The Teleonome Project

What sets the repertoire in motion?

Behaviour does not begin without motivation. In mammals, Jaak Panksepp’s work identified seven primary affective systems: SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF and PLAY.These systems are not the repertoire itself.

What is this horse attempting to regulate?

A horse repeatedly lifts a hind leg towards its abdomen and swishes its tail while tied — new to the place, not yet secure in the herd, and held where it cannot return to the others.The movement alone cannot tell us why. But context lets us form and test hypotheses: here, plausibly, an unsuccessful attempt to restore proximity to the herd after the horse has learned the restraint prevents escape.

What is animal welfare?

Give a horse a carrot and it will happily eat it. Give it a carrot every hour, in a dark stable it never leaves, and every carrot may still provide a genuinely positive experience. Yet almost everyone senses that something is still wrong.That small unease is the problem of animal welfare in miniature.Positive experiences matter, but they cannot define welfare by themselves.