Good animal care is a simulator

Today, countless animals find themselves living in environments created by humans. When an animal opens its eyes for the first time, it does not see the jungle, grassland, desert, mountains, tundra, ocean, lake, or coniferous forest it was evolutionarily prepared for. Instead, it sees a wall, a fence, glass, or bars.

Gone is the society of its own species. Gone are the countless other organisms that once surrounded it. Gone are the endless ecological interactions, the original climate, the weather, and the soil of its ancestral habitat.

In just a few hundred years, nature and its complex ecosystems have been replaced by homes, stables, livestock facilities, and zoos.

Yet for the millions of years before that, every animal lived as one small part of a vast and intricate ecosystem. To avoid competition, each species evolved to specialize in a particular ecological niche.

It is that ecosystem—and that niche—that has shaped the animal's genome, body, and behaviour into a remarkably well-adapted whole. Every feature has evolved for a specific purpose, to be used in a particular way and under particular environmental conditions.

The Animal's Genome Lags Behind

Every aspect of an animal is matched to its original ecosystem and ecological niche. Its body and behaviour respond appropriately to environmental changes because, in nature, those changes occur gradually over long periods of time. This allows evolution to keep pace. The animal survives, reproduces, and thrives.

Most animal welfare problems arise from what is called a genome lag.

Genome lag means that an animal's genome no longer matches its current environment and way of life. Millions of years of natural selection do not disappear simply because an animal has been removed from the wild. Nature never leaves the animal.

Good animal care, therefore, is not simply about feeding, sheltering, or treating disease. Above all, it is about building a simulation.

We create an artificial world that resembles, as closely as possible, the environment to which the animal's body, behaviour, and brain have evolved.

Welfare Emerges from Compatibility

This brings us to one of the most fundamental principles of animal welfare.

The more closely an animal's environment and lifestyle match its evolutionary biology, the smaller the genomic lag—and the higher its welfare.

In other words, many welfare problems do not arise because there is something wrong with the animal itself. They arise because the animal's biology and its living conditions no longer fit together.

When an environment does not allow species-typical behaviour, movement, foraging, social relationships, or recovery, genomic lag manifests itself as stress, disease, or behavioural problems.

Ultimately, animal welfare is about compatibility.

Good Animal Care Begins with Nature

This is why good animal care cannot be designed without a biological understanding of the species.

First, we must understand the environment in which the species evolved.

Then we must understand how it functions within that environment.

• How does it move?

• What does it eat?

• What does a typical day consist of?

• What kinds of social relationships does it form?

• What does it fear?

• What motivates it?

• Which behavioural needs are most essential?

  
  

Only when we understand an animal's original ecological world can we begin to build an effective artificial one.

What Kind of Simulation Should We Build?

The goal of good animal care is not to reproduce nature perfectly. That would be impossible.

Instead, the goal is to build the most effective simulation possible—a living environment that provides the biologically meaningful experiences to which the animal's body has evolved to respond.

The simulation does not have to look like nature.

But from the animal's perspective, it should function in much the same way.

I believe this represents both the current scientific direction of animal welfare and, hopefully, its global future. The focus is shifting away from isolated welfare indicators and individual management practices towards systems-level design—creating environments in which an animal's genome and its everyday life truly align.

When we begin to think of animal care as building a simulation, the questions we ask also begin to change.

Instead of asking:

What does this animal need?

We can ask:

What kind of world do we need to simulate for this animal?