Activists pressure Milan Fashion Week to go fully fur-free


By AFP
March 1, 2026


Anti-fur campaigners are hoping to step up pressure on Milan Fashion Week to ban brands who still use fur. - Copyright AFP Miguel MEDINA

Alexandria SAGE

Animal activists have been turning up the heat on Milan Fashion Week to adopt a fully fur-free policy, with dozens of protesters demonstrating outside the Giorgio Armani show on Sunday.

Although the Armani Group went fur-free a decade ago, activists hope the powerful luxury company can pressure the National Chamber of Italian Fashion (CNMI), which organises fashion week, to disallow brands which use fur from participating.

Sunday’s demonstration was one of several protests carried out this week in Milan by international anti-fur activists organised under the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT).

Behind a barricade and large banner saying “Milan Fashion Week Go Fur-Free”, activists with a megaphone yelled “Shame on you for what you do!” as Armani guests left the show.

Use of fur in the global fashion industry has dramatically fallen in recent years due to concerns about animal cruelty, changing trends and new synthetic alternatives.

But there remain notable holdouts, such as Fendi, owned by French conglomerate LVMH, a storied Italian luxury brand whose roots are in fur.

Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou, the chief executive of Fendi, sits on the board of directors of the CNMI along with brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna, which have already rejected fur.

Campaigners hope the anti-fur designers can convince Milan Fashion Week to ban fur, as London and New York have done.

Smaller fashion weeks, including in Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, have also gone fur-free.

“It won’t be Fendi that helps us reach our goal, because they have no interest in pushing this issue forward, but other brands might be able to contribute,” Alberto Bianchi, 25, one of the protest’s organisers, told AFP.

The CNMI did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

– Step forward? –

The activists had demonstrated Wednesday outside Fendi’s Milan headquarters where its runway show took place.

Inside, newly seated designer Maria Grazia Chiuri showed a collection that included “remodelled” furs, or old furs reworked.

Bianchi said that focus on recycling could possibly be seen as “a step forward” but cautioned that LVMH is still actively investing in the use of fur.

“I see it as a one-off move maybe to do a bit of greenwashing,” he said.

“As long as we still have fur farms in Europe and we still have the possibility of importing it, it’s a gesture that doesn’t change the underlying idea,” Bianchi added.

The coalition won a victory in late January when pressure campaigns led to shipping giant DHL and cosmetics company Wella withdrawing as sponsors of Milan Fashion Week.

Later this month, the European Commission is expected to rule on a 2023 citizens’ initiative that called on the EU to ban fur farms and the killing of animals such as mink, foxes, raccoon dogs or chinchillas solely for their pelts.

Activists cite the cruelty inherent in fur farming, in which the animals are crammed into tiny wire battery cages before being gassed or electrocuted.

Milan Fashion Week ends on Monday, with focus now turning to Paris Fashion Week — which similarly does not have an anti-fur policy.

WORD OF THE DAY (WOTD)

Scientists map the navigation styles of wild dogs and cats

Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways

FELIX MUST BE SINGULAR

A University of Maryland-led study that followed over 1,200 animals across six continents challenges longstanding assumptions about animal movement and has implications for conservation and management of at-risk mammalian carnivores globally

University of Maryland

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The next time you watch your dog visit the same places around your yard or notice that your cat seems to explore a new area every time it ventures outside, consider this: you might be witnessing an ancient evolutionary strategy in action.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of September 29, 2025 reveals that wild canids have, on average, both a greater density of travel routeways and a greater probability of routeway usage than wild felids. Led by University of Maryland researchers, the collaborative study used GPS collar data detailing the movements of 1,239 individual carnivores representing 34 species across six continents over the past decade—the largest comparative study of carnivore movement ecology ever conducted.

“We found that carnivore species use space in fundamentally different ways,” said the study’s lead scientist William Fagan, a Distinguished University Professor of Biology at UMD. “Members of the dog family appear much more structured in their uses of space. On average, they rely more heavily on favored travel routes compared to members of the cat family.”

Fagan and his collaborators found that wild members of the dog family—wolves, foxes, coyotes, and others—consistently create and stick to specific travel routes within their territories. But their distant carnivore cousins in the cat family—from bobcats to lions and leopards—tend to roam more freely, relying less strongly on favored routes.

