What are farm animals thinking?
December 23, 2023 4:17 PM Subscribe
“We’re trying to figure out if cows have friends,” says Annkatrin Pahl, the Ph.D. student leading the project.What’s got me wondering is, do their friends think they’re a cow?
posted by pulposus at 4:42 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
This post seems as good time as any to share the perennial favourite, "Cows Got Guns".
(Youtube via Invidious so you aren't tracked.)
posted by vac2003 at 4:43 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
(Youtube via Invidious so you aren't tracked.)
posted by vac2003 at 4:43 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Look, I am a meat eater, but even still, killing animals and eating them is fucked up. If I weren't such a lazy coward I would quit doing it.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:00 PM on December 23, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Literaryhero at 5:00 PM on December 23, 2023 [10 favorites]
Have these people never been around animals? Some of the studies sound interesting, but I'm baffled by the way the humans involved talk about them. How did they get into animal research yet remain so unfamiliar with animals? And apparently without encountering any people with animal experience? I'm not trying to snark or rag on the article, it has good stuff in it! I've genuinely wondered this for a while.
posted by sepviva at 5:16 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by sepviva at 5:16 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
What I got from the article is that the biggest thing that's changing is funding and publishing. It's moving away from, "You want to study something about farm animals other than growth rates and yield, and you want money and attention and a career for that? Weird."
posted by clawsoon at 5:36 PM on December 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 5:36 PM on December 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
Quite frankly, I find this news about goats, etc to be far more interesting than all the hooha about ChatGPT.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:25 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 6:25 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
I find it disturbing to even think about ChatGPT's hooha.
posted by hippybear at 6:33 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 6:33 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
How did they get into animal research yet remain so unfamiliar with animals?
Familiar enough with their palatability, apparently. The behavioral biologist working with the goats eats them, too. I must admit I'm skeptical of a researcher working specifically in animal cognition who does that. One can hope he didn't eat the primates he was working with previously.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:31 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Familiar enough with their palatability, apparently. The behavioral biologist working with the goats eats them, too. I must admit I'm skeptical of a researcher working specifically in animal cognition who does that. One can hope he didn't eat the primates he was working with previously.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:31 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
I do hope to perfect my longpig recipe while I finally get my psychiatry degree.
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
Look, I am a meat eater, but even still, killing animals and eating them is fucked up.
I do hope to perfect my longpig recipe…
Yeah, reading this made me think either (lacto ovo probably) vegetarian or cannibal is the only way eat without feeling guilty.
posted by TedW at 8:55 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
I do hope to perfect my longpig recipe…
Yeah, reading this made me think either (lacto ovo probably) vegetarian or cannibal is the only way eat without feeling guilty.
posted by TedW at 8:55 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Honestly, what's held this back for so long? Oh, right. Man is superior and separate from all the animals who were placed here as fodder for his whims.
... Bzuh?! Y'all. From a behavioral ecology perspective, I've been hearing about these interactions for at least five years and often farther back in animal behavior generally (e.g. Temple Grandin's famous slaughterhouse work). The specific work I'm thinking of was focused on goat contact calls and herd leadership dynamics, but looking at intraspecific social interactions among livestock is absolutely not new.
Now, the reason that a behavioral researcher might not think these findings are obvious is that animal social dynamics don't always look like ours. Sometimes animal social dynamics are mediated in ways that aren't obvious to humans, and humans often project all kinds of weird shit onto their animals. It's therefore important, when trying to understand a different species, to actually use experimental evidence to understand that species' social behavior.
Now, part of the problem is that animal behavior can be a fractured and very multidisciplinary field. It doesn't surprise me to see someone in comparative cognition, for example, express confusion and isolation when promoting the study of livestock: by far the biggest motivation in animal cog, and the largest funding sources, come from searching for analogues to human cognition so that you can test run solutions to human psychiatric conditions. Accordingly, people overwhelmingly study models like the comparatively cheap rats and mice, or they study species that are increasingly "human-like," such as primates (ick, personally). Even approaching these models from a perspective that takes ethological context into account is unorthodox and a little startling: the whole point is to identify a suite of cognitive abilities that can be compared and contrasted between species in an attempt to understand the theoretical universalities of animal cognition... so that it can be used to better understand one very specific animal, ie us.
