Theme Layout

Rightsidebar

Boxed or Wide or Framed

Theme Translation

Display Featured Slider

Yes

Featured Slider Styles

Display Grid Slider

No

Grid Slider Styles

Display Trending Posts

No

Display Author Bio

Display Instagram Footer

Dark or Light Style

Search This Blog
Do you Believe in Dog? (2018). Powered by Blogger.

Copyright Do You Believe in Dog (2018)

The content on Do You Believe in Dog? is copyrighted. If you are interested in using any content produced on Do You Believe in Dog? please email a request.

Strap line

It started when two canine scientists decide to become pen pals in an era of digital media...

Translate

Navigation Menu

All rights reserved
Do you believe in dog? 2016

Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts

22 November 2013

Poo Power! Global Challenge

Poo Power! Global Challenge

Hey Julie,
it's not every week I get to issue an invitation to the entire world, but that's exactly what I'm doing today!

 Mia
Students invited to compete in global dog poo competition:

Poo Power! Global Challenge launches Monday 25 November 2013

Students and classes will be pitched against each other to see who can identify the most and largest dog waste 'hotspots' in their local neighbourhood in the 'Poo Power! Global Challenge'. Participants use a GPS-enabled iPhone to download the free Poo Power! App from the App Store. Their task is to identify and map dog poo 'hotspots' in dog parks and public spaces from their neighbourhood from Monday 25 November 2013. 

 While the initial competition is being run for students and schools, anyone, anywhere can participate and contribute to this citizen science initiative.
Duncan & Diesel from Poo Power!
This eyebrow-raising project is a collaboration between dog poo entrepreneur Duncan Chew from Poo Power! and me (!), as a way to say thanks to all the students who voted for me to win I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here! in Australia recently. The collected information will be uploaded onto the Global Poo Map and provides a platform for students to discuss the scientific, social and environmental issues of dog waste. The students are then encouraged to write a letter to their local Government representative of their findings and recommendations. Citizen science at it's finest! 

Scientific American are currently featuring Poo Power! on their Citizen Science website

"From our research only 3% of Australians see uncollected dog waste as an environmental concern," explains Duncan Chew. "When it rains, uncollected dog poo gets washed down drains, effecting water quality and habitat for native animals, as well as making rivers and creeks unpleasant for us to visit."  

I just think this is a great way to utilise the prize money from winning the I’m A Scientist – Get Me Out of Here! competition; it raises awareness of new sustainable energy sources, environmental issues and responsible dog ownership, all while increasing student engagement in a citizen science activity.
The collated information has the poo-tential to identify sites for biogas-powered lights for parks as proposed by the Melbourne-basedproject, Poo Power!, currently in development. The methane that is released from the dog waste as it breaks down inside a 'biogas generator' can be used as a viable renewable energy source.
Photo: Steven Pam

Competition prizes and giveaways are up for grabs for students whose submissions are received between 25th November and 9th December 2013. After this initial competition period closes, the project will continue to run, collecting ongoing hotspot data worldwide.
Check out everything you need to know at www.poopower.com.au
Download the full instructions to participate here

To contextualise the material for classroom lessons, teachers can download the Poo Power! Study Guide

Competition details

Individual student prizes include 2 iPod Shuffles (for the two students who log the most hotspots) and 4 Doggie Doo games (random giveaways to people mapping hotspots) during the two week competition period.
For each competing class, teachers will receive a copy of the 'Dog Poo - The Truth At Last' on DVD. For contextualising the material for classroom lessons teachers are encouraged to download the Study Guide from the Poo Power! Resources page.
Download the full instructions to participate here
Further reading:

 Okoroigwe E.C., Ibeto C.N. & Okpara C.G. (2010). Comparative Study of the Potential of Dog Waste for Biogas Production, Trends in Applied Sciences Research, 5 (1) 71-77. DOI:  

 Nemiroff L. (2007). Design, Testing and Implementation of a Large-Scale Urban Dog Waste Composting Program, Compost Science & Utilization, 15 (4) 237-242. Link: click here to view PDF

 © Mia Cobb | Do You Believe in Dog? 2013
Continue Reading »
DoYouBelieveInDog
0 Comments

You Might Also Like

waterway

27 August 2012

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

Yep - that adult (green coat) having more fun than any kid? That's me.
Hey Julie,

We had a fun weekend, there were miniature trains involved, so how can that be anything other than fabulous? 
I hope you did too!

Can I firstly say – !!!! – how awesome is EthoSearch?! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing that with me – I can’t believe I didn’t know about it and will certainly be starting any conversations with new students in my research group with “Hi, I’m Mia, and here is the link for EthoSearch – you’re welcome”. It’s a GREAT resource.
(source)

So you’d like me to define ‘animal welfare’, would you?