The findings challenge scientists’ traditional understanding of the movement ecology of mammalian predators. Historically, researchers assumed that predators moved randomly throughout their territories, an assumption so widespread that it was baked into standard mathematical models. However, the new findings show that many carnivores create invisible “highway” systems that they use repeatedly to move through portions of their home ranges perhaps thanks in part to the dogs’ powerful sense of smell.

“We suspect that this split reflects deep evolutionary differences in how these species navigate and find their way around,” Fagan explained. “Canids possess superior olfactory abilities compared to felids, potentially helping them establish and remember preferred travel routes. It looks like these different navigation strategies have developed over millions of years since dogs and cats last shared a common ancestor.”

“Given the inherent heterogeneity in such a large, global dataset, the magnitude and consistency of these differences is striking,” says senior author Justin M. Calabrese, head of the Earth System Science research group at CASUS in Germany and Adjunct Professor at UMD. “However, we were careful to check that the lineage-specific differences persisted even after for controlling for many potentially confounding factors.” Intriguingly, the differences between canids and felids actually became stronger when the researchers restricted their analyses to nine shared landscapes where both canids and felids could be studied together, removing the influence of variation in vegetation type, human “footprints”, and other factors across landscapes.

The researchers believe that their findings have many implications for improving wildlife conservation and management practices. Fagan noted that understanding and anticipating regularity of animal movement patterns is crucial for predicting human-wildlife encounters and organizing conservation areas, particularly in protecting endangered species from threats such as poachers. For example, Fagan and collaborators held a workshop at UMD’s Brin Mathematics Research Center focusing on the links between movement, encounters, and the dynamics of disease transmission, mate-finding and predator-prey systems.

“This research was a massive undertaking, beginning as a multitude of email exchanges during the COVID pandemic and ultimately transforming into the world’s biggest comparative carnivore movement dataset involving 177 collaborators around the world. The project demonstrated how modern GPS technology and sophisticated analysis methods developed by our research group can reveal fascinating hidden aspects of animal behavior that were impossible to study just a short time ago,” Fagan said.

###

The paper, “Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of September 29, 2025.

This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Infrastructure Innovation for Biological Research Program (Grant No. 1915347), Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Saxon Ministry for Science, Culture, and Tourism (SMWK).

In addition to Fagan, other co-authors of this research affiliated with UMD’s Department of Biology include research technician Ananke G. Krishnan, research scientists Christen H. Fleming and Justin M. Calabrese, PhD students Gayatri Anand, Stephanie Chia, Qianru Liao, and Anshuman Swain, and undergraduates Christina Barrett, Varun Chilukuri, Daisy Liao, Sarah Na, Shreyas Ramulu, Elizabeth Sharkey, and Steven Su. Also contributing were Professor Michael Dougherty from UMD’s Department of Psychology and Assistant Dean Katerina V. Thompson from the College of Computer, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences. 

 

---

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2401042122 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways

This grassland bird eavesdrops on prairie dogs to keep itself safe from predators

By —Christina Larson, Associated Press

Science Jun 14, 2025 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prairie dogs are the Paul Reveres of the Great Plains: They bark to alert neighbors to the presence of predators, with separate calls for dangers coming by land or by air.

“Prairie dogs are on the menu for just about every predator you can think of”— golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, foxes, badgers, even large snakes — said Andy Boyce, a research ecologist in Montana at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

Those predators will also snack on grassland nesting birds like the long-billed curlew.

To protect themselves, the curlews eavesdrop on the alarms coming from prairie dog colonies, according to research published Thursday in the journal Animal Behavior.

READ MORE: Ronan the sea lion is better than ever at grooving to a beat, new study finds

Previous research has shown birds frequently eavesdrop on other bird species to glean information about potential food sources or approaching danger, said Georgetown University ornithologist Emily Williams, who was not involved in the study. But, so far, scientists have documented only a few instances of birds eavesdropping on mammals.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s rare in the wild,” she said, “it just means we haven’t studied it yet.”

Prairie dogs live in large colonies with a series of burrows that may stretch for miles underground. When they hear one each other’s barks, they either stand alert watching or dive into their burrows to avoid approaching talons and claws.

“Those little barks are very loud — they can carry quite a long way,” said co-author Andrew Dreelin, who also works for the Smithsonian.