I've spent the last couple of years studying learning and motivation from a similar context. I get it. It's pretty alienating sometimes.
On the other hand, most of the livestock oriented research I've read comes out of another discipline entirely: applied animal behavior research. Animal welfare experts, the group containing the branch from which Grandin sprung, are all about doing the work to figure out what kinds of husbandry practices maximize welfare... which actually does involve studying species social dynamics, at least in terms of monitoring distress behavior or cortisol levels. There's a ton of research about livestock social and motivational behavior from this perspective! It's just not very easy to find if you don't do a lot of wide ranging lit search outside your area, or if you don't often engage in interdisciplinary collaboration.
As for the rest... Look, I don't have to imagine that the animals that share lives with me are actually little people in fur suits to be interested in their lives and motivations. It's not like most pigs wouldn't happily eat me.
(I would cheerfully eat the mice I do work with, for what it's worth, if they would actually taste good and I was sure I couldn't get a disease. I also am interested in their social dynamics and lived experiences, especially interactions within their social groups and the genesis of chosen interactions. They're not incompatible things! I want the animals I eat to get to have had enriched, good lives before I eat them!
Hell, I want pet chickens sometime in the next decade, in part because I enjoy watching social dynamics of animals and finding out about the perspective and umwelt of species that I interact with. I anticipate zero effect on my interest in eating chicken. I've known too many chickens.)
posted by sciatrix at 10:01 PM on December 23, 2023 [15 favorites]
... Bzuh?! Y'all. From a behavioral ecology perspective, I've been hearing about these interactions for at least five years and often farther back in animal behavior generally (e.g. Temple Grandin's famous slaughterhouse work). The specific work I'm thinking of was focused on goat contact calls and herd leadership dynamics, but looking at intraspecific social interactions among livestock is absolutely not new.
Now, the reason that a behavioral researcher might not think these findings are obvious is that animal social dynamics don't always look like ours. Sometimes animal social dynamics are mediated in ways that aren't obvious to humans, and humans often project all kinds of weird shit onto their animals. It's therefore important, when trying to understand a different species, to actually use experimental evidence to understand that species' social behavior.
Now, part of the problem is that animal behavior can be a fractured and very multidisciplinary field. It doesn't surprise me to see someone in comparative cognition, for example, express confusion and isolation when promoting the study of livestock: by far the biggest motivation in animal cog, and the largest funding sources, come from searching for analogues to human cognition so that you can test run solutions to human psychiatric conditions. Accordingly, people overwhelmingly study models like the comparatively cheap rats and mice, or they study species that are increasingly "human-like," such as primates (ick, personally). Even approaching these models from a perspective that takes ethological context into account is unorthodox and a little startling: the whole point is to identify a suite of cognitive abilities that can be compared and contrasted between species in an attempt to understand the theoretical universalities of animal cognition... so that it can be used to better understand one very specific animal, ie us.
I've spent the last couple of years studying learning and motivation from a similar context. I get it. It's pretty alienating sometimes.
On the other hand, most of the livestock oriented research I've read comes out of another discipline entirely: applied animal behavior research. Animal welfare experts, the group containing the branch from which Grandin sprung, are all about doing the work to figure out what kinds of husbandry practices maximize welfare... which actually does involve studying species social dynamics, at least in terms of monitoring distress behavior or cortisol levels. There's a ton of research about livestock social and motivational behavior from this perspective! It's just not very easy to find if you don't do a lot of wide ranging lit search outside your area, or if you don't often engage in interdisciplinary collaboration.
As for the rest... Look, I don't have to imagine that the animals that share lives with me are actually little people in fur suits to be interested in their lives and motivations. It's not like most pigs wouldn't happily eat me.
(I would cheerfully eat the mice I do work with, for what it's worth, if they would actually taste good and I was sure I couldn't get a disease. I also am interested in their social dynamics and lived experiences, especially interactions within their social groups and the genesis of chosen interactions. They're not incompatible things! I want the animals I eat to get to have had enriched, good lives before I eat them!
