Scientist & Philosopher | Former zookeeper, now Lecturer at University of Southampton, specialising in animal welfare, sentience, and ethics
Dr Heather Browning (Veit)
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A growing body of evidence suggests that cephalopods can experience pain and distress, as described in #BiologicalReviews by @dralexschnell.bsky.social, @zoophilosophy.bsky.social, Andrew Crump, Charlotte Burn, and @birchlse.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1002/brv....
This article evaluates the evidence for sentience – the capacity to have feelings – in cephalopod molluscs: octopus, cuttlefish, squid, and nautilus. Our framework includes eight criteria, covering b...
Beyond my book on happiness, I've been working away on /The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Desire/. The volume has 35 entries from many fantastic talented people, on a vast range of topics - wellbeing, decision, action, neuroscience, animals, pleasure, love, economics, AI, and more.
Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D.
Adding to the case for insect sentience - new research shows flexible self-protective behaviour in injured crickets
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
Love this new research showing that mice can discriminate between conspecifics with good and poor welfare (and show a preference for the former as breeding partners). Potentially promising new direction for finding novel welfare indicators, particularly olfactory ones.
doi.org/10.1002/zoo....
Love this idea - 'Creature Connect', using digital technologies to create opportunities for mutually rewarding human-animal interactions in the zoo
dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Nooo why would he be called the 'edible' dormouse 😭
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...
Great review on the validity of abnormal repetitive behaviours as welfare indicators, assessing them against multiple validity tests to show they are (somewhat) robust, and providing potential explanations for observed patterns of failure.
doi.org/10.20944/pre...
My new paper 'Mapping profiles of animal affect' is now out in Biology and Philosophy. In it, I explore why understanding species-specific “affect profiles” matters for animal welfare research, and sketch some possible ways we might begin to map them.
Available open access: doi.org/10.1007/s105...
Abstract. The possibility that insects experience pain is a frontier question at the intersection of behaviour, cognition and philosophy of mind. Interest
Fascinating new open-access paper from @zoophilosophy.bsky.social argues for mapping species-specific "affect profiles"—moving beyond pain as the default proxy for animal sentience.
Dr Heather Browning (Veit)
🌟 2026 UFAW Award Spotlight
We are pleased to recognise Dr Heather Browning (Veit) as a joint recipient of the UFAW Early Career Animal Welfare Researcher of the Year Award.
🔗 Read more about the 2026 UFAW Award winners:
https://ow.ly/s88450YIPzk
#UFAWAwards
Biology & Philosophy - The study of animal consciousness typically focuses on the distribution question: i.e., which animal taxa are conscious. However, recent work has instead suggested a...
My new paper 'Mapping profiles of animal affect' is now out in Biology and Philosophy. In it, I explore why understanding species-specific “affect profiles” matters for animal welfare research, and sketch some possible ways we might begin to map them.
Available open access: doi.org/10.1007/s105...
Insect Welfare Research Society
Science for Animal Welfare
Biology & Philosophy - The study of animal consciousness typically focuses on the distribution question: i.e., which animal taxa are conscious. However, recent work has instead suggested a...