A long-billed curlew is seen at the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area in Mora County, New Mexico, in this photo dated Nov. 19, 2021. Photo by Anna Weyers Blades/USFWS

The long-billed curlew nests in short-grass prairie and incubates eggs on a ground nest. When one hears the prairie dog alarm, she responds by pressing her head, beak and belly close to the ground.

In this crouched position, the birds “rely on the incredible camouflage of their feathers to become essentially invisible on the Plains,” Dreelin said.

To test just how alert the birds were to prairie dog chatter, researchers created a fake predator by strapping a taxidermied badger onto a small remote-controlled vehicle. They sent this badger rolling over the prairie of north-central Montana toward curlew nests — sometimes in silence and sometimes while playing recorded prairie dog barks.

When the barks were played, curlews ducked into the grass quickly, hiding when the badger was around 160 feet (49 meters) away. Without the barks, the remote-controlled badger got within about 52 feet (16 meters) of the nests before the curlews appeared to sense danger.

“You have a much higher chance of avoiding predation if you go into that cryptic posture sooner — and the birds do when they hear prairie dogs barking,” said co-author Holly Jones, a conservation biologist at Northern Illinois University.

Prairie dogs are often thought of as “environmental engineers,” she said, because they construct extensive burrows and nibble down prairie grass, keeping short-grass ecosystems intact.

“But now we are realizing they are also shaping the ecosystems by producing and spreading information,” she said.

Trump’s push to control Greenland echoes US purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867

Talk of a takeover of Greenland may seem fanciful. But it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. was able to procure a piece of the Arctic


President Dwight Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Alaska as the 49th state, Jan. 3, 1959.

 (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)

THE CONVERSATION
MAY 11, 2025
William L. Iggiagruk Hensley


President-elect Donald Trump is again signaling his interest in Greenland through a series of provocative statements in which he’s mused about the prospect of the U.S. taking ownership – perhaps by force or economic coersion – of the world’s largest island by area.

Talk of a takeover of Greenland may seem fanciful. But it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. was able to procure a piece of the Arctic. The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. To mark the 150th anniversary of the sale in 2017, we asked William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, a visiting professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, to write about that historic sale. This is the article "The Conversation" published then, with minor updates.

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Russian envoy Baron Edouard de Stoeckl signed the Treaty of Cession. With a stroke of a pen, Tsar Alexander II had ceded Alaska, his country’s last remaining foothold in North America, to the United States for US$7.2 million.

That sum, amounting to just $138 million in today’s dollars, brought to an end Russia’s 125-year odyssey in Alaska and its expansion across the treacherous Bering Sea, which at one point extended the Russian Empire as far south as Fort Ross, California, 90 miles from San Francisco Bay.

Today, Alaska is one of the richest U.S. states thanks to its abundance of natural resources, such as petroleum, gold and fish, as well as its vast expanse of pristine wilderness and strategic location as a window on Russia and gateway to the Arctic.

So, what prompted Russia to withdraw from its American beachhead? And how did it come to possess it in the first place?

As a descendant of Inupiaq Eskimos, I have been living and studying this history all my life. In a way, there are two histories of how Alaska came to be American – and two perspectives. One concerns how the Russians took “possession” of Alaska and eventually ceded it to the U.S. The other is from the perspective of my people, who have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and for whom the anniversary of the cession brings mixed emotions, including immense loss but also optimism.

Russia looks east

The lust for new lands that brought Russia to Alaska and eventually California began in the 16th century, when the country was a fraction of its current size.

That began to change in 1581, when Russia overran a Siberian territory known as the Khanate of Sibir, which was controlled by a grandson of Genghis Khan. This key victory opened up Siberia, and within 60 years the Russians were at the Pacific.

The Russian advance across Siberia was fueled in part by the lucrative fur trade, a desire to expand the Russian Orthodox Christian faith to the “heathen” populations in the east and the addition of new taxpayers and resources to the empire.

In the early 18th century, Peter the Great – who created Russia’s first navy – wanted to know how far the Asian landmass extended to the east. The Siberian city of Okhotsk became the staging point for two explorations he ordered. And in 1741, Vitus Bering successfully crossed the strait that bears his name and sighted Mt. Saint Elias, near what is now the village of Yakutat, Alaska.

Although Bering’s second Kamchatka expedition brought disaster for him personally when adverse weather on the return journey led to a shipwreck on one of the westernmost Aleutian Islands and his eventual death from scurvy in December 1741, it was an incredible success for Russia. The surviving crew fixed the ship, stocked it full of hundreds of the sea otters, foxes and fur seals that were abundant there, and returned to Siberia, impressing Russian fur hunters with their valuable cargo. This prompted something akin to the Klondike gold rush 150 years later.

