Veterinarians are an important source of information about animal care for owners. They provide general advice about topics important to an animal's well-being, such as appropriate training, exercise and nutrition. Veterinary behaviorists, when dealing with undesired or abnormal behaviors, also perform an assessment of pet welfare and an evaluation of owners' behavior and attitudes. It is likely that these assessments are affected by the attitude toward animals and toward animal welfare of the behaviorists. The aim of this study was to investigate whether veterinary behaviorists have a different attitude toward animals and animal welfare compared to other veterinarians. An online questionnaire, also including the 20-item Animal Attitude Scale, was completed by a convenience sample of 540 Italian veterinarians dealing with companion animals: 140 were behaviorists, 22 were starting to work in the field of behavioral medicine, and 378 were not involved in it. Veterinary behaviorists showed a more positive attitude toward non-human animals and their welfare, which seems to be more related to the interest in behavioral medicine than to its practice. Moreover, behaviorists attached more importance to the psychological aspects of pet welfare that they perceived as less protected in their feline and canine patients. These findings suggest that being involved in one discipline or another of veterinary medicine do matter in the attitude toward nonhuman animals and their welfare.

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Simple SummaryAlthough cortisol is usually considered the main reference for the assessment of stress, in some animal species it has been shown that prolactin can be used as a biomarker of both acute and chronic stress. Behavioural parameters can also be used to assess the state of welfare and stress. This study was aimed at evaluating the possible relationship between serum prolactin, serum cortisol and behavioural signs of stress in domestic dogs. To reduce the possible influence of some factors, the study was performed on a homogeneous sample formed by 40 castrated male Spanish Greyhound dogs housed in a dog shelter. The weak negative correlation found between serum cortisol and prolactin values agrees with results obtained in other studies, indicating that prolactin response might be an alternative to cortisol response.AbstractProlactin has been recently regarded as a potential biomarker of both acute and chronic stress in several species. Since only few studies until now have focussed on domestic dogs, this study was aimed at evaluating whether prolactin, cortisol and stress behaviour correlated with each other in sheltered dogs. Both cortisol and prolactin analysis were performed in serum samples through a hormone-specific ELISA kit. For each dog, a stress score was calculated by summing the number of occurrences of stress-related behaviours. The presence/absence of fear during the time spent in the collection room was also scored for each individual. Results revealed a weak negative correlation between cortisol and prolactin levels. Neither of the hormones was correlated with the stress score, nor did their values seem to be influenced by showing fear in the collection room. The weak negative correlation found between cortisol and prolactin values agrees with results obtained in other studies, indicating that prolactin response might be an alternative to cortisol response. This, together with the high serum prolactin levels compared to those reported by other authors for healthy domestic dogs, may indicate that prolactin might be a good biomarker of chronic stress, and although further studies are needed to better understand the potential role of prolactin in the evaluation of canine welfare.

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Animals living in the wild are exposed to numerous challenges, such as fires, that can lead to suffering. The impacts of fire have been studied in different branches of ecology, but studies of its effects on the welfare of individual animals remain scarce. The current review aims to synthesize a sample of relevant aspects regarding fire’s negative effects on wild animals. We mainly focus on the immediate impacts of fire on individuals. How animals respond to fire depends on many factors including their life history, evolutionary adaptations to fire, and individual stress coping styles, in addition to the characteristics of the fire. The fundamentals of carrying out future work for animal rescue and prevention of animal harms in fires were also explored. Fires may increase the risk of injury, disease, stress, and mortality for animals living in the wild, resulting in physiological and psychological harm, experiences of suffering, discomfort and pain, and long-term detrimental consequences. Wild animals can benefit from effective rescue, rehabilitation, and release during fires, and post-release monitoring must accurately evaluate their outcome success. The resulting information can be used to educate veterinarians, rehabilitators, and the public in the prevention of the suffering and deaths of as many animals as possible in future fire events, which ultimately benefits animal welfare. This review provides a better understanding of how fire compromises animal welfare, providing an example of how to use the knowledge gathered in animal ecology to examine the welfare of wild animals. It can help raise concern for the situation of wild animals as individuals, and to develop the field of welfare biology, by identifying promising future lines of research.