Ethology of the Freed Animal : Concept , methods , 2 projects

The present essay illustrates the methodological and theoretical premises of an emerging 8 research area carrying out both ethological and (bio)ethical implications: the ethology of the freed 9 animal (EFA). Unlike existing ethological fields, EFA focuses neither on non human (NH) animals 10 in natural conditions of freedom in their own environment, nor on NH animals kept in conditions 11 of “captivity”. Rather, EFA consists of a comparative study of NH animals that are released from a 12 condition of more or less abusive captivity and instead relocated in an environment more 13 appropriate to their species-specific and individual characteristics and inclinations. Ideal places for 14 this study are contexts like “Animal sanctuaries” and parks/reserves provided with a camp or 15 station for researchers, where a previously-captive NH animal can be reintroduced in his/her 16 natural habitat. Even though EFA exists already, as a de facto practice of the specialized and/or 17 volunteer personnel running sanctuaries and parks, the field still lacks a recognizable scholarly 18 paradigm, and it is yet to be acknowledged at institutional/academic level. By consequence, one 19 important aim for creating a field like this lies in the establishment of an active interaction between 20 the two parties involved (researchers and sanctuaries/parks operators). 21


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This essay intends to introduce the methodological and theoretical premises for an emerging  to laboratory ethology, which observes NH animals in conditions of "captivity" (regardless of the 31 quality of their welfare, which depends on contexts and legislations). Rather, the EFA consists of a 32 comparative and interdisciplinary study of NH animals that are released from a condition of more or 33 less abusive "confinement", from the status of "living tool" of human beings, from any form of 34 exploitation -and instead relocated in an environment as appropriate as possible to their 35 species-specific and individual characteristics and inclinations -including, of course, reinstalling the 36 subject in his/her most natural habitat. "Confinement" is a neutral term aimedat describing various 37 forms of limitation/deprivation of the NH animal's freedom: in this sense, we do not wish to include 38 only the violent and physically-damaging ones. "Significance" is also a key-word, because it will be 39 important to distinguish the forms of confinement that effectively limit or impair a NH animal's 40 freedom, from those that have no serious impact.
Since the 1990's, two notions, previously introduced by two great scholars of the 20th century,

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CH. Waddington and J. Piaget, began to find consensus through experimental findings and took on 135 a central relevance in the evolutionary studies: the "behavior as motor of evolution" (Piaget 1976) 136 and the existence of that non-genetic hereditary systems, able to produce phenotypic modifications 137 much faster than genetic mutations (Waddington 1975;Piaget 1974;, which now we call   This approach, already introduced by Evolutionary Epistemology and defined by K. Popper as 151 an "exploratory or active Darwinism" which "assumes that, very early in the history of life on Earth, environments […] for new places to live in or, sometimes, merely from slightly modified ways of 154 living, for slightly new ways of behaving" (Popper 1982: 39) is integrated, in the contemporary 155 evolutionary studies, with some "Lamarckian" theoretical elements supported by increasingly 156 empirical and experimental evidence. there is more to heredity than genes;

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• some hereditary variations are nonrandom in origin;

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• some acquired information is inherited;

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• evolutionary change can result from instruction as well as selection

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The "four dimensions" of inheritance and evolution which Jablonka and Lamb described are We can today prove that two groups of factors turn out to be the primary ways of triggering

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These are events that in many cases can affect both the organisms directly exposed to them and 211 their descendants, without modifying their genetic code, rather leaving "molecular scars" on their  These are fundamental acquisitions for a field of study such as the EFA, whose starting point, as

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we shall see, is precisely the reconstruction of the "personal history", a biographical profile of every 217 single NH animal observed, and of its provenance context, and whose objective is to learn to 218 encourage as much as possible a dis-anthropization (a word which we shall deepen in the next 219 paragraph) of the freed NH animals, and to study its course with non-invasive methodologies.

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This is why a place like an animal sanctuary is an ideal context to study the constraints and

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With all this in mind, the next step has to be an extensive analysis of the taxonomy, the 228 characteristics and the operativity of anthropization. It is important to point out that the forms of 229 anthropization that we consider worth of analysis are not only, so to speak, factual (that is, 230 physiological, ethological, physical, etc.), but may often trespass the line of the mythical, the 231 metaphorical, the cultural and so forth. This is due to two reasons: a) our conviction that wolf" has resulted in phobias, extermination of specimens, distorted understanding of wolves' 239 behavior, and so forth). This is a golden rule that applies to all the anthrozoological reflections we 240 shall suggest in this section of the article, and we hope that the readership will not be too disoriented 241 by it.