Challenges emerge

But maintaining these settlements wasn’t easy. Russians in Alaska, who numbered no more than 800 at their peak, faced the reality of being half a globe away from Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the empire, making communications a key problem.

Also, Alaska was too far north to allow for significant agriculture and therefore unfavorable as a place to send large numbers of settlers. So they began exploring lands farther south, at first looking only for people to trade with so they could import the foods that wouldn’t grow in Alaska’s harsh climate. They sent ships to what is now California, established trade relations with the Spaniards there and eventually set up their own settlement at Fort Ross in 1812.

Thirty years later, however, the entity set up to handle Russia’s American explorations failed and sold what remained. Not long after, the Russians began to seriously question whether they could continue their Alaskan colony as well.

For starters, the colony was no longer profitable after the sea otter population was decimated. Then there was the fact that Alaska was difficult to defend, and Russia was short on cash due to the costs of the war in Crimea.

Americans eager for a deal

So, clearly, the Russians were ready to sell, but what motivated the Americans to want to buy?

In the 1840s, the United States had expanded its interests to Oregon, annexed Texas, fought a war with Mexico and acquired California. Afterward, Secretary of State Seward wrote in March 1848:



“Our population is destined to roll resistless waves to the ice barriers of the north, and to encounter oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific.”

Almost 20 years after expressing his thoughts about expansion into the Arctic, Seward accomplished his goal.

In Alaska, the Americans foresaw a potential for gold, fur and fisheries, as well as more trade with China and Japan. The Americans worried that England might try to establish a presence in the territory, and the acquisition of Alaska, it was believed, would help the U.S. become a Pacific power. And overall the government was in an expansionist mode backed by the then-popular idea of “manifest destiny.”

So a deal with incalculable geopolitical consequences was struck, and the Americans seemed to get quite a bargain for their $7.2 million.

Just in terms of wealth, the U.S. gained about 370 million acres of mostly pristine wilderness, including 220 million acres of what are now federal parks and wildlife refuges. Hundreds of billions of dollars in whale oil, fur, copper, gold, timber, fish, platinum, zinc, lead and petroleum have been produced in Alaska over the years – allowing the state to do without a sales or income tax and give every resident an annual stipend. Alaska still likely has billions of barrels of oil reserves.

The state is also a key part of the United States defense system, with military bases located in Anchorage and Fairbanks, and it is the country’s only connection to the Arctic, which ensures it has a seat at the table as melting glaciers allow the exploration of the region’s significant resources.

Impact on Alaska Natives

But there’s an alternate version of this history.

When Bering finally located Alaska in 1741, Alaska was home to about 100,000 people, including Inuit, Athabascan, Yupik, Unangan and Tlingit. There were 17,000 alone on the Aleutian Islands.

Despite the relatively small number of Russians who at any one time lived at one of their settlements – mostly on the Aleutians Islands, Kodiak, Kenai Peninsula and Sitka – they ruled over the Native populations in their areas with an iron hand, taking children of the leaders as hostages, destroying kayaks and other hunting equipment to control the men and showing extreme force when necessary.

The Russians brought with them weaponry such as firearms, swords, cannons and gunpowder, which helped them secure a foothold in Alaska along the southern coast. They used firepower, spies and secured forts to maintain security, and they selected Christianized local leaders to carry out their wishes. They also met resistance, however, such as from the Tlingits, who were capable warriors, ensuring their hold on territory was tenuous.

By the time of the cession, only 50,000 Indigenous people were estimated to be left, as well as 483 Russians and 1,421 Creoles (descendants of Russian men and Indigenous women).

On the Aleutian Islands alone, the Russians enslaved or killed thousands of Aleuts. Their population plummeted to 1,500 in the first 50 years of Russian occupation due to a combination of warfare, disease and enslavement.

When the Americans took over, the United States was still engaged in its Indian wars, so they looked at Alaska and its Indigenous inhabitants as potential adversaries. Alaska was made a military district by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

For their part, Alaska Natives claimed that they still had title to the territory as its original inhabitants and having not lost the land in war or ceded it to any country – including the U.S., which technically didn’t buy it from the Russians but bought the right to negotiate with the Indigenous populations. Still, Natives were denied U.S. citizenship until 1924, when the Indian Citizenship Act was passed.