Great question! I’ll show you mine if you show me yours! I’m not sure I have a one line response, but allow me to ‘think out loud’ if you will...

I think it’s fair to say that there’s no single universal definition of ‘animal welfare’. 

I think this is partly because our understanding of how and what animals experience is changing over time and partly because different people emphasise different aspects of animal experiences so their 'angle' on/of animal welfare will also differ.

(source)
It is a term with its roots in philosophy and ethics and I was lucky enough to share great conversation over dinner with Peter Sandøe earlier this year. 

Sandøe trained as a philosopher and is currently a Professor of bioethics in Denmark. You can hear the public lecture (and see the PowerPoint presentation) that he gave in March 2012, titled ‘Animal Welfare – where does science end and ethics begin?’ via the Animal Welfare Science Centre/RSPCA Australia. It’s a fabulous presentation and well worth taking the 45min if this is a topic of interest to you.

When I refer to thoughts about the definition of ‘animal welfare’ used by people who have been working in this field far longer than me, I find:


Broom (who, incidentally, I can happily vouch for as a master of the conference dance floor!):
“The welfare of an individual is its state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment”. 
  • If coping can be achieved easily with little effort and resource, energy and time use – welfare is considered OK. 
  • If it fails to cope or coping takes much time/energy/resources, then welfare is obviously poor.

(source)
From within Sandøe & Christiansen:
  • The welfare of a sentient animal is determined by its capacity to avoid suffering and sustain fitness.
  • Not only will welfare mean control of pain and suffering, it will also entail nurturing and fulfilment of animals natures.

Dawkins:
"Good welfare is achieved when animals are healthy and have what they want."




 From within Stafford:
  • The welfare of an animal relates to its subjective experiences of life.
  • We can never know the subjective experience of a dog but we can be reasonably sure of its physical condition and can use physiological, behavioural and immunological parameters to give some indication of an animal’s experience of suffering and pleasure.
  • The strength of these emotions may be measured using physiological and behavioural parameters that appear to be common to many mammals including humans.
  • Interpretation is always subjective.
(source)

From within Grandin:
Despite debates on what animal welfare is, many guidelines  and regulations have been created to protect animal’s wellbeing. It’s a little peculiar to imagine rules governing a concept that we, in general, have so much trouble understanding and defining. Some animal welfare concepts and concerns are purely ethical and cannot be completely explained scientifically. 

I think many people would anticipate a response to your question along the lines of ‘animal welfare refers to an animal’s physical and mental well-being’. For me this is a little like your example of saying ‘aggression is aggressive because it’s aggression’ – it doesn’t really clarify what is meant. I could also say 'there is no definition, we don't know what we mean by animal welfare'... 
How would you rate this dog's welfare compared to the one below? (source)
(source)
Instead, I think I prefer to say that I understand ‘animal welfare’ as a state of an individual animal which can range from negative to positive and is influenced by its physical, behavioural, environmental and affective experiences. I’m also quite prepared to change this understanding as I continue to learn. 

What ‘good animal welfare’ refers to may need to wait to be a topic for another day!

I’m very interested to hear more about the welfare aspects of the work Marc Bekoff touched on in his article last week. Can you tell me a bit more about that? 

 And remember – I’ve shown you mine, so fair’s fair... 

 Mia

 Referenced:
Broom, D.M. (1986). Indicators of poor welfare, British Veterinary Journal, 142 (6) 526. DOI: 10.1016/0007-1935(86)90109-0

 Dawkins, M.S. (2008). The Science of Animal Suffering, Ethology, 114 (10) 945. DOI: 10.1111/j.1439-0310.2008.01557.x

 Grandin, T. (Ed.) (2010) Improving Animal Welfare: a practical approach, (Book), Cabi; ISBN: 978-1-84593-541-2

 Sandøe, P. & Christiansen, S. (2008) Ethics of animal use, (Book), Blackwell Publishing; ISBN: 978-1-4051-5120-7

 Stafford, K. (2006). The Welfare of Dogs, (Book), DOI: 10.1007/1-4020-4362-7

© Mia Cobb 2012
Continue Reading »
DoYouBelieveInDog
0 Comments

You Might Also Like

welfare

21 August 2012

It's all about objective multiples...

It's all about objective multiples...

sciseekclaimtoken-5036b68d5c7f8
First thoughts...
Hey Julie!

I hope you had a great weekend. Can I tell you more about assessing welfare? Hell to the yeah I can! 

(By the way, who gave you that photo of me working at 3:17am?!) 

I could probably blog every day until the next Canine Science Forum about measuring animal welfare - but there are so many other things I want to discuss with you, that simply won’t do.

