Walk with the animals

(...)That animals — even less obviously social animals, like cats — have emotional lives is something most appreciate, according to American scientist Marc Bekoff.

"I think common folk, lay people, know it. Pet owners know it."

However, Bekoff, a professor emeritis of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, has made it his life's work to scientifically prove that animals not only have emotions but have moral lives too — a finding he will discuss in Auckland this week at the 20th New Zealand Companion Animal Conference, staged by the New Zealand Companion Animal Council

"Basically, animals have the ability to make moral judgments, right or wrong judgments," Bekoff says by phone from his home in Boulder, Colorado.

"They know what they're supposed to do in a particular situation, like in play. When they're playing they will have an expectation that if 'I invite you to play, I won't bite you too hard, I won't knock you too hard and I will honour the rules of the game'. They make decisions about food sharing, about reciprocity — I scratch your back and you scratch mine, paying back favours. The evidence is really clear, as time goes on, that this is in fact what is happening. More and more animals are showing this kind of moral intelligence." MORE>>

Marc signed the book I book :)

This topic is very close to the article in the New Scientist

Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter

Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

"I think our work is the best evidence yet that it's painful," says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. ....