode, Dr. Heather Hill, Professor of Psychology, St. Mary's University, shares her research, experiences, pipe dreams, and stories about belugas, dolphins, and killer whales, including very exciting collaborative work on a stranded beluga calf.
Heather has done welfare-related research on topics such as play, baby animals, mother-calf behaviour and development, including developmental aspects. Heather's research interests also include cognition, problem-solving, communication systems, and group formations. To understand what are animals doing in the wild, and how can we give them the best experience in human care, also using the information from the wild to shape care programs.
Heather has worked with SeaWorld, and with many other facilities, on observational, cognition, and developmental studies among her many interests.
Heather shares stories and work of her friend, mentor, colleague, and inspiration, the late Dr. Stan Kuczaj.
This podcast was recorded on National Dolphin Day, 14 April 2020.
The first podcast of AnimalConcepts is a special podcast. It is dedicated to our friend and colleague, the late Graham Law. This podcast is a conversation between AnimalConcepts & PAWS Director Sabrina Brando and Mark Kingston Jones, Co-Founder of Team Building with Bite, remembering the work, travel, and downtime with the kind, witty, always up for a joke and drink, and to animals committed Scotsman, of which he was very proud.
Graham Law was Graham, and he was a husband, father, friend, and colleague. He was a visionary, an inspirator, joker, deep thinker, a poker & pusher to explore and be the best we can be, he was and is a legend.
Graham's thinking and ideas have brought so many changes in the animal care and welfare field, for bears, cats, birds, fishes, and others. Enrichment ideas such as the wobble tree, the pitfall feeder, the 'bear' basket, the swing pole feeder, and the feeding pole, are all among the many contributions he made.
Did you meet Graham, did he inspire you?
Do you use his ideas in animal care?
Share your experiences and memories with us in this tribute and celebration of his life.