Explore the vast range of titles available.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents an opportunity to explore the role of animals as sources of emotional and physical support during a period when most of the population is experiencing social and environmental challenges. We investigated how companion animal owners perceived the influence of human–animal interaction on their physical and mental health during the first COVID-19 lockdown phase in the U.K., and what concerns they had regarding their animals at this time. We also explored the impact of participants’ interaction with non-companion animals during this phase. A cross-sectional online survey of U.K. residents aged over 18 was conducted between April and June 2020. The final item of the survey invited open-ended free-text responses, allowing participants to describe any experiences and/or perceptions of their human–animal relationships during the COVID-19 lockdown phase. A qualitative thematic analysis of responses was undertaken. Four main themes related to the following aspects of human–animal interactions during the COVID-19 lockdown phase were identified: the positive impact of animal ownership during the COVID-19 lockdown (e.g., amelioration of wellbeing and mental health), concerns relating to animal ownership during the COVID-19 lockdown (e.g., concerns over animals carrying the COVID-19 virus), grief and loss of an animal during the COVID-19 lockdown and the impact of engaging with non-companion animals during the COVID-19 lockdown. The findings complement and extend previous insights into the impact of human–animal interaction with both companion and non-companion animals. They also highlight the challenges of caring for an animal during the lockdown phase and indicate the need to consider the development of further targeted support strategies, such as “day care” for the companion animals of key workers in this context.

Positive human–animal interactions (HAIs) can be intrinsically rewarding and facilitate positive human–animal relationships. However, HAI paradigms vary across studies, and the influence of different interaction paradigms on the animal’s response has been overlooked. We compared the behavioural responses of pigs ( n  = 28) individually tested with two types of gentle tactile interactions with a familiar human: ‘free form (FF)’ where the pig could voluntarily approach and interact as they normally would, and ‘imposed contact (IC)’ where the human imposed tactile contact on the pig according to a standardised protocol. Pigs did not differ in their level of engagement with the human between the two types of interactions. However, they differed in their behaviour as they explored the pen more during the FF test, while they emitted more low-pitched vocalisations (grunts) during the IC test. These differences can likely be imputed to the IC test differing to the pigs’ habituation to human contact, which could have evoked greater attention to the human or triggered frustration due to violation of expectation. These findings highlight the influence of the predictability of the interaction or level of agency provided to the animal in HAI tests and relation to their previous experience of interacting.

The internet has been found to be a popular source for human health information. However, there is a lack of information on pet owners’ use of the internet to source pet health information and implications for the owner–veterinarian relationship. Therefore, the aim of this study was to address this gap in knowledge by focusing on UK pet owners’ general use of the internet to find online pet health information and the impact of this behaviour on the owner–veterinarian relationship. An online survey targeting UK pet owners resulted in 571 respondents. Respondents reported the most frequently used source for pet health information was the internet (78.6 per cent), followed by their veterinarian (72 per cent). Veterinarians and other pet owners, however, were rated as the most trustworthy sources. The topics searched for most often online were specific medical problems (61.3 per cent) and diet/nutrition (58.5 per cent). Regarding the owner–veterinarian relationship, 42.1 per cent of participants reported discussing information they found online ‘sometimes’ with their veterinarian. When asked if their veterinarian recommended specific websites, nearly half (49.6 per cent) stated that their veterinarian ‘never’ made such recommendations, yet over 90 per cent said they would visit veterinarian-recommended websites.