During that time, Alaska Natives had no rights as citizens and could not vote, own property or file for mining claims. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, in conjunction with missionary societies, in the 1860s began a campaign to eradicate Indigenous languages, religion, art, music, dance, ceremonies and lifestyles.

It was only in 1936 that the Indian Reorganization Act authorized tribal governments to form, and only nine years later overt discrimination was outlawed by Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945. The law banned signs such as “No Natives Need Apply” and “No Dogs or Natives Allowed,” which were common at the time.

Statehood and a disclaimer

Eventually, however, the situation improved markedly for Natives.

Alaska finally became a state in 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act, allotting it 104 million acres of the territory. And in an unprecedented nod to the rights of Alaska’s Indigenous populations, the act contained a clause emphasizing that citizens of the new state were declining any right to land subject to Native title – which by itself was a very thorny topic because they claimed the entire territory.

A result of this clause was that in 1971 President Richard Nixon ceded 44 million acres of federal land, along with $1 billion, to Alaska’s Native populations, which numbered about 75,000 at the time. That came after a Land Claims Task Force that I chaired gave the state ideas about how to resolve the issue.

Today, Alaska has a population of 740,000, of which 120,000 are Natives.

As the United States celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Cession, we all – Alaskans, Natives and Americans of the lower 48 – should salute Secretary of State William H. Seward, the man who eventually brought democracy and the rule of law to Alaska.

This article was first published on March 29, 2017.


The Conversation is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to unlocking the ideas and knowledge of academic experts for the public.

Scapegoating Wild Birds Won’t Solve Avian Flu: We Need Radical Farming Reform

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence.


South Korean health officials inspect a rice field frequented by migrating birds in Seosan, 130 kilometers (78 miles) southwest of Seoul, on November 24, 2006.
(Photo: Jeon Young-Han/AFP via Getty Images)

Peter Stevenson
May 10, 2025

Common Dreams

For migratory and other wild birds, bird flu is a disaster. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, states that 169 million U.S. poultry have been affected by highly pathogenic bird flu since January 2022. Yet worldwide, tens of millions of wild birds have died of bird flu—which has also spread to mammals, including over 1,000 US. dairy herds.

Saturday 10 May is World Migratory Bird Day, a global event for raising awareness of migratory birds and issues related to their conservation. The poultry industry and governments like to blame wild birds for bird flu. However, the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds—which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) stresses that wild birds are in fact the victims of highly pathogenic bird flu; they do not cause it. As a recent study states, “This panzootic did not emerge from nowhere, but rather is the result of 20 years of viral evolution in the ever-expanding global poultry population.”

Until recently, the bird flu viruses that circulate naturally in wild birds were usually of low pathogenicity; they generally caused little harm to the birds. It is when it gets into industrial poultry sheds—often on contaminated clothing, feed, or equipment—that low pathogenic avian influenza can evolve into dangerous highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down.

Industrial poultry production, in which thousands of genetically similar, stressed birds are packed into a shed, gives a virus a constant supply of new hosts; it can move very quickly among the birds, perhaps mutating as it does so. In this situation, highly virulent strains can rapidly emerge. The European Food Safety Authority warns that it is important to guard against certain low pathogenic avian influenza subtypes entering poultry farms “as these subtypes are able to mutate into their highly pathogenic forms once circulating in poultry.”

Once highly pathogenic avian influenza strains have developed in poultry farms, they can then be carried back outside—for example, through the large ventilation fans used in intensive poultry operations—and spread to wild birds. The Scientific Task Force states that since the mid-2000s spillover of highly pathogenic bird flu from poultry to wild birds has occurred “on multiple occasions.”

So, low pathogenic bird flu is spread from wild birds to intensive poultry where it can mutate into highly pathogenic bird flu, which then spills over to wild birds and can even return back to poultry in a growing and continuing vicious circle.

Following its evolution in farmed poultry, the highly pathogenic virus has adapted to wild birds, meaning that it is circulating independently in wild populations, with some outbreaks occurring in remote areas that are distant from any poultry farms.
Is There a Health Risk for Humans?


