What is animal happiness?

Abstract

Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research focused on minimizing negatives such as stress, while more recent endeavors strive to promote positives such as happiness. But what is animal happiness? Although often mentioned, the term lacks a clear definition. With recent advances in the study of animal emotion, current interest into positive rather than negative experiences, and the call for captive and domesticated animals to have good lives, the time is ripe to examine the concept of animal happiness. We draw from the human and animal literature to delineate a concept of animal happiness and propose how to assess it. We argue that animal happiness depends on how an individual feels generally-that is, a typical level of affect.

Keywords: affect balance; animal welfare; human happiness; typical level of affect.

Figure 1

The four different views of human quality of life, based on Veenhoven.24 The matrix draws a distinction between chances for a good life and the outcomes of a life, and between external (environmental) and internal (individual) qualities. A distinction is also made between cognitive and affective appraisals linked to the satisfaction with life quadrant.

Figure 2

Schematic representation of the distinction between emotion, mood, and affective happiness. Although emotions and moods are transient affective experiences, affective happiness is stable under more or less stable conditions.

Figure 3

Linking the views of animal welfare as identified by Fraser et al.14 with the concept of animal happiness, defined in terms of affect balance. Natural living and biological functioning are linked to assumed welfare, because various environmental or psychological aspects are assumed to be better for welfare (e.g., more natural environment or good health). Affective states instead are linked to apparent welfare, because it is based on assessing the subjective experience of an animal. When affective states are investigated in the context of an individual's life as a whole, this view of animal welfare can be translated as animal happiness.