What is animal happiness?

Abstract

Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research focused on minimizing negatives such as stress, while more recent endeavors strive to promote positives such as happiness. But what is animal happiness? Although often mentioned, the term lacks a clear definition. With recent advances in the study of animal emotion, current interest into positive rather than negative experiences, and the call for captive and domesticated animals to have good lives, the time is ripe to examine the concept of animal happiness. We draw from the human and animal literature to delineate a concept of animal happiness and propose how to assess it. We argue that animal happiness depends on how an individual feels generally-that is, a typical level of affect.

Symposium review: Scientific assessment of affective states in dairy cattle

“…A key component of animal welfare is the animal's affective state; in other words, how it feels. Affective states can be negative, like pain and fear, or positive, like pleasure and happiness (Boissy et al, 2007;Webb et al, 2019). Affective states are subjective by nature, making them out of reach of direct assessment.…”

“…Affective states are 1 of the 3 commonly discussed components of animal welfare, the remaining 2 being natural living and physical health (Fraser et al, 1997). As described by Webb et al (2019), natural living and physical health belong to the "assumed" aspects of welfare (as we assume natural environments and good health to improve welfare), whereas affective states belong to the "apparent" aspect (as this directly relates to the animal's experience). This review will focus on affective states, because of their importance to welfare and because of the challenges in developing assessment methods for these states.…”

From Land to Water: Taking Fish Welfare Seriously

“…Most recently, animal welfare scientists expanded on these foundations by recognizing the need to aim beyond a mere reduction of suffering and have instead begun to explore what might constitute a "good life" for individuals of a particular species [7,8]. Interest in this good-life/positive-welfare approach has surged in recent years, with numerous reviews on the topic published in the last year alone [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Positive Welfare for Fishes: Rationale and Areas for Future Study

“…Mellor [20] presents a neuropsychological explanation of the relationship between emotions and behavior in animals based on a model of action-oriented systems previously described in humans. Webb et al [21] suggest adopting human quality of life indicators into animal welfare assessment methodology as a framework for quantifying and assessing animal happiness.…”