While the health risk to humans from bird flu may be low, it cannot be ignored. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to mammals including otters, foxes, seals, dolphins, sea lions, dogs, and bears. Worryingly, it has been found in a Spanish mink farm where it then was able to spread from one infected mink to another.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that cow-to-cow transmission is a factor in the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. The ability for bird flu to move directly from one mammal to another is troubling as a pandemic could ensue if it could move directly from one human to another.

Scientists at Scripps Research reveal that a single mutation in the H5N1 virus that has recently infected U.S. dairy cows could enhance the virus’ ability to attach to human cells, potentially increasing the risk of passing from person to person.

A 2023 joint statement from the World Health Organization, the FAO, and WOAH stated that, while avian influenza viruses normally spread among birds, “the increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza detections among mammals—which are biologically closer to humans than birds are—raises concern that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily.”

Some mammals may also act as mixing vessels, leading to the emergence of new viruses that could be more harmful.
Pigs as Mixing Vessels

Pigs can be infected by avian and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. Pigs can act as mixing vessels in which these viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses can emerge. The U.S. CDC explains that if the resulting new virus infects humans and can spread easily from person to person, a flu pandemic can occur.
Need for a Coherent Strategy to End Bird Flu

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down. There is no sign of this happening. Without an exit strategy we are likely to face repeated, devastating outbreaks of bird flu for years to come. We need an action plan to restructure the poultry and pig sectors to reduce their capacity for generating highly pathogenic diseases.

We need to:Move to a poultry sector with smaller flocks and lower stocking densities to give the birds more space. Transmission and amplification of bird flu would be much less likely in such conditions.

End the practice of clustering a large number of poultry farms close together in a particular area. Between-farm spread is a major contributor to the transmission of highly pathogenic bird flu.

End the use of birds genetically selected for very fast growth. Such birds have impaired immune systems making them more susceptible to disease.

In light of pigs’ capacity for acting as mixing vessels for human, avian, and swine influenza viruses, the pig sector too needs to be restructured to make it less vulnerable to the transmission and amplification of influenza viruses. As with poultry, this would involve reducing stocking densities, smaller group sizes, and avoiding concentrating large numbers of farms in a particular area.

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence. Failure to rethink industrial farming leaves us vulnerable, with the continued devastation of wild birds and poultry, and perhaps even a human pandemic.

Peter Stevenson is the chief policy adviser of Compassion in World Farming.
Full Bio >

Man’s best friend may be nature’s worst enemy, study on pet dogs finds

Curtin University

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New Curtin University research into the overlooked environmental impact of pet dogs has found far-reaching negative effects on wildlife, ecosystems and climate.

While ecological damage caused by cats has been extensively studied, the new research found dogs, as the world’s most common large carnivores, present a significant and multifaceted environmental threat.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Bill Bateman, from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the research found that human-owned, pet dogs disturb and directly harm wildlife, particularly shorebirds, even when leashed.

“As well as predatory behaviour like chasing wildlife, dogs leave scents, urine and faeces, which can disrupt animal behaviour long after the dogs have left,” Associate Professor Bateman said.

“Studies have found that animals like deer, foxes and bobcats in the US are less active or completely avoid areas where dogs are regularly walked, even in the absence of the dogs

“Dog waste also contributes to pollution in waterways and inhibits plant growth, while wash-off from chemical treatments used to clean and guard dogs from parasites can add toxic compounds to aquatic environments.

“In addition, the pet food industry, driven by a vast global dog population, has a substantial carbon, land and water footprint.”

Associate Professor Bateman said addressing these challenges required a careful balance between reducing environmental harm and maintaining the positive role of dogs as companions and working animals.

“Dogs are incredibly important to people’s lives and their roles range from providing companionship to contributing to conservation efforts as detection dogs,” Associate Professor Bateman said.

“However, the sheer number of pet dogs globally, combined with uninformed or lax behaviours by some owners, is driving environmental issues that we can no longer ignore.”

The study also sheds light on barriers to sustainable pet ownership, finding that while the dog food industry is a key factor in national sustainability action plans, only 12 to 16 per cent of dog owners are willing to pay more for eco-friendly pet food, largely due to rising costs. Additionally, a lack of awareness among owners about the impact of dogs on the environment compounds the issue.

“Many owners simply don’t realise the environmental damage dogs can cause, from disturbing wildlife to polluting ecosystems,” Associate Professor Bateman said.

