Animal Behavior Expert Says Understanding Animals' Emotions Is Key

You can tell when an animal is stressed: The whites of its eyes show, the tail swishes, the head is up and ears pinned back, and it defecates more. It may balk, bolt or lash out.  People who work with animals, whether as veterinarians, trainers, facility or livestock managers, need to understand animals’ emotional response if they want the best outcomes, Temple Grandin told students and faculty at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at a lunchtime lecture Tuesday. She is an internationally known designer of livestock facilities, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and autism activist.

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7 Ways To Improve Animal Welfare

Temple Grandin, an animal scientist at Colorado State University, says that being autistic helps her do better work to improve animal welfare in slaughterhouses. There’s a stereotype that people with autism are cold and unfeeling. However, Grandin is empathetic toward animals.  Grandin shared her thought process over at Grist, “To design a good restrainer system, you have to really care about the animals it will hold. You have to imagine what it would be like if you were the animal entering the restrainer. 

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Temple Grandin Discuss Practical Side of What Animals Want

Temple Grandin, an animal scientist who teaches at Colorado State University, works to improve animal welfare in farming. She is autistic, and, as she told Terry Gross, she thinks that may give her a special ability to do her work:  It was easy for me to figure out how animals think and how animals would react because I think visually. Animals don’t think in language. They think in pictures. It’s very easy for me to imagine what would it be like to go through a system if you really were a cow, not a person in a cow costume but really were a cow, and autistic senses and emotions are more like the senses of an animal.

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