Abstract: Whereas mammalian mothers and young may retain long-term social affiliations in nature, the management of animals in captivity typically dictates that offspring are abruptly and permanently separated from their mothers at a relatively early age, often prior to the time of natural weaning. For animal breeders, this strategy can enhance the yield of offspring from a breeding population. Morbidity and mortality can also precipitate severance of mother-young bonds. Although it is recognized that early weaning provides nutritional challenges for the young, relatively little attention has been paid to the psychological consequences and long-term impacts of breaking the mother-young bond in non-human mammals. Furthermore, whereas great strides are being made in our understanding of the neurobiological and genetic underpinnings of social bonding, the mechanisms underlying the process of detachment following establishment of a mother-young bond remain relatively unexplored, although parallels can be drawn with processes involved in withdrawal from addictive substances. In this review, we outline mechanisms involved in social bonding. We consider the diversity in extent and duration of mother-young attachment across mammalian lineages and implications for predicting the outcome of severing ties between mothers and young at different times post-partum. We identify characteristics signalling emotional distress resulting from separation of mothers and young and discuss strategies for mitigating separation-induced distress. These include postponement of separation, ensuring high-quality maternal care of young prior to separation, providing bonded individuals with opportunities to separate voluntarily for brief periods prior to permanent separation, use of anti-suck devices prior to separation, allowing a period of partial (fence line) contact prior to full separation, providing substitutes for stimuli previously exchanged between mother and young, providing social buffers, gradual introduction to new housing arrangements, and pharmacological intervention. Areas for future research are proposed, including the use of functional neuroimaging technologies and functional genomics approaches, in combination with behavioural assessments of reinstatement motivation, individual recognition memory and long-term consequences of early separation, to shed further light on the nature of mother-young bonding and detachment in animals.

Abstract: Animals with relatively highly developed brains are likely to experience some degree of self-awareness and the ability to think. As well as being interesting in its own right, self-consciousness matters from an ethical point of view, since it can give rise to forms of suffering above and beyond the immediate physical sensations of pain or distress. This article surveys the evidence for animal self-consciousness and its implications for animal welfare.

Abstract: A telephone survey was conducted of 100 racing stables, 100 riding schools and 100 competition establishments (8,427 horses in total) to determine what management practices were being applied to horses showing stereotypic behaviour, and to determine the underlying reasons for them by assessing the perceptions and opinions of the people working with the horses. The results indicated that horse owners are concerned about stereotypic behaviour, first, because it reduces the performance of the animal (31, 30 and 27 per cent of the owners of racing stables, riding schools and competition establishments respectively), secondly, because it has adverse clinical effects on the horse (52, 55 and 56 per cent), and thirdly, because it reduces the monetary value of the animal (45, 59 and 31 per cent). The belief that these behaviours are learnt or copied also affects the management of affected horses: they are not allowed on to the premises by 4, 32 and 17 per cent of owners of racing stables, riding schools and competition establishments, respectively; attempts are made to remove the causal factors of the stereotypy by 35, 43 and 36 per cent; the behaviours are physically prevented by 77, 67 and 79 per cent, and the affected horses are kept separate from other horses by 39, 30 and 48 per cent.