“Others may feel their individual actions won’t make a difference, leading to a ‘tragedy of the commons’ where shared spaces like beaches and woodlands suffer cumulative degradation

“Restrictive measures such as banning dogs from sensitive areas are necessary for protecting vulnerable species but they are not a complete solution. We are calling for a collaborative effort between dog owners, conservation groups and policymakers to develop strategies that balance pet ownership with environmental care.”

The paper, ‘Bad Dog? The environmental effects of owned dogs,’ has been published in Pacific Conservation Biology and can be found online here: https://doi.org/10.1071/PC24071

DOI

10.1071/PC24071 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Bad Dog? The environmental effects of owned dogs

Article Publication Date

9-Apr-2025

Canine EEG helps human: cross-species and cross-modality epileptic seizure detection via multi-space alignment

Science China Press

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For temporal similarity, intracranial EEG from both canines and humans exhibits large fluctuations during epileptic seizures, indicating the transferability of time-domain features across species. For entropy similarity, the approximate entropy of intracranial EEG from both species increases significantly during seizures, indicating the transferability of entropy features across species. For spectral similarity, power spectral density spectrograms derived from consecutive Fourier transforms for both species show increased power across all channels during seizures, suggesting the transferability of frequency-domain features.

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Credit: ©Science China Press

The study, led by Professor Dongrui Wu from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, first analyzed the feature similarities across species (canine/human) and modalities (scalp/intracranial EEG), from the perspective of temporal, spectral, and entropy features (Figure 1). For temporal features, EEG signals from both canines and humans exhibit large fluctuations during epileptic seizures, indicating the transferability in the time domain. For entropy features, the approximate entropy of intracranial EEG from both species increases significantly during seizures, indicating their transferability across species. For spectral features, power spectral density spectrograms derived from consecutive Fourier transforms for both species show an increase in the power across all channels during seizures, suggesting the transferability in the frequency domain.

However, discrepancies across species and modalities are also evident (Figure 2). Input space disparity across species is highlighted by the discrepancy in electrode configurations between species. In terms of data acquisition devices, canine intracranial EEG signals were captured using implanted intracranial electrodes, whereas human scalp EEG signals were collected via non-invasive scalp electrodes. Even for the same signal modality, the number and configuration of electrodes can be significantly different, e.g., 16 intracranial electrodes were used for canines’ intracranial EEG data, whereas only 6 were used for humans’ intracranial EEG data. Feature distribution gaps between canines and humans are also significant.

This work considers the setting that the target species itself has little or no labeled data, and some labeled data from an auxiliary species/modality are used to train a seizure classifier. It addresses the following challenges in cross-species and cross-modality transfer:

1. Differences in electrode configurations, sampling rates, and signal characteristics present significant obstacles to aligning the input space of distinct species and modalities.

2. In addition to the input heterogeneity, distribution discrepancies across species, datasets, and subjects also introduce large heterogeneities in the feature and output spaces.

3. Limited labeled data for the target species, a common yet critical limitation in automatic seizure detection.

The team found that utilizing cross-species auxiliary labeled data is beneficial. Euclidean alignment reduces the input space discrepancy, domain adaptation helps the feature space distribution alignment, and knowledge distillation benefits the output space alignment. The proposed joint alignment mechanism in the input-feature-output space enables epilepsy pattern transfer across biological barriers (Figure 3).

This is a pilot study that provides insights into the challenges and promise of multi-species and multi-modality data integration, offering an effective solution to collecting huge EEG data to train large brain models.

See the article:

Canine EEG helps human: cross-species and cross-modality epileptic seizure detection via multi-space alignment

https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaf086

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Journal

National Science Review

DOI

10.1093/nsr/nwaf086 

Input space disparity across species is highlighted by the discrepancy in electrode configurations between species. Sixteen intracranial electrodes were used for canines’ intracranial EEG data collection in the Kaggle dataset, whereas only six were used for humans’ intracranial EEG data collection in the Freiburg dataset. Canine intracranial EEG signals were captured using intracranial electrodes linked to implanted devices, whereas human scalp EEG signals in the NICU and CHSZ datasets were collected via scalp electrodes, demonstrating the configuration differences. Feature distribution gaps between canines and humans are also distinct.

The framework of cross-species and cross-modality transfer network utilizes intracranial/scalp EEG data from canines and humans (left). ResizeNet, which projects EEG signals of the species with higher dimensionality to a lower dimensionality to match their feature spaces (right).

