A bird’s eye view of animals in Psychology

I have always wanted to understand how animals think and feel. I am a comparative psychologist at the University of Bristol, but I have had a discipline-hopping career trajectory – a leopard who has changed her spots several times.

First, I studied Zoology (BSc), then wild animal health at a vet school (MSc) and biological anthropology at Cambridge (MPhil) before returning to a vet school for a PhD in animal cognition and welfare. I worked for zoos and zoological societies between these courses, including eight postdoctoral years at a zoological society before re-entering academia three years ago. 

This all means I have taught quite broadly across topics, student demographics, and higher education levels. Based on my experience teaching psychology and other life science disciplines, I argue it's time to modernise and diversify animal content across the undergraduate psychology curriculum.

The tree of life

A challenge in high-quality psychology education is balancing core content (necessary for degree accreditation standards) with modern, relevant content. To earn a psychology degree accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS), students must learn five core areas of psychology: biological, cognitive, developmental, individual differences, and social. 

Psychology students mainly encounter animal content in biological psychology, but animals have relevance across the entire discipline: they are evolutionary links, experimental models, companions, commodities and co-inhabitants of a rapidly changing planet. Psychology is a uniquely positioned hub science with a responsibility to encompass all (human, animal, artificial) minds. 

The BPS broadly defines psychology as the study of the mind and behaviour and does not claim it is a uniquely human science (although I've met psychologists who feel this way). We must leverage the fact that psychology students have a powerful opportunity to study all minds and challenge what it means to be uniquely human. 

The connection between psychology, zoology and anthropology is fairly intuitive; psychology is the hub science many other disciplines feed into (Boyack et al., 2005; Cacciopo, 2007). I like to describe psychology as the most popular friend within the life sciences; to borrow a phrase from animal social network analysis, it is the 'gambit of the group' (Whitehead & Dufault, 1999).

My first proposal, then, is to keep the connections between psychology and other life science disciplines open, thus maintaining psychology's strong network position and diversity.

A threshold concept

The way we view animals (as food sources, pets, research subjects, etc.) shapes how we treat them and the questions we ask about them. My second proposal is to teach human perceptions of animals as a threshold concept in the psychology curriculum. 

A threshold concept is something the learner builds future knowledge upon, like the first brick in a wall, and it prepares them for conceptually difficult or controversial content (Meyer & Land, 2003). For example, most students I have taught (regardless of their discipline) are surprised that only 200 years ago, animals were frequently harvested for display in zoos because they did not survive very long in enclosures resembling picture frames and being poked by wealthy visitors with sticks. This is substantially different from our treatment of captive wildlife today. 

Knowing that human perceptions of animals have changed across time and still vary cross-culturally provides context for many classic psychology studies. I added a threshold concept lecture covering anthropocentrism versus biocentrism, anthropomorphism, the history and animal welfare science, and significant paradigm shifts like behaviourism and ethology to my psychology teaching, and found it incredibly useful. 

Animal welfare is also a threshold concept in its own right for psychology students; modern animal welfare science is based on the idea of subjective animal feelings (emotions, mood, and broader affective state; Kremer et al., 2020), so students can draw parallels between animal and human mental health. 

Opening a can of worms

My third proposal is to make space for animal ethics in the curriculum. After preparing students with threshold concepts (i.e. how human moral frameworks, laws, and trending knowledge gaps have shaped animal research) we can move on to specific research areas. Ethical cans of worms should be opened in a safe and non-judgmental classroom setting. If we show old images of animals in research, their context needs to be given – many scientific heroes in psychology would be classified as villains today. 

For example, maternal deprivation research on rhesus monkeys (e.g. Harlow & Harlow, 1962) is a challenge for students because it strongly influenced developmental and social psychology, but the emotional needs of the primates studied were overlooked in the subsequent experiments (Gluck, 2017). I now include an icon on lecture slides to flag literature which is 'problematic' for ecological validity, welfare or data deficiency reasons (Volsche et al., 2023).

Scientific progress is never linear. For example, research, public opinion and legislation on animal sentience are in a phase of rapid advancement (Duncan, 2006; Browing & Weit, 2022), and research crossovers between animal cognition and animal welfare are increasingly popular (Clark, 2017; Mendl & Paul, 2020). Although the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the RSPCA) was established in the UK in 1824, animal welfare science as a field spurred by the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare did not appear until around the 1960s and was initially biased towards farmed animals (Broom, 2011). 

