Why do dogs wag their tails?
Published in 2024
Scientific review of the mechanism, ontogeny, function and evolution of tail-wagging behavior in dogs.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories:Canine
Keyword: Evolutionary processes
Cleaner fish recognize self in a mirror via self-face recognition like humans
Published in 2023
Scientific article showing that the cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) is able to recognize itself in a mirror and in a photograph, and to distinguish itself from its relatives, which proves that it has the necessary cognitive capacities to build a mental image of itself.
Document Types: Scientific paper
Animal categories: Fish
Keywords:Awareness, Memory, Metacognition, Evolutionary process
What is really social about social insect cognition?
Published in 2023
Scientific review on insect cognition, focusing on the hypothesis that there is such a thing as a "social brain", i.e. cognitive capacities specific to social species. Most of the research on cognition in insects is done on highly social species, so it is not possible to make comparisons with less social species. It would therefore be necessary to develop specific research programs to address this issue.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories:Insects
Keywords:Cognitive process, Evolutionary process
The causes and consequences of yawning in animal groups
Published in 2022
Scientific review showing that yawning serves as a signal to improve attention levels in observers, and that its contagious nature, found in mammals and birds, has the function of synchronising and/or coordinating group activity patterns, thus playing a social role.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: All animals
Keywords:Evolutionary processes
Why do animals want what they like?
Published in 2022
Commentary on an article demonstrating the conservation of dopamine-related neural circuits and mechanisms involving desire and reward in animals, from bees to humans.
Document Types: Opinions
Animal categories:Insects
Keywords:Brain integration, Cognitive processes, Evolutionary processes
Cichlids and stingrays can add and subtract 'one' in the number space from one to five
Published in 2022
Scientific paper proving that stingrays and cichlids are capable of learning to add and subtract, confirming that, at the least, the common ancestor of vertebrates could carry out these two operations.
Document Types: Scientific paper
Animal categories: Fish
Keywords: Cognitive processes,Learning, Evolutionary processes, Human-animal relationships
Review: Assessing fish welfare in research and aquaculture, with a focus on European directives
Published in 2018
Literature review on issues related to the welfare of teleost fish in aquaculture and research. It addresses the practical factors to take into account when assessing fish welfare, rearing and care, behavioural requirements and current regulations.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Fish
Keywords: Animal-based measurements, Pain, Experimentation, Welfare indicators, Fear, Evolutionary processes, Breeding and rearing systems
Limb Health in Broiler Breeding: History Using Genetics to Improve Welfare
Published in 2019
Testing for a possible improvement brought about by genetic selection on broiler skeletal integrity growth rates. Analysis of changes in breeding values over a period of 11-14 years for 5 skeletal health traits (limbs) in broilers from 3 pure lines.
Document Types: Scientific paper
Animal categories: Poultry
Keywords: Evolutionary processes, Carcass quality
Ethologie animale. Une approche biologique du comportement
Published in 2015
What is ethology, the ideas behind it and its methods? How does an animal inhabit its space, make use of available food resources and build its social world? What are the cognitive processes at work in this? How can personality explain behaviour? Written by specialists from different fields but in an intentionally accessible and explanatory way with the help of numerous illustrations, this book offers an overview of ethology grounded in analysis of cutting-edge research in ethology.
Document Types: Scientific work
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Learning, Training, Consciousness, Memory, Living environment, Fear, Cognitive processes, Evolutionary processes, Human-animal relationships
La Conscience des Animaux
Published in 2018
Are animals conscious beings? How do they perceive their own worlds? These questions are being debated in the scientific community for both academic and practical reasons. Accordingly, on 7 July 2012, a group of leading scientists in England headed by Philip Low felt it necessary to publish The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. This manifesto states that "a convergence of evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuro-anatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states as well as the ability to express intentional behaviour...". It calls for further research to learn more about this capacity in animals. In 2015, INRA carried out a multidisciplinary scientific expertise in order to provide a critical review of the literature on animal consciousness. This work was executed at the request of the European Food Safety Authority (request EFSA-Q-2015-00390, contract no. EFSA/Inra/2015/01).
This study is an overview based on the report from INRA's collective scientific expertise (Le Neindre et al., 2017). It is divided into six chapters:
––the social, ethical and legal context for the expertise (chapter 1)
––consciousness in the animal kingdom: historical perspectives, epistemology and definitions (chap. 2)
––overview of current knowledge on human consciousness, with a discussion of the main current innovative concepts given their usefulness for our understanding of the available data on animals (Chapter 3)
––behavioural and neurobiological components in animals that allow us to talk about more or less elaborate content of consciousness. This chapter constitutes the core of the expertise (chap. 4).
––the positive consequences of taking consciousness into account on our understanding of welfare, suffering and pain (chap. 5)
––the importance of consciousness in the adaptive capacities of animals, especially in their phylogenetic components (Chapter 6)
The book concludes with proposals for future avenues of research resulting from the deliberations of various scientific bodies.
Document Types: Scientific work
Animal categories: Bovines, Canines, Caprines, Equines, Mammals, Monogastrics, Birds (except poultry), Ovines, Fish, Porcines, Primates, Reptiles, Rodents, Ruminants, Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Anxiety, Learning, Training, Consciousness, Pain, Societal issues, Enrichment, Brain integration, Metacognition, Cognitive processes, Evolutionary processes, Stress
