With the advent of increased public awareness and appreciation for animal well-being in livestock production, it is becoming necessary to understand more specifically how animals perceive different situations and assess whether or not their well-being is being met. This is necessary to maintain a level of public respect for current production practices and to enhance the image of livestock prod...

In countries where major animal research is conducted, comprehensive laws exist to ensure that the animals’ physical needs are satisfactorily met. However, as animals also require an environment that allows them to fulfill their behavioral needs, this will be the focus of the article. Two studies, which were performed by the author to compare the effects of enriched and un-enriched cage environ...

Belief in one's ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual's wellbeing. It has repeatedly been argued that perception of control is not only desirable, but is also probably a psychological and biological necessity. In this article, we review the literature supporting this claim and present evidence of a biological basis for the ne...

There is a growing appreciation within the livestock industry and throughout society that animal stress is an important issue that must be addressed. With implications for animal health, well-being, and productivity, minimizing animal stress through improved animal management procedures and/or selective breeding is becoming a priority. Effective management of stress, however, depends on the abi...

Social support is critical for psychological and physical well-being, reflecting the centrality of belongingness in our lives. Human interactions often provide people with considerable social support, but can pets also fulfill one's social needs? Although there is correlational evidence that pets may help individuals facing significant life stressors, little is known about the well-being benefi...

The overall assessment of animal welfare is a multicriterion evaluation problem that needs a constructive strategy to compound information produced by many measures. The construction depends on specific features such as the concept of welfare, the measures used and the way data are collected. Welfare is multidimensional and one dimension probably cannot fully compensate for another one (e.g. go...

Concerns about the welfare of animals typically include 3 questions: is the animal functioning well (e.g., good health, productivity, etc.), is the animal feeling well (e.g., absence of pain, etc.), and is the animal able to live according to its nature (e.g., perform natural behaviors that are thought to be important to it, such as grazing)? We review examples, primarily from our own research,...

BACKGROUND There is empirical evidence that the presence of a companion animal can have a positive impact on performance. The available evidence can be viewed in terms of differing hypotheses that attempt to explain the mechanisms behind the positive effects. Little attention has been given to motivation as a potential mode of action with regards to human-animal interactions. First we give an o...

Family Histo-ry.?The monster is the 5th child of its parents and has three sisters and one brother who are all alive, having good health and without any mental or bodily deformity. There is no history of abnormal delivery or of abortion. All deliveries, including that of the monster, were normal without any trouble to the mother. The parents are of good physique and possess very good health. Th...

The first anniversary for older widows (n = 47) has been explored during Months 11, 12, and 13. Concurrent correlations show that optimism inversely correlates with psychological (intrusion and avoidance) stress as measured with the Impact of Event Scale (r = -.52 to -.66, p < .005) and positively correlates with well-being (physical: r = .36 to .46, p < .025; psychosocial: r = .58 to .72, p < ...