There is room to integrate animal welfare in animal psychology, across the board, from laboratory experiments to wild observations. Inspired by Science in the Service of Animal Welfare – the motto of The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) – psychology students should learn what animals have done for us, and increasingly what we can do for animals. 

Old dog, new tricks

A high-quality psychology degree accredited by the BPS must include certain core topics, but there is flexibility in how they are taught and opportunities for universities to play to their own strengths in research. Associative and non-associative animal learning is core content, but the curriculum (evidenced by any core psychology textbook) has focused on man's best friend drooling in response to a bell (Pavlov's dog), and man's other best friend escaping from a box (Thorndike's cats). 

It's peculiar how dog saliva is such a dry subject! When I became a lecturer, I dutifully reeled off facts about conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, but my teaching approaches weren't promoting effective student learning. To practice what I was preaching, I needed to identify the ideal conditions for learning in the literature and apply them to the classroom. 

For example, animals and humans learn well when they are surprised (Foster & Keane, 2019). Students rapidly habituate to boring stimuli; this is why TikTok and YouTube video thumbnails contain images of faux shock and awe and clickbait titles. An undergraduate degree may revisit content covered at school or even across years, so my fourth proposal is to leverage 'spiral learning' (Harden, 1999) and find new narratives to make content more palatable.

Consistent with learning and surprise, students appear to be attracted towards myths and controversies. This should be encouraged because it reflects a desire to question the world. So, I began hunting through the animal literature for more intrigue, mystery and suspense. Animal cognition is often seen as a bright and alluring field, but there are dark historical corners you can explore (assuming you have prepared by teaching threshold concepts first). 

Skinner's Project Pigeon (Skinner, 1960) contains suitably high intrigue; it was a broadly unsuccessful attempt to train pigeons to navigate missiles and one of the earliest studies to demonstrate the importance of learning conditions. Similarly, the IQ Zoo created by two graduates of Skinner (Breland & Breland, 1961) illustrates conditioning in numerous species and is more bizarre (thus more memorable) than one salivating dog. 

Classic content is the first bus stop, but the most important destination for our students is life after graduation. Therefore, psychological literacy or learning for life (Cranney et al., 2022) needs to be generously sprinkled amongst the core content. After two years of trial and error, I discovered that artificial intelligence and study skills were motivating topics because they connect to the real world. 

The humble sea slug (a common and frankly quite boring species in animal learning research) achieves hero status when students discover its simple neural network-inspired machine learning (see box). We critically evaluate which study techniques are effective, based on a corpus of learning evidence from rats, pigeons and humans. 

Students are also interested in learning and dementia – the current generation is notably concerned with human health and wellbeing. Old dogs really can learn new tricks if their learning opportunities are optimal, so there is an important and real-world connection between animal research and the challenge of an increasingly ageing population.

EDI is for animals, too 

My fifth proposal for the animal psychology curriculum is decolonisation, in line with the psychology discipline as a whole. If your undergraduate education was 20 years ago, like mine, I expect Skinner, Pavlov, Thorndike, Lorenz, Harlow, and Darwin were glorified ad nauseam. Anecdotally, lecturers today seem to avoid showing these portraits of old white 'godfathers' because it creates a questionable expectation of reverence and trust (see earlier discussion on ethics and historical context). 

Decolonising the curriculum involves moving away from white Westernised viewpoints and including more global cultures and knowledge systems (Arday et al., 2021). Practically speaking, decolonising the animal psychology curriculum involves showcasing Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) researchers such as C H Turner (Dona & Chittka, 2020) as well as early career research, research from the global South, and research from less influential groups (and thus understudied species). 

However, I do not believe that 'cancel culture' is that useful in the curriculum. We don't need to 'de-crow', 'de-chimpanzee' and 'de-dolphin' the curriculum. Rather than expunge a century of knowledge from the scientific record, we need to responsibly rebalance content. Dogs, cats and sea slugs have their place in the Psychology Hall of Fame, but what about others? 

A lack of camel and spider content in the curriculum sounds like a joke but reflects biases in animal cognition that are caused, to a certain extent, by white Westernised biases. Teaching and learning about animal cognition is exciting because the field advances quickly. There has been a recent explosion of research on underdog (understudied, undervalued) species; think play in bumblebees, predator recognition in spiders, and object permanence in hornbills (Dona et al., 2022; Plate & Rößler, 2024; Yao & Garcia-Pelegrin, 2024).

