INTERBEING by AnimalConcepts

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