A recent article in Neuroepidemiology, called “What the COVID-19 crisis is telling humanity,” argues that the way we treat animals puts us at risk of further disasters similar to the current pandemic. The authors, David Wiebers and Valery Feigin, are neuroscientists. Their call for a change in our treatment of […]
Knowledge of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on animals continues to emerge, albeit slowly. We already knew that the virus probably originated from bats, and may have passed on through an intermediary animal, perhaps the pangolin. We now also now that SARS-CoV-2 can infect pet cats and dogs and cause illness, […]
Major figures such as United States President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have claimed that SARS-COV-2 escaped from a Chinese laboratory. Experts, however, think it is more likely that the novel coronavirus originated from human contact with wildlife, possibly in a wet market in Wuhan. The new […]
One of the notable animal welfare stories to hit the headlines in March was the temporary closing of the Santa Anita Park horse-racing track. The track in California’s Arcadia witnessed the death of over 20 horses in a ten-week period. Santa Anita Park featured in the popular movie Seabiscuit and […]
Popular culture has started to examine the question of whether it is wrong to harm robots. In the series Westworld, the android inhabitants of a Wild West-style theme park are sometimes treated decently by the human visitors. But they are often mistreated and deliberately damaged, sometimes sadistically and immorally. Or […]
