22nd September 2006

Seeing Pain From The Animal’s Point Of View

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Last week, researchers gathered at a conference held at the Royal Society in London to hear the latest evidence on how animals interpret the world. One thing is clear: they do not see it the same way we do, and only by accepting that can we learn to care for them better, reports New Scientist "The matter of central interest is the animals' own perspective on its quality of life," says James Kirkwood of the Universities Federation for animal Welfare, which co-sponsored the conference with the British Veterinary Association.

Different animals exhibit different behaviours and levels of intelligence, so a set of carefully designed tests is being put together to assess animals' health and welfare. The aim is to allow owners and vets to make objective decisions on how to care for them, free of subjective human assumptions. Many tests, such as those devised in the UK by Lesley Wiseman-Orr, Jacky Reid and colleagues at the University of Glasgow's Institute of Comparative Medicine, rely on a form of psychometric assessment that asks a series of specific questions about an animal's behaviour.

Wiseman-Orr and Reid have designed a simple one-page questionnaire that can be used to evaluate whether a dog is in pain, an approach they say can be used to objectively evaluate the welfare of any animal in any setting. Their latest test monitors the health and welfare of dogs suffering arthritis. A series of 109 questions covering 13 facets of a dog's appearance, behaviour and habits allow a vet to track the progression of the disease and which treatments are working. The idea is to replace subjective assessments with an objective, repeatable system of logging symptoms.

David Morton of the University of Birmingham, UK, is developing a system to help vets and owners decide whether an animal is suffering so much that it ought to be put down. Its ratings weigh signs of physical distress against positive signs, such as a dog wagging its tail, to give a dispassionate measure of how an animal is faring.

Françoise Wemelsfelder of the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh is looking at a different aspect of welfare: developing a way to assess the suitability of the environment in which animals are kept. She asks observers to watch recordings of groups of animals and then choose adjectives that best describe their physical condition, demeanour and behaviour in a particular environment. These "emotional profile descriptors" are placed on a grid according to how positive or negative the words are. Completed grids show clusters of words which reflect the body language of an animal in that environment.

Over 60 studies on pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry show that "without exception, we've found high levels of agreement between observers, regardless of whether they're vets, farmers or activists," says Wemelsfelder. "Shown videos, they agree what the body language of the animal means."

In the first practical pilot study of the technique, Wemelsfelder asked 11 vets of the UK State Veterinary Service to apply the technique to commercial pig farms. The completed grids show the animals were far less happy crowded into small, indoor penned enclosures. "Before this study, inspectors would simply have rated pigs as 'healthy' or 'unhealthy'," says Wemelsfelder. The new technique reveals much more about how animals react to their circumstances, which will help with the design of better enclosures and encourage animals to be housed in appropriately enriched environments.

It could also help vets find more appropriate ways to treat animals and relieve suffering. For instance, some medical therapies can interfere with how an animal interacts with others, says John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol, UK. Treat a dog with antibiotics, and you risk killing the bacteria that live in its anal sac and produce the individual scent by which it is recognisable to other dogs. "We don't think of dogs losing their identities as a result of medical treatment," he says. Our failure to see life from a dog's perspective means that vets will too freely prescribe antibiotics without considering the consequences for the animal.

As experimental evidence of the mental capabilities and limitations of animals accumulates, we should be able to dismiss some of the assumptions we make about animals, says John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol, UK. As an example, he cites the scenario of a pet owner returning home to find their dog has damaged the furniture. The owner would likely admonish or punish the dog, not realising that it will have little, if any recollection of the damage it caused hours ago. If the dog learns anything from the experience, it will be to associate the punishment with the owner's angry face.

Most species only seem capable of thinking in the present, and cannot think about past or future events. Similarly, few animals appear to be self-aware, or aware that other creatures are sentient.

"Owners perceive pets as if they were human," says Bradshaw, who points out that anthropomorphism plays a key role in the relationship between people and their pets, possibly because looking on animals in this way is an intrinsic property of the human brain. "We must work with it and get round it rather than dismissing it," he adds.