Animal Cognition and Changes to Standards of Welfare

Cognition refers to the mental process by which animals perceive and store information. Animal sentience implies the ability to feel both positive and negative emotions and conscious awareness of a variety of states. Thus, cognitive abilities and emotions are linked to sentience, and have been used for advocating for higher standards of welfare. I will show how goats express their own emotions and perceive emotions in other goats, and I will also outline some of the physical and social cognition abilities of this remarkable and very common livestock species (global population > 1 billion). I will also discuss how it is vital to get the results of cognition and welfare research out to a broad public audience, in order to enact changes so that animals can experience better lives.