Background Research shows that older adults can experience physical, emotional, and social benefits from owning or interacting with pets. Different variables, such as the type of animal, the context, and the duration of human-animal contact, can influence the effects of animal companionship on health. This umbrella review aims to assess how interactions between animals and older adults impact health and wellbeing. Methods After the definition and registration of the review protocol, five electronic medical databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science and Cochrane Library) were systematically searched in June 2024 to find relevant second-level studies. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses assessing the association between exposure to animals and the physical, emotional, and mental health and well-being of individuals aged 60 years or older were included; studies focusing exclusively on animal-assisted treatments, conducted on older adults with a specific disease or medical condition, and written in a language other than English were excluded. The extracted information comprised the main author and year, objectives, review type, participant details, context and setting, number of databases searched with date range, number and design of studies included, quality ratings, methods used to synthesize evidence, and outcomes. The data extracted from qualitative and quantitative research were presented according to the different types of exposure and summarized for the different outcomes using a tabular presentation. Results The main findings regard the beneficial effects of dog-assisted interventions on social interaction and loneliness of older adults living in facilities; also, dog owners appeared to engage in high levels of walking activity. Qualitative research reported that older adults attributed to pets an important role and a variety of beneficial impacts (i.e., emotional support, sensory engagement, reciprocal interactions); some negative aspects related to pet ownership were also described as worries for pets’ health, and pets’ related expenses. Conclusions Older adults living in facilities could benefit from dog assisted interventions to improve social interactions and decrease loneliness. Dog owners are found to benefit from the animal’s companionship, particularly regarding higher levels of physical activity due to dog walking.

Modern veterinary medicine offers numerous options for treatment and clinicians must decide on the best one to use. Interventions causing short-term harm but ultimately benefitting the animal are often justified as being in the animal’s best interest. Highly invasive clinical veterinary procedures with high morbidity and low success rates may not be in the animal’s best interest. A working party was set up by the European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia to discuss the ethics of clinical veterinary practice and improve the approach to ethically challenging clinical cases. Relevant literature was reviewed. The ‘best interest principle’ was translated into norms immanent to the clinic by means of the ‘open question argument’. Clinical interventions with potential to cause harm need ethical justification, and suggest a comparable structure of ethical reflection to that used in the context of in vivo research should be applied to the clinical setting. To structure the ethical debate, pertinent questions for ethical decision-making were identified. These were incorporated into a prototype ethical tool developed to facilitate clinical ethical decision-making. The ethical question ‘Where should the line on treatment be drawn’ should be replaced by ‘How should the line be drawn?’

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of tactile stimulation on the welfare of goat kids. Thirty-six goat kids were allocated into three treatments as follows: TSG = taking the goat kids out of the cage every day when they received tactile stimulation, RCG = taking the goat kids out of the cage for 5 s, and NRS = not taking the goat kids out of the cage nor receiving tactile stimulation. TSG goat kids received tactile stimulation once a day, for two minutes, from the 3rd to the 40th day. Goat kids' welfare was assessed by considering performance, health, and behavioral indicators. During the voluntary approach test, 96.5% of the goat kids voluntarily approached familiar and unfamiliar humans. There were significant effects only on the interaction between treatment and age on time spent in the corners and time playing (KW = 27.54 and 47.83, p < 0.01, respectively). We conclude that tactile stimulation did not affect any of the welfare indicators addressed in this study.

Quality of life (QoL) plays a significant role in the treatment of dogs with idiopathic epilepsy (IE), yet is so far understudied. This study describes the outcome evaluation of an online questionnaire based on the carer's perception focusing on 62 QoL questions in 159 dogs with IE. Results showed that seizure frequency, but not seizure severity or presence of cluster seizures, was significantly associated with carer-perceived dog's QoL. Dogs receiving third-line antiepileptic drugs had a significantly lower perceived QoL than those that did not. Generalised linear mixed model analysis demonstrated that severity of the side effects sleeping more and ataxia were significantly associated with carer-perceived dog's QoL, with higher severities predicting lower QoL scores. The degree of carer acceptability of seizure frequency and severity was significantly associated with the dog's reported seizure frequency and severity. Moreover, there was a significant association between IE-related QoL changes of the dog and the carer, with reductions in perceived canine QoL scores associated with reductions in carer QoL, and vice versa. In conclusion, aspects of canine IE can affect both the carer and their dog's QoL. This has implications for the management and requires consideration when treatment options and outcomes are discussed.

