What is animal happiness?

Abstract

Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research focused on minimizing negatives such as stress, while more recent endeavors strive to promote positives such as happiness. But what is animal happiness? Although often mentioned, the term lacks a clear definition. With recent advances in the study of animal emotion, current interest into positive rather than negative experiences, and the call for captive and domesticated animals to have good lives, the time is ripe to examine the concept of animal happiness. We draw from the human and animal literature to delineate a concept of animal happiness and propose how to assess it. We argue that animal happiness depends on how an individual feels generally—that is, a typical level of affect.

Abstract

The aim of our review is to propose a framework for the concept and assessment of animal happiness. To this end, we first study the literature on human quality of life, in particular, human happiness, and identify concepts that may also apply to animals and compare these with notions of animal welfare. Following this, possible methodologies to assess the proposed concept of animal happiness are examined.