The secret life of moody cows (Animal rights barf alert)

Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety — they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness.

Christine Nicol, professor of animal welfare at Bristol University, said even chickens may have to be treated as individuals with needs and problems.

“Remarkable cognitive abilities and cultural innovations have been revealed,” she said. “Our challenge is to teach others that every animal we intend to eat or use is a complex individual, and to adjust our farming culture accordingly.”

Nicol will be presenting her findings to a scientific conference to be held in London next month by Compassion in World Farming, the animal welfare lobby group.

John Webster, professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden. “People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic,” he said.

Webster and his colleagues have documented how cows within a herd form smaller friendship groups of between two and four animals with whom they spend most of their time, often grooming and licking each other. They will also dislike other cows and can bear grudges for months or years.

Dairy cow herds can also be intensely sexual. Webster describes how the cows become excited when one of the herd comes into heat and start trying to mount her. “Cows look calm, but really they are gay nymphomaniacs,” he said.

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also become excited by solving intellectual challenges.

In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph was used to measure their brainwaves.

“Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment,” said Broom.

The assumption that farm animals cannot suffer from conditions that would be considered intolerable for humans is partly based on the idea that they are less intelligent than people and have no “sense of self”.

Increasingly, however, research reveals this to be untrue. Keith Kendrick, professor of neurobiology at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has found that even sheep are far more complex than realised and can remember 50 ovine faces — even in profile. They can recognise another sheep after a year apart.

Kendrick has also described how sheep can form strong affections for particular humans, becoming depressed by long separations and greeting them enthusiastically even after three years.

The Compassion in World Farming conference will be opened with a keynote speech by Jane Goodall, the primatologist who founded the study of animal sentience with her research into chimpanzees in the early 1960s.

Goodall overturned the then accepted belief that animals were simply automatons showing little individuality or emotions. It has taken many years, however, for scientists to accept that such ideas could be applied to a wide range of other animals.

“Sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it,” said Webster. “You only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer’s day. Just like humans.”

>>>>They suggest that such animals may be so emotionally similar to humans that welfare laws need to be rethought.

The animal rights terrorists have hijacked the term animal welfare.

Animal welfare and animal rights are TWO different agendas.

Animal Rights or Animal Welfare?
By Anne Edwards, Vice President
MFAO

Many commonsense, compassionate people who love their animals do not understand the true nature of the animal rights movement. They care about their animals and want to insure they are treated humanely. Because they have been misled into believing that the movement is about something else (helping animals), they "think" they are for animal rights. What they actually believe in is animal welfare, from a responsible animal ownership perspective. They own and love animals and care for them and do not want to see any animal abused.

Do not confuse these feelings of compassion for animals with a movement that actually has no true regard for the protection of an animal's or a human's rights. If a person truly cares about animals, it is critical to realize the difference between the two philosophies. Every person who thinks he/she is for animal rights, when they are actually for animal welfare, poses a threat to themselves and others when it comes to our continued right to own animals. They help perpetuate a philosophy that has the potential to legally change our relationships with animals, permanently. This can happen because those laws that are passed by the animal rights people put us closer and closer to the place where our right to own any animals, for any purpose, has been legislated away.

True animal rights people hate humans and feel they are a blight on the planet. They only tolerate themselves and each other so they can carry on their campaigns against the rest of humanity. They don't particularly like non-human animals but by constantly claiming "animal abuse" they can play on the emotions of softhearted animal welfare people and solicit money from them to promote their agenda.

A part of the animal rights movement is to legally elevate the animal to a level as high as, or higher than, that of a person. When this happens those animals that depend upon us for their food, shelter, vet care, and affection are actually put at risk because the animal rights sponsored law has decreased the expected responsibilities of the animal owner.

If animals are to have the same legal rights as people then they will be expected to have the same level of responsibility as people, also. Is not one of the most important differences between humans and animals that humans are expected to take responsibility for their own actions and the actions of the animals owned by them? If the legal system sees fit to place animals on a par with people then might I ask that my pets take their turn paying the rent, buying my food as well as their own and paying my doctor's bills as well as their vet bills? Think about it the next time you get a solicitation from one of those "animal rights" organizations, such as HSUS or PETA or one of the others, that neither helps or likes animals, and does not pay the rent for you or your pets.

These organizations care about only two things: (1) making more money for themselves and to (2) support and promote an extremist agenda that advocates no interaction whatsoever between humans and animals.

Just like humans? I think not. Cows and lambs are mammals and as mammals their brains have some of the same components as other mammals. From that, we may assume that with those brain components come similar capacities, as found in other mammals whose brains also have those same components. So they feel pain and pleasure, fear and affection. But to call them sentient? They do have the capacity for certain "feelings" but to say they are "just like humans"? Not likely. Without the sapien brain they are not just like humans.

I couldn't have said that better. Your right too many people do NOT know the real Hidden agenda of these animal rights groups. They are such hypocrites. Take Paul McCartney for example, when his wife Linda was diagnosed with cancer they sure changed their tune. They had both been outspoken animal rights activists, but all of a sudden they were donating serious$$$$ for research.
I am one of those people that gets mad when I see a dog chained outside while it's not even 35 degrees out or when people leave their dog in the car on a very hot day. But I realize that I am concerned about their welfare not their rights. Next thing people will want them to vote, I'm sure Bill & Hillary can arrange to have someone help them fill out the voters registration card so long as they register Democrat(Gee that sounds very familiar)!

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