The Blue Zones, Well-being and Feeling Better

The Blue Zone concept has emerged from studies of communities with large numbers of healthy centenarians

Pet Demographics: Evolving Numbers and Insights

Producing accurate estimates of dog and cat populations around the world is much more challenging than one might expect

A Circular Economy and “Feel Better”

Planetary boundaries are being exceeded. How do we convert to a circular economic system and planetary sustainability

Comparing U.S. Groups’ Openness to Pro-Animal Actions

As animal advocates know, an outreach tactic that is successful with one person will not necessarily be successful with all people. Advocates rarely launch campaigns with no idea of who will be seeing their ‘asks’ (i.e., requests for pro-animal actions). Even in the case of passive tactics such as billboards, advocates may know who frequents that part of the city. For example, they may be near a university, meaning their audience will include a high proportion of students. The United States public is diverse and groups of people can differ greatly in their opinions. Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, advocates could be more effective in their outreach by taking the preferences of their audience into consideration. Much of the research that has been done on the U.S. public’s openness to various pro-animal actions has focused on one or two actions at a time, such as adopting a vegan diet or voting for cage-free ballot initiatives. Many studies have also only been able to consider a small number of participant characteristics, such as age, race/ethnicity, and gender. As a result, the amount of data comparing asks and characteristics has been limited. Through a survey of thousands of U.S. residents, we add much-needed data on the various segments of the U.S. population to animal advocates’ tool belts. Our results show how likely different segments of the U.S. public would be to take 18 different pro-animal actions. These results also allow advocates to compare subgroup differences across approximately 20 different characteristics. Advocates working with a particular group can compare which asks are most likely to appeal to them: for example, people with children in the home, people in rural areas, or people who are concerned about climate change. Alternatively, advocates working on particular asks can see which segments of the population may be the most likely to support their campaigns: for example, adopting a vegan diet, not buying animal-based materials like leather, or writing a member of Congress about farmed animal welfare

Plant sentience: feeling or biological automatism?

Sentience refers to the ability of an organism to have subjective experiences such as sensations, emotions and awareness. Whereas some animals, including humans, are widely recognized as sentient, the question of whether plants are sentient is still debated among scientists, philosophers, and ethicists. Over the past 20 years, many scientists such as Trewavas, Baluška, Mancuso, Gagliano, and Calvo have reported interesting discussions about memory, behavior, communication, and intelligence in plants. However, the reported conclusions have not convinced the entire scientific community. In this commentary, I would like to focus on two critical aspects related to sentience: cognition and emotio

Language matters

The term sentience tends to be associated with affective valence along with affectively neutral sensory states. In the absence of evidence for affectively laden states in plants, the use of the term sentience in the exploration of plant sensory and behavioral complexity is misleading and ethically problematic for its potential to trivialize animal sentience

Insentient “cognition”?

A sentient state is a state that it feels like something to be in. Cows have them, cars don’t. Cognitive capacities are a subset of behavioral capacities. Not all behavioral capacities are cognitive (but the distinction is fuzzy). Might the difference have something to do with whether the behaver is sentient

Wildlife, Economics, and Well-Being

In most countries, wildlife is owned by the state. However, there are exceptions. In Southern Africa (e.g., Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe), laws passed thirty or more years ago have given private landowners property rights over all the wildlife on their land. These property rights are subject to certain conditions (such as using appropriate game fencing that prevents wild animals from encroaching on land owned by others). Following this change in wildlife law, tourism on private lands has boomed and has had a very positive impact on biodiversity in southern Africa

World Happiness Report 2023

In the 2023 WHR, the life satisfaction values for 2021, 2022, and 2023 were averaged. Scandinavian countries occupied five of the top seven positions, with Israel (number 4) and the Netherlands (number 5) taking the other two positions. In general, national well-being has been remarkably resilient despite the increase in global morbidity and mortality caused by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Helping and altruistic behaviors increased during the pandemic and may have acted to counter the adverse effects of the pandemic and associated lockdowns

COP 15 - Can We Meet Biodiversity Goals & Targets?

The 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was held in two parts (in Kunming, China, in October 2021 and in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022). One primary goal for COP15 was the development of a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) covering the coming decade (from 2023 through 2030). The GBF produced by the participating countries at COP15 included four long-term global goals for 2050 linked to the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, along with 23 global targets for immediate action and completed by 2030. One outcome of the negotiations was the identification of the need to increase public awareness of the global biodiversity crisis leading to sustained activities to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss