I am currently reading a very interesting book, called Making Animals Happy by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson. It's about animal psyhcology; what makes
them behave the way they do, what they are capable of thinking and feeling, and what we can do to keep our pets happy and stimulated. It's worth a read for anyone who has pets that they care about or who are considering getting a pet.
I have only been reading it for a few days, so I am only 3 chapters into it. I found the first chapter on "what animals need" particularly interesting out of those three. It explains enriched environments, brain development and stereotypical behaviour.
A stereotypy is the abnormal repetitive behaviour you see in a lot of bored animals, such as pacing, bar biting, excessive grooming etc.
Temple says this about stereotypical behaviour:
| The stereotypies I worry about are the continuous stereotypies, the ones that go on for hours. Really intense stereotypies - stereotypies an animal spends hours a day doing - almost never occur in the wild (...) So when you see them in captivity, that means something is wrong. |
and:
| I was used to seeing stereotypies in high-fear Arab horses and autistic children. So I associated all stereotypies with fear and anxiety. But the most recent research on stereotypies showed me that wasn't the whole story. Yes, stereotypies are abnormal, but you can't automatically assume that an animal that is stereotyping has poor welfare right at that moment or that an animal that is not stereotyping has good welfare. An animal that is stereotyping might have better welfare than an animal that isn't. Abnormal repetitive behaviour means one of three things:
|
I have personally seen animals with stereotypical behaviour, I just didn't know it at the time. When I was a kid I spend a lot of time in the stable, and in European stables, horses are confined to a wooden booth which is about 3 metres x 3 metres, and are usually only let out when their owners want to ride them, or for a quick 15 minute run in the paddock while their booth is being cleaned. (Here in Australia horses are usually kept outside in fields, in groups, which is much more natural)
I saw a lot of horses shifting weight from one front leg to the other, repeteadly, for no good reason. Horses swallowing air out boredom was also a big problem, to the point where a lot of the horses had to wear a metal thing around their neck to prevent them from swallowing air and becoming sick. Another horse used to grind his teeth up and down the metal bars in front of his booth.
I recently encountered stereotypical behaviour again, but in an animal I never expected it from: One of my fish.
Last week I bought a big paradise fish and lots of plants for my biggest aquarium. Most fish appreciate densely planted tanks, it makes them happy because they can explore the plants and hide in them and feel safe etc.
But not this paradise fish. He immediately started swimming back and forth, back and forth in front of the glass. I took that as a sign that he wasn't happy in the tank, and added more plants. He still kept doing it, and I had no idea what to do.
I then added 2 young females to the tank, which were about half the size of the male. They behaved the way you would expect, exploring the tank and plants and sitting in the caves looking out at what was going on. I was relieved to know that there was nothing wrong with the tank, but still had no idea what to do about this fish.
I then started reading this book, and realised the fish is displaying stereotypical behaviour:
He does that all day, only stopping to eat and chase away females if they get in his way. Obviously he is not suffering at the moment, because the females are perfectly happy in the tank.
Temple also says this:
| Once stereotypies do develop, you should try to reduce them, even in the case of scar-on-the-brain-type stereotypies. An animal like Luna (an abused wolf previously mentioned in the book) may not be suffering, but the constant stereotyping itself interferes with the animal's quality of life and her nervous system is operating in a totally abnormal manner. |
So I should try to fix this fish, and I have a couple of ideas, but I will get back to them in a later blog entry. I find it fascinating that fish are capable of enough brain function to actually develop these behaviours, and this would suggest there is more going on in their heads than people give them credit for (which I have suspected for a long time, and so I always treat my fish like sentient, feeling animals that deserve the best care possible, in the form of interesting food and enriched environments).
When I started looking into stereotypical behaviour in fish, I came across some articles which would suggest it's not an uncommon problem.
Sentience and Cognition is the first one I found. Not very long and doesn't go into much details, but still interesting.
I then found this news story on aquariums in Scotland; Aquariums mistreating their animals.
But the one I found the most interesting is this one, Fish feel pain.
| The success of “pain” as a protective mechanism is demonstrated by its universality across the vertebrate kingdom. For example fish have evolved the same pain-blocking substances, endorphins, as humans. Endorphins can be thought of as naturally occurring morphine and their role in the body is complex. In species such as fish they may help the animals to tolerate pain from severe injuries to facilitate a successful escape from a predator. As one might now expect, analgesic drugs which are active in humans also appear to reduce pain in fish.
Since fish have the same nerve endings and the same chemicals for transmitting and blocking pain and a brain structure which allows processing of pain signals, it is beyond doubt that fish feel pain. An example of behavioural indications of pain was a study which injected irritant chemicals into the lips of fish. The fish displayed increased respiratory rate, avoidance of hard pelleted food, rocking behaviour and rubbed their lips on gravel and the tank walls. When morphine was administered to the fish, the incidence of these behaviours was reduced. |
So in light of these findings, obviously fishing it cruel, and goldfish should not be kept in tiny bowls as if they are incapable of being unhappy.
Fish deserve to be treated with as much respect as any other animal.
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