From the individual to the population – and back again? Emphasising the role of the individual in animal welfare science

• Published in: Applied animal behaviour science Vol. 212; pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Richter, Sophie Helene, Hintze, Sara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.03.2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: animal behavior; Animal personality; Animal welfare; Ecology; Evolution; hands; humans; Inter-individual differences; Personality; Welfare assessment; Inter-individual differences; Animal welfare; Animal personality; Welfare assessment
• ISSN: 0168-1591; 1872-9045
• DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2018.12.012

•The study of animal personality has gained increasing importance in animal sciences.•The concept has also implications for animal welfare science.•Aim of this article is to emphasise the role of the individual in welfare research.•Individual-tailored welfare assessment and treatment strategies are discussed. During the past decades, the study of “animal personalities” has gained increasing importance in the field of behavioural and evolutionary ecology, thereby contributing to a focus shift from the population to the individual in various research disciplines. Against this background, the overall idea of the present review is to transfer the personality concept from behavioural ecology to animal welfare science, to discuss the role of the individual in different research approaches and to pave new grounds for a more individual-tailored assessment and treatment of welfare-related problems. Moreover, we will explicitly refer to welfare issues “beyond the average”, thereby addressing problems that are not entirely covered by simply studying personality traits in animal welfare research. By combining two different fields, we hope to stimulate more theoretical and empirical work on this topic to find new ways of improving the welfare of animals in human hands even at the individual level.