Luke Hecht luke.b.hecht@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy
The importance of considering age when quantifying wild animals’ welfare
Hecht, Luke
Authors
Abstract
Wild animals experience different challenges and opportunities as they mature, and this variety of experiences can lead to different levels of welfare characterizing the day-to-day lives of individuals of different ages. At the same time, most wild animals who are born do not survive to adulthood. Individuals who die as juveniles do not simply experience a homogeneous fraction of the lifetimes of older members of their species; rather, their truncated lives may be characterized by very different levels of welfare. Here, I propose the concept of welfare expectancy as a framework for quantifying wild animal welfare at a population level, given individual-level data on average welfare with respect to age. This concept fits conveniently alongside methods of analysis already used in population ecology, such as demographic sensitivity analysis, and is applicable to evaluating the welfare consequences of human interventions and natural pressures that disproportionately affect individuals of different ages. In order to understand better and improve the state of wild animal welfare, more attention should be directed towards young animals and the particular challenges they face.
Citation
Hecht, L. (2021). The importance of considering age when quantifying wild animals’ welfare. Biological Reviews, 96(6), 2602-2616. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12769
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jun 16, 2021 |
Online Publication Date | Jun 21, 2021 |
Publication Date | 2021-12 |
Deposit Date | Aug 13, 2021 |
Publicly Available Date | Aug 13, 2021 |
Journal | Biological Reviews |
Print ISSN | 1464-7931 |
Electronic ISSN | 1469-185X |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 96 |
Issue | 6 |
Pages | 2602-2616 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12769 |
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Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2021 The Author. Biological Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cambridge Philosophical Society.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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