I argue that considering Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in animal content is important because it reflects how psychology, our society, our planet and our learners are changing. An important example of this is climate change. Thirty years ago, a link between animal cognition and environmental destruction would have sounded far-fetched (although see Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, ahead of its time when published in 1962). 

Today, I am acutely aware of my responsibility to embed sustainability into teaching, so I cover how climate change negatively impacts animal cognition and behaviour. We are experiencing the world's sixth mass extinction (Barnosky et al., 2011) – let's save some column inches for marine turtles eating plastic litter because they mistake it for jellyfish, and birds struggling to solve problems during heat waves (Santos et al., 2021; Blackburn et al., 2022). 

I'm arguing for more taxonomic diversity and inclusion in psychology, but critics may say that psychology students are not biologists – an A-level or equivalent in Biology is not always a prerequisite for psychology at university. I agree, but say again that psychology is a hub science, connected to but still different from allied disciplines. Von Uexküll's soap bubbles (1992) is a useful framework to acknowledge the unique perceptual or literal environments (bubbles) of different species without considerable biological knowledge.

Monkey see, monkey do

My sixth and final proposal for the animal psychology curriculum is to see the wide value of animal projects for undergraduates. The dissertation is a crucial opportunity for students to work alongside experts and apply what they have learned. In my experience, animal projects are hugely beneficial to psychology students regardless of whether they self-identify as animal lovers or grew up taking care of pets. 

It's a cliché but true: being able to think 'outside the box' and compare the human mind to an animal or artificial mind enriches the mind of the researcher. I supervise students who are applying human game psychology to animals. Our main aim is to assess and enhance animal welfare through gameplay, but secondary benefits to humans are emerging. For example, self-report methods like questionnaires exclude non-linguistic people, so developing non-self-report methods in animals may inspire new methods for human research.

A powerful beast

Psychology is a powerful beast – our discipline cuts across the life sciences and encompasses all minds. We need to keep those connections open and cover more context and nuance. Students need time and space to have authentic responses to animal use in research, rather than navigating ethical dilemmas alone or blindly accepting paradigms used decades or a century ago. New narratives will make content more palatable and relevant to our current generation of learners; and we need to shift away from white, westernised researchers, laboratories, methods and subsequently a bias in study species. 

Ultimately, studying animals challenges students to look at things from a different angle, and university is the perfect place for them to do so.

[BOX] Cyber slugs

A major obstacle for artificial 'brains' is the ability to forget irrelevant information and remember important information. Scientists turned to the simple learning abilities of the sea slug (Aplysia californica) for help. 

Aplysia is one of the most common animal models in learning and memory research due to its relatively large body size, simple neurological system and distinct gill withdrawal behaviour in response to environmental stimuli. Fundamental research on sea slugs revealed that habituation and sensitisation (simple types of learning where a behavioural response to a stimulus decreases or increases over time, respectively) are linked to changes in electrical activity at the junctions (synapses) of neighbouring neurons. 

Sea slugs recently gained new hero status when slug-like habituation and sensitisation were emulated in non-living material. In 2021, researchers found the chemical compound nickel oxide (NiO) could 'learn' by becoming more or less resistant to a flow of electrical current. Materials like NiO might one day be used to build AI hardware, so intelligence isn't merely held within computer software. And if AI can reliably respond like an animal, including emotionally, there is a chance it could eventually replace animals in research.

[BOX] Trash Pandas

Over the past decade, there has been an increasingly urgent need for psychologists and conservationists to work together to save endangered species. This might sound like an odd pairing, but human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) means that we are losing species at an unprecedented rate and need to work together creatively. HIREC covers climate change, deforestation, over-hunting and other environmental issues.

The raccoon (Procyon lotor) is not endangered – it is quite abundant and classified as a pest species in many parts of North America. This so-called 'trash panda' is loathed by members of the public (who are victims of its bin-raiding antics) but loved by psychologists. Why? Because the raccoon holds the secret to thriving in a human-dominated world. Research on wild and captive raccoons reveals they have a suite of cognitive and behavioural skills that allow them to live close to humans and take advantage of our infrastructure and food sources. These include a general attraction to novelty, the ability to rapidly reverse previously learned associations, and high social learning tendencies. 

The raccoon does not need our help to survive, but understanding how 'cognitive flexibility' is a superpower can help us conserve other less fortunate species. For example, zoo animals that are planned to be released back to the wild could be given special training to develop their reversal learning skills. And coming up with new cognitive challenges like raccoon-proof bins might help reduce human-wildlife conflict and be applied to more threatened carnivores.

