Beaulieu Michaël
Wild Animal Initiative, 5123 W 98th St, 1204, Minneapolis, MN, 55437, USA.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2024 Feb;99(1):1-22. doi: 10.1111/brv.13009. Epub 2023 Aug 27.
Affective states, such as emotions, are presumably widespread across the animal kingdom because of the adaptive advantages they are supposed to confer. However, the study of the affective states of animals has thus far been largely restricted to enhancing the welfare of animals managed by humans in non-natural contexts. Given the diversity of wild animals and the variable conditions they can experience, extending studies on animal affective states to the natural conditions that most animals experience will allow us to broaden and deepen our general understanding of animal welfare. Yet, this same diversity makes examining animal welfare in the wild highly challenging. There is therefore a need for unifying theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that can guide researchers keen to engage in this promising research area. The aim of this article is to help advance this important research area by highlighting the central relationship between physiology and animal welfare and rectify its apparent oversight, as revealed by the current scientific literature on wild animals. Moreover, this article emphasises the advantages of including physiological markers to assess animal welfare in the wild (e.g. objectivity, comparability, condition range, temporality), as well as their concomitant limitations (e.g. only access to peripheral physiological markers with complex relationships with affective states). Best-practice recommendations (e.g. replication and multifactorial approaches) are also provided to allow physiological markers to be used most effectively and appropriately when assessing the welfare of animals in their natural habitat. This review seeks to provide the foundation for a new and distinct research area with a vast theoretical and applied potential: wild animal welfare physiology.
诸如情绪等情感状态可能在动物界广泛存在，因为它们被认为具有适应性优势。然而，迄今为止，对动物情感状态的研究主要局限于改善人类在非自然环境中管理的动物的福利。鉴于野生动物的多样性以及它们可能经历的各种不同条件，将动物情感状态的研究扩展到大多数动物所经历的自然条件下，将使我们能够拓宽和深化对动物福利的总体理解。然而，正是这种多样性使得在野外研究动物福利极具挑战性。因此，需要统一的理论框架和方法来指导热衷于这一有前景研究领域的研究人员。本文旨在通过强调生理学与动物福利之间的核心关系并纠正当前关于野生动物的科学文献所揭示的明显疏漏，来推动这一重要研究领域的发展。此外，本文强调了纳入生理指标以评估野生动物福利的优势（如客观性、可比性、适用条件范围、时效性），以及它们相应的局限性（如只能获取与情感状态存在复杂关系的外周生理指标）。还提供了最佳实践建议（如重复和多因素方法），以便在评估自然栖息地中动物的福利时最有效且恰当地使用生理指标。本综述旨在为一个具有广阔理论和应用潜力的全新独特研究领域——野生动物福利生理学奠定基础。
