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Asked by Katch to Carrie, Ellen, Rupert on 17 Mar 2017.
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Rupert Marshall answered on 17 Mar 2017:
If we want to know if an animal is happy or sad we first need to know what its normal behaviour is. Zoos have to check their animals are happy and healthy so they check the each day and if they see a change then they know there might be a problem. Some changes might be normal, like starting to sing in the spring, or hibernating in the winter, so we need to know what is normal for the time of day, time of year, age of the animal and things like this. Some animals may be quite active when they are not happy, like tigers walking in circles around their enclosure all day long. Other animals may sit in a corner and do nothing. Some reptiles may be quite happy sitting under a warm light doing nothing, but it’s not good for them – a bit like us sitting on the sofa all day, it feels fine but we need to exercise. Zoos turn the lights on and off in different places to force the reptiles to move around as this keeps them healthy and helps them digest their food. So activity alone is not enough – we need to know about the animal’s natural behaviour and how its body works. Many pets and other animals have been carefully studied by animal behaviour scientists so we know what to look out for: which behaviours might tell us there is a problem and which tell us they are happy.
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Carrie Ijichi answered on 17 Mar 2017:
Really important question – there are different ways we can try to work this out. We can measure the animal’s behaviour and compare it to what’s normal for that species or that individual. We can take measures of its biology like heart rate, stress chemicals and core temperature too. There are also incredible tests called “cognitive bias” tests and these find out whether the animal feels optimistic = happy or pessimistic = sad. This changes depending on the environment the animal lives in and whether anything stressful has been happening. This is my favourite way of asking animal how it feels.
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