In thinking how to respond to your question, I popped out to my bookcase (technically, it’s more of a book wall) and grabbed the first few books I thought of when I think of ‘understanding and assessing canine welfare’. There were 23 of them. Hmmm. And that’s before I even considered pulling up relevant scientific journal papers. So...

Interpreting and measuring animal welfare isn’t easy. There’s no litmus test for animal welfare, no smartphone app' that you can use to scan an animal and get a quick result as to whether its welfare is good, neutral or poor (but how cool would that be!).
It’s not easy, but it’s by no means impossible. 

Saliva collecting is easy with slobbery dogs
As scientists, we love an objective measure (one that requires minimal judgement by the person making the assessment, which reduces the chance of human bias and/or error) so we really love something that gives us numbers to analyse. This is where measurements of physical functions, like heart rate, weight, stress hormones and immune system function are great. No matter what mood I’m in, how much coffee I’ve drunk or what time of the night I’m reviewing my PhD data, I can’t alter the fact a salivary cortisol measure came in at 0.29µg/dL. Because that’s what the value is. It just is.

This dog obviously has 'good drive' (source)
Behavioural information is awesome because we can generally collect it without interfering with the animals, reducing any experimenter effect. It’s important that its measurement is still done objectively and this is where an ethological background (oh hey, like mine!) can be really handy. There are many industry-based terms which may mean different things to different people, or in different contexts. For example, in the working dog industry, terms like ‘drive’, ‘willingness’, ‘suspicion’ and ‘instinct’ are behavioural traits commonly referred to, but what is good drive? Has this boxer got ‘good drive’? How do we measure it? Is a livestock herding dog’s drive the same as a guide dog, police dog or racing greyhound’s drive? 

When we measure behaviour objectively using an ethogram, and look at frequencies (how often within a timeframe) or durations (length of time) of certain actions (like barking, sitting, walking, interaction with another dog, person or toy) we remove the human interpretation (and potential error in interpretation) from the data collection stage, which is SUPER important. So rather than rate the subjective term drive, a scientist would tend to measure objective behaviours or actions, like command-response time, running speed or directional tracking of eye movements.

(source)
Environment is also important as it gives context to the physiological and behavioural data. For example, if a dog’s cortisol reading in my PhD work was unusually high (usually associated with stress) and the video recording showed that dog barking incessantly in its kennel yard for an extended period of time, I might interpret that as a dog with a significant stress response to being kennelled. However, if I know that at that particular time of behavioural sampling and prior to the saliva collection there was a thunderstorm taking place, it might change how I interpret the data in front of me. It’s critical not to overlook even the simplest of environmental factors (like temperature) that have been shown to affect both animal behaviour and physiology.

This is truly just the tip of the ‘assessing animal welfare’ iceberg and there's always more to learn. I haven’t touched on the hot topics of ‘quality of life’, ‘affective states’, individual vs. population welfare, the interplay of public attitudes/perceptions and ethics with animals welfare or why there is currently an emphasis about avoiding bad welfare rather than promoting the good – lucky we have time on our side for all of that! 

 Hopefully this has helped give you an idea of why multiple (physiological and behavioural) measures are so important in assessing canine welfare – the more information you have to help with the interpretation of an animal’s experience, the better – until that smartphone app' comes along anyway!

So how was your weekend, anyway?

Mia

 Dreschel, N.A. & Granger, D.A. (2009). Methods of collection for salivary cortisol measurement in dogs, Hormones and Behavior, 55 (1) 168. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2008.09.010

Martin, P. & Bateson, P. (2007) Measuring Behaviour: An Introductory Guide. (3rd Ed.) Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521535632

© Mia Cobb 2012
Continue Reading »
DoYouBelieveInDog
0 Comments

You Might Also Like

working dogs
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
[name=Do You Believe in Dog?] [img=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih0oTdT87wf4V9ic3qh3r4nwYEQ2IsqFtweaU5RXbfIGujIMEg7n7jBmLq88mM9ZWZZ74jemUA2tK0UDNV-mLf4Mx7UzOEv6FISOcaffwhjDIU-9DgKhUj1VILdKBCInozoneqSXX6_kPP/s100/DYBID3+SPARCS2013.jpg] [description=Do You Believe in Dog? is a popular canine science platform presented by Mia Cobb and Julie Hecht. We think it's important that everyone be able to access and understand the latest canine research.] (facebook=https://www.facebook.com/DoYouBelieveInDog/) (twitter=https://www.twitter.com/doubelieveindog/) (instagram=https://www.instagram.com/mlcobb77/) (instagram=https://www.instagram.com/dogspies/)

Follow @SunriseSunsetBlog