Hacker News with Generative AI: Animal Welfare

Buying a Robot Cat and Falling into the Weird World of Animal-Robot Research (mitpress.mit.edu)
What began as a TikTok experiment with my rabbit led me into a strange world of cyborg cockroaches, imposter fish, and the ethics of care.

Robotics, Animal Welfare, Research, Technology, Entertainment

3 points by EA-3167 20 hours ago | 1 comments

Orcas abandoned in shuttered marine park filmed in algae-infested pool (nypost.com)
France’s last two captive orcas were filmed stranded in an algae-infested marine park near Cannes months after the park closed, leaving the fate of the marine mammals uncertain.

Animal Welfare, Orcas, France, Marine Parks

24 points by rguiscard 8 days ago | 7 comments

Chinese-owned farms press for repeal of California animal welfare law (kiowacountypress.net)
The largest pork producer in America is owned by a Chinese company, and a lot of people don’t like that.

Agriculture, Politics, China, California, Animal Welfare

25 points by miles 30 days ago | 1 comments

Finland is painting deer antlers with reflective paint (2014) (smithsonianmag.com)
Every year, about 4,000 reindeer lose their lives on Finnish roads in car accidents, causing 15 million Euros of damage every year. And now, the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association is testing out a new way to make the large mammals more visible to drivers: reflective paint.

Wildlife, Traffic Safety, Finland, Environmental Issues, Animal Welfare

101 points by andrewfromx 33 days ago | 120 comments

Vivarium: The keeper of a lab's animals stumbles onto a secret [fiction] (jsomers.net)
The keeper of a university’s lab animals stumbles onto an extraordinary secret.

Fiction, Science Fiction, Animal Welfare, University Research

71 points by jsomers 37 days ago | 17 comments

The Life of a Dairy Cow (vox.com)
The surprising truth about milk is hiding in plain sight.

Dairy Farming, Animal Welfare, Agriculture

18 points by Luc 50 days ago | 8 comments

The Physiology of Foie: Why Foie Gras Is Not Unethical (2019) (seriouseats.com)
I haven't always been comfortable with foie gras, though I've spent a good chunk of my life working with it.

Food, Animal Welfare, Ethics

5 points by Tomte 56 days ago | 5 comments

How 'animal methods bias' is affecting research careers (nature.com)
Some early-career researchers report feeling pressure to use animal models to meet journal and grant requirements, even in disciplines and projects that don’t require them.

Science, Research, Animal Welfare, Ethics, Academia

36 points by LinuxBender 63 days ago | 9 comments

Show HN: I Built an iOS app to locate stray animals (apple.com)
Locate & help stray animals with StraySync! Pin sightings, upload photos, and get real-time alerts—all on an interactive map. Join the community today

Mobile Apps, Animal Welfare, Community, iOS, Geolocation

85 points by Ic3creaM 67 days ago | 42 comments

US egg industry kills 350M chicks a year. New tech offers an alternative (tampabay.com)
Every year the U.S. egg industry kills about 350 million male chicks because, while the fuzzy little animals are incredibly cute, they will never lay eggs, so have little monetary value.

Animal Welfare, Agriculture, Technology, Business

36 points by howard941 155 days ago | 62 comments

Animals as Chemical Factories (worksinprogress.co)
Horses bled for antivenom, crabs drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives — but we need to find ways to scale them.

Animals, Science, Biotechnology, Animal Welfare, Sustainability

47 points by royalroad 161 days ago | 62 comments

How should we treat beings that might be sentient? (arstechnica.com)
If you aren’t yet worried about the multitude of ways you inadvertently inflict suffering onto other living creatures, you will be after reading The Edge of Sentience by Jonathan Birch. And for good reason. Birch, a Professor of Philosophy at the London College of Economics and Political Science, was one of a team of experts chosen by the UK government to establish the Animal Welfare Act (or Sentience Act) in 2022—a law that protects animals whose sentience status is unclear.

Artificial Intelligence, Animal Welfare, Ethics

27 points by rbanffy 173 days ago | 21 comments

The shrimp welfare project (benthams.substack.com)
Imagine that you came across 1,500 shrimp about to be painfully killed. They were going to be thrown onto ice where slowly, agonizingly, over the course of 20 minutes, they’d suffocate and freeze to death at the same time, a bit like suffocating in a suitcase in the middle of Antarctica. Imagine them struggling, gasping, without enough air, fighting for their lives, but it’s no use.

Animal Welfare, Food Production, Ethical Consumption

82 points by 0xDEAFBEAD 186 days ago | 168 comments

Singapore's Cat Problem (nytimes.com)
The reversal of a 35-year ban on cats in public housing won’t be a quick fix for cat-related problems. It’s not even clear how many cats live in the city-state.

Singapore, Animal Welfare, Policy, Urban Planning

3 points by paulpauper 193 days ago | 0 comments

'Vegetarian' salmon might lead the way to better health for humans and fish (phys.org)
Salmon are natural carnivores. In the wild, they eat insects, insect larvae, small herring, crustaceans, and animal plankton. However, in farming, salmon are also fed seafood-based feed, making production dependent on resource-intensive fishmeal and fish oil.

Sustainable Food, Aquaculture, Animal Welfare, Human Health, Nutrition

8 points by PaulHoule 210 days ago | 0 comments

'That's a bloodbath': How a federal program kills wildlife for private interests (npr.org)
A federal program kills hundreds of thousands of wild animals a year. Documents obtained by NPR show that many of those animals were killed in places where no damage to livestock was reported.

Wildlife Conservation, Government Programs, Environmental Issues, Animal Welfare

21 points by thunderbong 224 days ago | 5 comments

US man, 81, sentenced to six months for creating giant hybrid sheep for hunting (theguardian.com)
An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced on Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in central Asia and the US to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

Wildlife Conservation, Animal Welfare, Crime, Law Enforcement, Genetics

58 points by wwarner 234 days ago | 34 comments

Self-cleaning Litterbox kills cats [video] (youtube.com)

Pets, Technology, Humor, Animal Welfare

3 points by andrei-akopian 251 days ago | 0 comments

Is My Cat a Prisoner? (thecut.com)

Pets, Ethics, Animal Welfare

14 points by jbegley 284 days ago | 2 comments

Animal Abuse Is Taking over YouTube [video] (youtube.com)

Animal Welfare, YouTube, Online Content, Social Media

13 points by Rinzler89 293 days ago | 0 comments

Improving cat food flavors with the help of feline taste-testers (phys.org)