Hell, I want pet chickens sometime in the next decade, in part because I enjoy watching social dynamics of animals and finding out about the perspective and umwelt of species that I interact with. I anticipate zero effect on my interest in eating chicken. I've known too many chickens.)
posted by sciatrix at 10:01 PM on December 23, 2023 [15 favorites]
it's 20+ years since it was revealed that sheep are great at facial recognition. Which is possibly a prerequisite for being pals.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:05 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:05 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Really interesting article and thanks for your additional context sciatrix!
Potty trained cows mean they can be indoor friends!
posted by ellieBOA at 4:07 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
Potty trained cows mean they can be indoor friends!
posted by ellieBOA at 4:07 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
Good opportunity to post a video ofCows released in spring. The joy is evident.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:51 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:51 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
I thought it was well-known that cows have best friends. Then again, I'm not a scientist.
posted by tommasz at 7:54 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 7:54 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
Cow cliquer.
posted by whuppy at 8:31 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 8:31 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I remember reading a book on cat genetics that mentioned a study of whether cats had personality. and the author took the time to explain that, no, the scientists weren't completely unfamiliar with cats, it's just extremely hard to study domestic cats, since their lives are so tightly linked to humans and humans strongly anthropomorphize animals they think they know. I imagine the same problem exists for farm animals.
Volunteers at an animal shelter were asked to fill out questionnaires on each of the shelter cats and then their answers were tested for correlation, and yes, it turns out cats have distinct personalities.
posted by acrasis at 12:56 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
Volunteers at an animal shelter were asked to fill out questionnaires on each of the shelter cats and then their answers were tested for correlation, and yes, it turns out cats have distinct personalities.
posted by acrasis at 12:56 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
I would cheerfully eat the mice I do work with
Actually, on a related note, my ex and I saved three of the mice she worked with and kept them as beloved pets for their short lives. I buried Flute, Eilonwy, and Velvet in the backyard, my first fur children, and mourned them for a long time.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 3:06 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Actually, on a related note, my ex and I saved three of the mice she worked with and kept them as beloved pets for their short lives. I buried Flute, Eilonwy, and Velvet in the backyard, my first fur children, and mourned them for a long time.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 3:06 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh yeah—one of my coworkers brought home one of our mice, too, and kept her for the remaining length of her life. It's not uncommon! If I had fewer pets currently at home, I might be tempted to keep a few particularly beloved mice too. In my lab, we make little paper tombstones for particularly notable mice and hang them on the office wall as memories: yucca0, who was very sweet and very fat and therefore quite nice to hold and talk to; lando2, who turned out to execute his choice between two screens by carefully backing up and ramming the touch screen with his butt; rose0, who was small and fast and busy and slammed out her trials with enthusiastic ferocity. Sometimes they do go home as pets, although it's not common and the university strongly prefers that we not do that with rodents. (In other species, it can be the norm: many of the increasingly small number of dogs used for research, largely beagles, are offered for adoption when their experimental time is finished.)
Human relationships with animals are variable and multifaceted! Even when you are interacting with animals that you are keeping for a purpose beyond simply loving them, it is quite common to see people getting attached to specific individuals and keeping them on well past that theoretical purpose.
posted by sciatrix at 5:48 AM on December 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
Human relationships with animals are variable and multifaceted! Even when you are interacting with animals that you are keeping for a purpose beyond simply loving them, it is quite common to see people getting attached to specific individuals and keeping them on well past that theoretical purpose.
posted by sciatrix at 5:48 AM on December 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
The article that convinced me about animal personalities was a report about a day in the life of a zoo's staff in charge of reptiles and snakes. The staff discussed their animals and the zoo's manner of taking care of them. It turned out that an older male Egyptian cobra could be moved by hand ( don't try this at home, I guess). But the other cobras were just seething for a chance to get back at their captors, they could not even be approached. The staff said that the older cobra had always been a live-and-let-live snake. If cobras have distinct personalities, then I guess cows can. Happy holidays everyone!
posted by SnowRottie at 9:12 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SnowRottie at 9:12 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
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Honestly, what's held this back for so long? Oh, right. Man is superior and separate from all the animals who were placed here as fodder for his whims.
I'm glad we're finally realizing officially about farm animals things farmers have been reporting for generations upon generations.
posted by hippybear at 4:38 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]