INTERBEING by AnimalConcepts

“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