Professor Michael Mendl

Professor Michael Mendl

Division of Animal Health and, Husbandry, Langford House
BS40 5DU
(See a map)

mike.mendl@bristol.ac.uk

Telephone Number (0117) 928 9485

Organisations

Farm Animal Science

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Animal Welfare, Emotion and Cognition

Research overview

My research interests are in the area of animal behaviour and welfare.

I am interested in the links between affective and cognitive processes, in particular the ways in which attention, memory and decision-making both influence and are influenced by affective state. One aim of our current research, in collaboration with psychologist Dr Liz Paul, is to investigate whether affect-induced modulation of decision-making, which leads to so-called 'cognitive bias' in humans, is also observed in animals, and hence can be used as a novel indicator of animal affect (emotion) and welfare.

I am also interested in the evolution and function of affective states, developing new measures of animal emotion and welfare that can be used under field conditions, and understanding more about animal cognition, emotion, personality, and social behaviour with a view to identifying and minimising welfare problems for captive animals.

I also have interests in the influence of early experience and social behaviour (including mother-offspring relations, early husbandry procedures, and 'abnormal behaviours' such as tail-biting in pigs) on behavioural development, an individual's ability to cope with challenge, and animal welfare.

Key words

emotion, cognition, decision-making, animal welfare, animal behaviour

Key findings

• Development of a new technique for measuring biases in decision-making under ambiguity ('judgement biases') in non-human animals
• Affect-induced judgement biases appear to be reliable new indicators of animal emotion and welfare
• Affect-induced judgement biases have now been observed in rats, humans and dogs. Other labs have used our technique to demonstrate them in rodents, sheep, starlings, rhesus monkeys, pigs, and honeybees
• Sensitivity to reward loss may also be a useful new indicator of animal emotion and welfare
• 'Discrete' and 'dimensional' theories of emotion can be integrated to provide a functional view of animal emotion and the role of affect in altering decision-making
• The influence of threat (e.g. probability of predation) on optimal decision-making by combined fast/inaccurate and slow/accurate mechanisms can be modelled
• Early experience of stressful husbandry effects may have lifelong consequences in sheep
• Pigs can adjust their foraging behaviour to avoid their knowledge being exploited depending on whom they are foraging with

Techniques in routine use

Operant tests of decision-making

Equipment in routine use

Coulbourn operant equipment, Sound recording hardware and software (Avisoft)

Collaborations

Dr Emily Blackwell, Prof Bill Browne, Dr Tilo Burghardt, Dr Neill Campbell, Dr Rachel Casey, Prof Innes Cuthill, Dr Sion Hannuna, Dr Suzanne Held, Dr James Hodge, Prof Alasdair Houston, Prof John McNamara, Dr Jo Murrell, Prof Christine Nicol, Dr Liz Paul, Dr Emma Robinson, Dr Pete Trimmer, Dr Becky Whay, Prof Nicky Clayton (University of Cambridge), Prof Peter Dayan (UCL), Prof Melissa Bateson (University of Newcastle), Dr Oliver Burman (University of Lincoln), Prof Georgia Mason (University of Guelph Canada), Profs Harry Blokhuis and Linda Keeling (SLU Uppsala Sweden), Dr Jens Malmkvist (University of Aarhus Denmark)

Full publications list in the University of Bristol publications system