Research : Animal and Environmental Ethics
Research: Animal and environmental ethics
Animal ethics – which inevitably contains assumptions about animals and animal life – can have far-reaching consequences for the use of animals in biomedical research and agriculture. Discussion of how new findings in animal science can become relevant for animal ethics is therefore urgent.
Pär Segerdahl has looked at natural behaviour in domestic animals, focusing on the role animal caretakers play organic farming. The aim of the research was to formulate a new view on natural behaviour that enables ecological farmers to see their caretaking routines as part of domestic animals’ natural behaviour. Since ecological farmers often associate welfare with natural behaviour, this new outlook makes it possible to connect animal welfare in ecological production to the caretaker’s presence rather than to his absence.
Pär Segerdahl also participated in an international collaboration with the Great Ape Trust, Iowa, USA on a study of forgiveness in great apes. This project follows from his long collaboration with the Great Ape Trust, working with the Bonobo Kanzi's spontaneous acquirement of language.
In June 2007, the Centre hosted an international multi-disciplinary symposium entitled Searching for the Animal of Animal Ethics. The aim of the symposium was to direct the bioethical discussion towards the basic question of our notion of an animal and contemporary scientific knowledge of animal life.
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- Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor
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