Interspecies Comparisons of Welfare

Comparisons across species are not straightforward because there are significant differences between animals with respect to their cognitive, affective, and sensory capabilities. Such comparisons require input from many fields, including animal welfare science, evolutionary biology, comparative cognition, neuroethology, ecology, economics, philosophy, and others. This breadth of perspective is essential to understand the differences between species, the relevance of those differences for welfare, and how we can both quantify and aggregate welfare to address practical problems.