very interesting - thanks for sharing this framework! As a biologist, in my behavioural research with free-ranging elephants and giraffes, I have often encountered gaps in the basic knowledge we need to interpret potential welfare indicators. For less-studied or cryptic wild species, we may need considerable research just to understand what their main welfare problems are.
I also wondered about scaling across species. Expanding an intervention within one species seems quite different from applying it to another, especially when their social lives, activity patterns and ecological needs differ.
How should funders balance supporting interventions we already know how to evaluate with building that basic understanding of neglected or cryptic species? Could we otherwise end up prioritizing animals whose welfare is easier to measure, while overlooking those whose needs we understand less well?
very interesting - thanks for sharing this framework! As a biologist, in my behavioural research with free-ranging elephants and giraffes, I have often encountered gaps in the basic knowledge we need to interpret potential welfare indicators. For less-studied or cryptic wild species, we may need considerable research just to understand what their main welfare problems are.
I also wondered about scaling across species. Expanding an intervention within one species seems quite different from applying it to another, especially when their social lives, activity patterns and ecological needs differ.
How should funders balance supporting interventions we already know how to evaluate with building that basic understanding of neglected or cryptic species? Could we otherwise end up prioritizing animals whose welfare is easier to measure, while overlooking those whose needs we understand less well?