Behavioral Research on Captive Animals: Scientific and Ethical Concerns

Abstract

Behavioral research on non-human animals (hereinafter referred to as animals) can involve the study of their evolution and natural behavior, cognitive abili­ ties and psychological constructs, or welfare and response to stressors, among other areas of natural animal behavior. Behavioral research on animals is also carried out to model human behavior, for example in psychological studies and pharmacological models, as well as for comparative purposes to under­ stand differences and similarities between species. This chapter focuses on the former-where ethology moves into the laboratory environment to model the behavior of free living animals-however, some of the discussion is also rel­ evant to the laboratory animal model in general because of the very nature of using laboratory animals as "models". For further discussion on animals used to model disease or within pharmacology in particular, see the following chapters in this Volume: Archibald, Coleman and Drake (2019, Chapter 18); Bailey (2019, Chapter 19); Carvalho et al., (2019, Chapter 16); Greek and Kramer (2019, Chap­ ter 17); Pippin, Cavanaugh and Pistollato (2019, Chapter 20); and Ram (2019, Chapter 15). For more on animal models within psychology, see Shapiro (1998). In comparison to other scientific procedures, such as those within biomedi­ cal research, modeling the behavior of wild animals in the laboratory can involve