New finding refines how scientists study animal happiness
For nearly a decade, Vincent Bombail has been tickling rats. It’s been a standard technique used in the study of animal happiness. But not all rats particularly enjoy the experience, data show.
Female rats prefer gentler, more playful tickling than males, Bombail and his colleagues report April 15 in Biology Letters. The findings suggest that the same physical experience evokes a different emotional response in different individuals, potentially influencing the results of studies on animal happiness.
“This research helps us understand these animals as playful but also rich and complex and having opinions,” says Daniel Weary, an animal welfare scientist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the study. “Understanding the affective lives of animals is actually one of the coolest and most difficult questions there is in science,” he says. [Continue reading…]