Dr Fay Clark is a Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol. [email protected]

See also our 'Animals' collection.

References

Arday, J., Zoe Belluigi, D., & Thomas, D. (2020). Attempting to break the chain: reimaging inclusive pedagogy and decolonising the curriculum within the academy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53, 298-313. 

Barnosky, A. D., Matzke, N., Tomiya, S., Wogan, G. O., Swartz, B., Quental, T. B., ... & Ferrer, E. A. (2011). Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?. Nature, 471(7336), 51-57. 

Blackburn, G., Broom, E., Ashton, B. J., Thornton, A., & Ridley, A. R. (2022). Heat stress inhibits cognitive performance in wild Western Australian magpies, Cracticus tibicen dorsalis. Animal Behaviour, 188, 1-11.

Boyack, K. W., Klavans, R., & Börner, K. (2005). Mapping the backbone of science. Scientometrics, 64, 351-374.

Breland, K., & Breland, M. (1961). The misbehavior of organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681-684

Broom, D. M. (2011). A history of animal welfare science. Acta Biotheoretica, 59, 121-137. 

Browning, H., & Veit, W. (2022). The sentience shift in animal research. The New Bioethics, 28, 299-314.

Cacioppo, J. (2007). Psychology is a hub science. APS Observer, 20. 

Carson, R. (1962) Silent spring. Houghton Mifflin, New York.

Clark, F. E. (2022). Bridging pure cognitive research and cognitive enrichment. Animal Cognition, 25, 1671-1678.

Cranney, J., Morris, S., Norris, K., & Connolly, C. E. (2022). Charting the psychological literacy landscape: Systematic review highlighting psychology education. Frontiers in Education, 7913814). 

Dona, H. S. G., & Chittka, L. (2020). Charles H. Turner, pioneer in animal cognition. Science, 370, 530-531.

Dona, H. S. G., Solvi, C., Kowalewska, A., Mäkelä, K., MaBouDi, H., & Chittka, L. (2022). Do bumble bees play?. Animal Behaviour, 194, 239-251.

Duncan, I. J. (2006). The changing concept of animal sentience. Applied animal behaviour science, 100, 11-19.

Foster, M. I., & Keane, M. T. (2019). The role of surprise in learning: Different surprising outcomes affect memorability differentially. Topics in Cognitive Science, 11, 75-87.

Gluck, J. P. (2017). Harry F. Harlow and animal research: Reflection on the ethical paradox. In: Pimple, K.D. (ed). Research Ethics (pp. 479-491). Routledge.

Harden, R. M. (1999). What is a spiral curriculum?. Medical teacher, 21, 141-143.

Harlow, H. F., & Harlow, M. K. (1962). Social deprivation in monkeys. Scientific American, 207, 136-150.

Kremer, L., Holkenborg, S. K., Reimert, I., Bolhuis, J. E., & Webb, L. E. (2020). The nuts and bolts of animal emotion. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 113, 273-286.

Mendl, M., & Paul, E. S. (2020). Assessing affective states in animals. In: McMillian, F. D. (ed). Mental health and well-being in animals, 2^nd edition (pp. 328-344). CABI.

Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In: Rust, C. (ed). Improving Student Learning – Ten Years On. (pp. 412-424). Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford.

Skinner, B. F. (1960). Pigeons in a pelican. American Psychologist, 15, 28-37. 

Plate, J., & Rößler, D. C. (2024). Variation in predator recognition across three species of jumping spiders (Salticidae). Animal Behavior and Cognition, 11, 50-60.

Santos, R. G., Machovsky-Capuska, G. E., & Andrades, R. (2021). Plastic ingestion as an evolutionary trap: Toward a holistic understanding. Science, 373, 56-60.

Volsche, S., Root‐Gutteridge, H., Korzeniowska, A. T., & Horowitz, A. (2023). Centring individual animals to improve research and citation practices. Biological Reviews, 98(2), 421-433.

Von Uexküll, J. (1992). A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, 89, 319-391   

Whitehead, H., & Dufault, S. (1999). Techniques for analyzing vertebrate social structure using identified individuals. Advances in the Study of Behaviour, 28, 33-74.

Yao, R., & Garcia-Pelegrin, E. (2024). Oriental pied hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris) solve invisible displacement tasks in a test of Piagetian object permanence. Biology Letters, 20, 20230547.