Animal Sentience Archives

Octopus vulgaris | Photo credit: TheSp4N1SH

May 02, 2022 UK Passes Its Own Animal Sentience Act After Leaving the EU

Posted at 16:34h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Animals, Articles, Ethics, Regulation, Law, Letter from the President, Public Awareness/Attitudes, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

When the UK (United Kingdom) voted to leave the European Union (EU), one of the consequences would be the loss of legislation on various issues covered in existing EU laws. The UK government had to pass new laws covering the many items in EU legislation...

Mar 14, 2022 The Magic of Being Among Gorillas in Rwanda

Posted at 09:45h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Articles, Tales of WellBeing, Wild Animals - By Eric "Rick" Bernthal

It was to be the trip of a lifetime. For decades, I’d imagined how thrilling it would be to walk among the Mountain Gorillas in their natural habitat. I’d been on several safaris elsewhere in Africa. Those were amazing, transformational experiences, yet there were still...

Jan 17, 2022 Animal Sentience: Moving Forward

Posted at 09:38h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Animals, Articles, Ethics, Regulation, Law, Public Awareness/Attitudes, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan

In October last year, WellBeing International organized two webinars on animal sentience – specifically on the question of invertebrate sentience – as part of a project funded by the Centre for Effective Altruism. We were surprised by the level of interest in the topic. In...

Dec 31, 2021 Replacing Laboratory Animals in Safety Testing

Posted at 11:37h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Articles, Laboratory Animals, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

In 1993, the NIH Revitalization Act included language, supported by corporations and animal advocates, that authorized a new program to develop and validate toxicity tests that would replace and reduce the use of laboratory animals. Seven years later, that 1993 Act led to the passage...

Invertebrate Animal Sentience Free Webinar Series

Sep 16, 2021 Webinar Series: Invertebrate Animal Sentience

Posted at 10:27h In Animal Sentience, Articles, Education, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

The term sentience – referring to the ability to feel pleasures and pains – was used by philosophers in the 17th century to distinguish the capacity to feel from an ability to think or reason. This distinction was directly expressed in Jeremy Bentham’s famous phrase...

Aug 17, 2021 Animal Sentience, Public Awareness, and Public Policy

Posted at 11:52h In Animal Sentience, Animal Well-being, Animals, Articles, Ethics, Regulation, Law, Letter from the President, Public Awareness/Attitudes, WellBeing News - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Over the past fifty years, public concern for animals (and “animal sentience”) has prompted significant changes in public policy in many countries worldwide. It is not yet clear what has driven this concern. There had been a similar increase in public concern for animals in...

Animal Sentience Archive