Knowledge of domestic animal welfare is helpful in understanding the welfare of wild animals and vice versa

摘要

Addison and Thomas (2010) called the assumption that wild animals possess the same mental reactions as their domesticated relatives a fundamental welfare error. This statement is based mainly on their remark: “The dog with its ten thousand years plus of human selection must be the extreme example of domestication, its psychology so changed that even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, trail behind dogs at reading the intentions, emotions and faces of humans”. This is an anthropocentric remark.This statement is anthropocentric because it assumed initially that only species that are closely related to us may possess capacities that resemble human capacities. However, it turned out that dogs resemble us more, in particular capacities, than chimpanzees. The dog is less related to us than the chimpanzee. This statement is anthropocentric because it assumed that these capacities must be the result of many generations of intimate contact with human beings. However, ten thousand years is a negligible period on the evolutionary timescale. For this reason, domestication has never resulted in the emergence of completely new traits.