Credit

©Science China Press

Credit

©Science China Press

Do “optimistic” versus “pessimistic” medical detection dogs perform differently?

Study uncovers links between detection success and dogs’ affective and behavioral tendencies

PLOS

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image: 

Overhead view of the experimental room. Shows the judgement bias test (JBT) arrangement with room measurements, the items utilized in JBT and their location, and the dog’s initial position. Cam=Camera. Bowl locations on JB screen: P = Positive; NP = Near positive; M = Middle; NN=Near negative; N = Negative. 

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Credit: Bistre Dabbah et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

A new, exploratory study has revealed statistical links between the performance of medical detection dogs and their scores on behavioral and affective tests, finding that more “optimistic” dogs tended to perform better overall on detection tasks, but “pessimistic” dogs had higher scent detection specificity. Sharyn Bistre Dabbah of the University of Bristol, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on April 9, 2025.

Animal researchers commonly use a method called judgment bias testing to help assess animals’ emotional states. For example, dogs may first be trained to associate a specific location in a room with treats, and a different location with no treats. When presented with intermediate locations where a treat may or may not be present, the dogs’ responses are assessed as a proxy for their emotional states. Dogs who tend to run quickly to intermediate locations in hopes of a treat may be considered to have a more “optimistic” emotional state.

However, prior research involving judgment bias testing has neglected medical detection dogs—dogs that can use scent to detect disease or assist people with chronic health conditions, such as warning a diabetic patient of low blood sugar. Now, Bistre Dabbah and colleagues have analyzed statistical associations between judgment bias scores, behavioral assessment scores, and scores on medical detection tasks for 27 medical detection dogs and 39 detection dogs in training.

The analysis showed that more “optimistic” dogs, older dogs, and dogs who scored higher on tests assessing confidence, food orientation, and playfulness tended to score higher on detection tasks. However, among the fully trained medical detection dogs, those who were more “pessimistic” achieved a higher degree of specificity in scent detection tasks.

This study does not establish any cause-effect relationships, and more research will be needed to further evaluate the findings. However, the researchers suggest that these relationships might indicate that differences in dogs’ searching styles and performance in detection tasks could be influenced by underlying differences in affective or cognitive processes. They note that, pending further research, judgment bias testing could hold promise as a screening tool for potential detection dogs.

The authors add:

“Our findings suggest that dogs displaying more ‘optimistic’ responses in a judgement bias test tend to demonstrate higher overall ability, as rated by their trainers. Understanding this link could help us to better train, select, and support successful medical detection dogs.”

“Dogs that approached ambiguous cues more quickly—indicative of ‘optimism’—were associated with higher levels of traits such as confidence and playfulness. These insights could have important implications for training and selection methods in medical detection dogs.”

“Working through the judgment bias test was particularly interesting, as it is a relatively simple and inexpensive methodology with the potential to provide valuable insights into dogs’ personalities and decision-making processes. These findings could be relevant not only to the performance of working dogs but also to the welfare of companion dogs.”

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/42cgr1u

Citation: Bistre Dabbah S, Mendl M, Guest C, Rooney NJ (2025) An exploratory study of associations between judgement bias, demographic and behavioural characteristics, and detection task performance in medical detection dogs. PLoS ONE 20(4): e0320158. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320158

Author countries: U.K.

Funding: The current study was supported by a doctoral scholarship awarded to SBD from the Council of Science and Technology. MX (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACyT) (reference number: 472257; https://conahcyt.mx/) In partnership with the University of Bristol, UK (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Caption

Front view of the judgement bias test (JBT) apparatus containing five possible bowl locations. The positive ‘P’ (marked in green) and negative N’ (marked in red) locations on either side of the wooden panel were the conditioned locations. The other three positions in between those locations (near positive, middle and near negative) presented ambiguous test locations.

Judgement bias test (JBT) dog training. Dog being trained to associate the Positive’ P’ location with a food reward (A) and the Negative location ‘N’ with the absence of reward (B). Locations were on opposite sides for half of the dogs.

Credit

Bistre Dabbah et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0320158 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

An exploratory study of associations between judgement bias, demographic and behavioural characteristics, and detection task performance in medical detection dogs

Article Publication Date

9-Apr-2025

COI Statement

I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: CG and NR are employed by Medical Detection Dogs, the charity where the dogs from this study are trained and data collection was conducted. However, they were not involved in data collection or analysis for this study. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.