President Biden signed the awkwardly named 'Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers for Veterans Therapy Act' or the 'PAWS for Veterans Therapy Act' (PAWS Act of 2021) into law at the end of August 2021. This Act requires the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to implement a...
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...
Michael & Dwight's arrivalTwo orange tabbies arrived at Wallis Annenberg PetSpace in November 2019 as a bonded pair. The Animal Care team quickly decided to name the duo Michael & Dwight, after another bonded pair from the staff-favorite TV show, The Office. The two companions...
Over the past five to ten years, the academic literature on cat management (specifically outdoor cat management) projects have been enriched by dozens of papers looking at public attitudes to cats and different cat management options and detailing the effects of some cat management projects...
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...
In 2018, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP – headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya) signed a two-year agreement with a Kenyan animal protection group, the Africa Network for Animal Welfare (ANAW – founded in 2006), that included a stipulation that ANAW should organize animal welfare conferences...
There are many examples of animal evolution in which wild creatures adapt to take advantage of urban or industrial environments. A recent paper describes some details of urban fox evolution. As with many such findings, the story began with a researcher, Kevin Parsons, asking some...
In the late 1970s, North Korea developed a “technology” for obtaining (“milking”) bile from live bears, and the “farming” of bears for their bile began in earnest in Asia over the following decade. At the time, it was argued that bear bile farms would also...
It is February in Costa Rica, and Maria, a spunky Ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), is just waking up from her deep state of sleep (torpor). It was colder last night, and she needed to conserve her energy. The average hummingbird is approximately 7.1 to 8.9...
At the 87th Session of the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child held at the end of May 2021, Tunisia’s programs to address child protection were examined. The printed report of the session, issued on June 7, 2021, was fifty-five paragraphs long and...