Automated recognition of equine–human interaction behaviors from video represents a significant challenge in computational ethology, with critical applications spanning animal welfare assessment, equine-assisted services evaluation, and safety monitoring in equestrian environments. Existing approaches to animal behavior recognition typically focus on single species in isolation, rely solely on facial expression analysis while ignoring full-body posture, or employ flat classification architectures that fail under the severe class imbalances characteristic of naturalistic behavioral datasets. Furthermore, no prior framework integrates simultaneous analysis of both human and equine body language for cross-species interaction classification. This paper presents a novel hierarchical classification framework integrating multi-modal computer vision features to distinguish behavioral states during horse–human encounters. Our methodology employs three complementary feature extraction pipelines: YOLOv8 for spatial relationship modeling, MediaPipe for human postural analysis, and AP-10K for equine body language interpretation. From 28 annotated interaction videos comprising 50,270 temporal samples across five horse breeds, we extract 35 discriminative features capturing proximity dynamics, body orientation, and species-specific behavioral indicators. To address severe class imbalance (18.3:1 ratio between affiliative and avoidant categories), we implement cost-sensitive gradient boosting with automatic class weight optimization within a two-stage hierarchical architecture. The first stage classifies interactions into three parent categories (affiliative, neutral, avoidant) achieving 73.2% balanced accuracy, while stage two discriminates six fine-grained sub-behaviors achieving 88.5% balanced accuracy (under oracle parent-category routing; cascaded end-to-end performance is 62.9% balanced accuracy due to Stage 1 error propagation, identifying parent classification as the primary bottleneck). Notably, our system achieves 85.0% recall on safety-critical avoidant behaviors despite their representation of only 3.8% of the dataset. Extensive ablation studies demonstrate that equine pose features contribute most critically to classification performance, while comprehensive cross-validation analysis confirms model robustness across diverse interaction contexts. The proposed framework establishes the first systematic multimodal cross-species behavioral assessment pipeline in human–animal interaction research, with direct implications for improving equine welfare monitoring and rider safety protocols.

BackgroundLiving in a multicat household has been implicated as a risk factor for various feline issues, but evidence is often anecdotal or based on retrospective studies.MethodsData from the Bristol Cats Study, a UK longitudinal study of pet cats, were used. Cats were included if they had remained in either a single cat or multicat household between questionnaires 1 (two months old to four months old) and 5 (two-and-a-half years old). Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were used to analyse associations between single cat/multicat households and measures of health and behaviour (overweight/obesity, abscesses/cat bites, negative interactions with owner and periuria). Multicat households were also subcategorised according to whether owners had reported agonistic behaviour between household cats.ResultsThere was no evidence of association between household type and the likelihood of obesity, abscesses or periuria. The likelihood of negative interactions with the owner (eg, growling or hissing) was influenced by the cats’ relationships; cats in non-agonistic multicat households had decreased odds of negative interactions with the owner, compared with single and agonistic multicat households (P<0.001).ConclusionLiving in a multicat households per se was not a risk factor for the health and behaviour issues investigated, but the intercat relationship is important.

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of tactile stimulation on the reactivity and performance of Brahman calves. One hundred and nine calves were randomly assigned to two treatments: calves that received tactile stimulation (TS, n = 57) and those that did not (NTS, n = 52). Tactile stimulation was performed for eight minutes, 12 hours after birth. The behavioral variables were collected at weaning (209.50 ± 55.83 days) by assigning reactivity scores in the squeeze chute, which ranged from one to five (one was assigned to a calm calf and five to the most reactive). A flight speed score was assigned when each calf exited the squeeze chute. Performance was assessed using the adjusted weaning weight (WW) and daily weight gain (ADG). TS female calves showed lower reactivity scores in the squeeze chute (p < 0.05) and when leaving it (p < 0.05) than  NTS calves, but no significant differences were observed in male calves between the treatments (p > 0.05). WW and GMD did not differ between the treatments (p > 0.05). In conclusion, tactile stimulation performed in Brahman’s calves at birth resulted in less reactivity in female calves without affecting their performance.