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The NH animals that EFA can study are "freed" animals, not necessarily (or not yet) "free" 243 ones. The difference emerging from these two words implies, to begin with, that the conditions 244 preceding the release -the past indeed -is of foremost importance. The long tradition of ethology 245 has primarily focused on two types of condition: the free/wild one and the captive one. Since

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anthropization is obviously a process that materializes only in the latter situation, we can identify 247 the study of free/wild NH animals as a study of "An-anthropization" (the condition of total absence 248 of anthropization) or -when some form of confinement is likely or bound to happen -

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Needless to say, each entry should not be considered isolated from the others, but in fact often 290 in the position to intersect and overlap with, contain or be contained by, other entries.

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A "freed" NH animal may thus come from radically different conditions -radically different 292 pasts. To begin with, and keeping up with the ways these different conditionsrelate to 293 anthropization, the termination of a more or less extended period of confinement may result in two 294 distinct states, which we shall call "post-anthropization" and (as anticipated) "dis-anthropization".

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Post-anthropization occurs when NH animals that were previously anthropized and now have the

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Once more, it is important to remind that this article is prolegomenon to this possible new field, and 336 that we envision plenty of refinement and improvement in the near future.

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Concept.Reiterating on what we already suggested, we can define the "Ethology of the Freed

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Animal" (EFA) as a comparative and interdisciplinary study of NH animals that are released from a anthrozoological relationship). In the next paragraph, we shall elaborate on these objectives.

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Methods. If concept and objectiveswere already mentioned in our introductory notes, nothing

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specific was yet said about methodological aspects. Obviously, the restrictions of an article of this

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With this in mind, the first concept we shall discuss is that of ethology as an "animal

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To assume an etho-ethnologic approach means then first of all:

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• At the level of procedures and methodologies, to adopt observation and data logging methods 393 which allow to distinguish, in the least invasive possible way, each individual as such, within an 394 observed group, and each observable local or regional intraspecific difference of uses and 395 communication systems in the populations belonging to the same species.

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• At theoretical level, to assume that:

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eachanimal is not a simple repeater of behavioral patterns typical of its species; it is a selective

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Here, of course, we cannot to offer an analysis of the various types of observable play activities;

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we limit ourselves to suggesting that they are subdivided into at least three major groups:

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-Playful activities in which animals interact with elements in the environment that are not 447 living beings;

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-Playful activities in which animals interact with their conspecifics;

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-Playful activities involving animals of different species.

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Each of the last two types goes then into two subgroups: of "object" used to carry out self-earning activities. A typical example of this second group is the 457 classic "play cat and mouse": a non-hungry cat teasing a prey, before or also without killing them.

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The manifestation of these three forms of playing is a significant symptom of the state of functional also in the interaction between mammals and some social birds.

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• As mentioned above, we begin only now to fully grasp that playing belongs to a behavioral 474 repertoire that has developed even outside the mammalian class, and particularly among social whereas anthropocentrism reminds to ethnocentrism and speciesism reminds to racism,

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anthropocracymay be designated to correspond to imperialism and colonialism.

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It is very difficult to imagine, at the present state of human evolution, just any form of 511 anthropization that is not mediated by one or more of these three factors. Even the most benevolent 512 types of anthropization depart anyway (and at least) from a self-positioning, from the human 513 agent's part, "at the centre" of the anthrozoological space (e.g., the responsibility to preserve a given 514 species), or as "magnanimous despot" (e.g., ownership of a pet). The question is problematic per se,

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but it gets even more so, when we consider that anthropocentrism, speciesism and anthropocracy significant biases (there is no room to develop the question here, but the similarity between these 518 "interspecific biases" and the lengthy-problematized "intergroup biases" -see Tajfel 1981 -is quite   519 striking). We see EFA as a significant chance to (commence to) overcome these three filters and to 520 replace the biases with a more balanced and knowledgeable understanding of our fellow species.

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We shall mention only few of the numerous distortions which affect our anthrozoological it. S/he kills, exploits, possesses, hunts, imprisons… even when s/he has "won" already.

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There is no doubt, to our mind, that developing a serious EFA would be of enormous help in ("cancelling the debt") that would make the land totally self-sufficient and the independence 560 permanent.

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Another important distortion that EFA may contribute in addressing critically is what we may 562 call "standardization of diversity", which can be briefly defined as the replacement of diversity with 563 prototypes. We shall again use language as an example: expressions like "animals are X", "animals 564 are not Y", "animals do A", "animals do not do B", are not only gross generalizations of 565 observations/reflections that would require accurate distinctions (species by species, if not specimen 566 by specimen), but they are also "empty" expressions that once again bring the discourse on a 567 metalevel that has little or nothing to do with the topic dealt with (e.g., sentences like "animals are has to be the reconstruction of the "personal history" of every single NH animal observed.
In paragraph 4, we have discussed some anthrozoological questions that must be considered 644 basic premises to an EFA, defining more at length the concept of "anthropization", in terms of 645 typologies, motivations and roles.

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Finally, the essay was finalized with the more extended paragraph 5 (and subsequent