Have you voted for the fattest marmot yet? 👀 Our grantees Dan Blumstein and Emily Renkey — of @uclaioes.bsky.social and #OnlyMarms fame — have launched #FatMarmotWeek to support the Marmot Project at @rmblscience.bsky.social. Voting is open this week only! Choose your marmot! 👇️

FAT MARMOT WEEK

About Fat Marmot Week The largest of the true hibernators, marmots bulk up all summer to survive the winter. Fat Marmot Week is an opportunity to get folks excited about yellow-bellied marmots, one of...

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As part of our commitment to fostering inclusion and equity at Wild Animal Initiative, we conduct an annual survey on staff diversity and belonging. Now on our blog, you can read about our 2026 results. 👇️

Results of our 2026 staff diversity survey — Wild Animal Initiative

August 12, 2026 Each year, our internal Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee conducts an anonymous survey of our staff’s diversity and feelings about what it’s like to…

wildanimalinitiative.org

Research efforts to "decode" animal communication systems are booming. But what might listening in on — and even talking to — wild animals mean for their welfare?

AI-assisted animal language translation — Wild Animal Initiative

May 31, 2025 Every animal welfare scientist has probably thought at some point in their career, “My job would be a lot easier if the animals could just tell me how they’re feeling.” The new — and…

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How well represented are veterinarians in wildlife research, and wild animal welfare science in particular? A new study by @meekl.bsky.social explores these questions.

The representation of veterinarians in wild animal welfare science — Wild Animal Initiative

Veterinarians have a lot to offer the field of wild animal welfare science, but research training and opportunities are essential.

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We’re overhauling our grant types! We’ve funded lots of exciting projects over the past five years. Now, we want to see more projects build on each other, and we want to provide a clearer pathway for grantees interested in continued support for their wild animal welfare research programs. 🧵

The special issue is out, including our contribution: "Social information about affective states in a human-altered world." Led by @lucahahn.bsky.social, @jackdawjordan.bsky.social & @margauxvanhussel.bsky.social. tinyurl.com/hyhfvmjn. @wildanimals.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social.

Social information about others' affective states in a human‐altered world

Faced with anthropogenic change, animals now encounter challenges different from their evolutionary past. To cope with such challenges, animals may use social information about others' affective stat...

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Journal of Animal Ecology@animalecology.bsky.social · 3w ago

🚨 new Special Feature! 📝 the collection, edited by David Fisher and Natalie Pilakouta, aimed to explore how organisms plasticly alter their social behaviour in response to environmental variation. 🐒 read the full collection here: buff.ly/iWJVFw5 🎙️ and listen to the podcast here: buff.ly/qGycB98

We're excited to be at #ISAE2026 this week 🇮🇳 If you're here, join @janirecas.bsky.social for a discussion on wild animal welfare methods — Friday at 10:30 am. You can also catch her poster (tomorrow at the 3:15 pm session) and talk (Friday at 2:45 pm). @applied-ethology.bsky.social #ISAEcongress

ISAE coffee hour discussion — Wild Animal Initiative

August 14, 2026 | 10:30 am | Auditorium 2, Gautam Buddha University Convention Center, Greater Noida, India

wildanimalinitiative.org

Invertebrates make up most animal life on Earth, yet almost nothing is known about their welfare in the wild — or how to measure it. Funded by WAI, research by @cds-york.bsky.social will work towards developing a welfare assessment toolkit for wild insects. 🔗 Learn more: buff.ly/r5CuWvW

Veterinarians have a lot to contribute to wild animal welfare science, but they're not currently as well represented in the research as they could be. A new study by @meekl.bsky.social et al. digs into the details.

The representation of veterinarians in wild animal welfare science — Wild Animal Initiative

Veterinarians have a lot to offer the field of wild animal welfare science, but research training and opportunities are essential.

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Validating ways to assess wild animal welfare is one of our priority research areas. Since welfare can't be measured directly, we fund research that validates indicators of welfare that can be measured in free-living wild animals.

How to measure wild animal welfare — Wild Animal Initiative

Wild animal welfare scientists use a variety of metrics and indicators to find out about the subjective experiences of individual wild animals. These are some examples.

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Managing wildlife to maximize individuals' welfare is a novel idea — so ensuring that wild animal welfare interventions are net positive will require careful monitoring. So far, we have identified three ways to approach this.👇️

How can we make sure wild animal welfare interventions have positive outcomes? — Wild Animal Initiative

Intervening in ecosystems can have unintended effects. Ensuring that interventions intended to improve the welfare of wild animals have positive outcomes will require careful monitoring.

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Don't miss our monthly updates! Click to subscribe to our newsletter and hear about the latest developments in wild animal welfare science.

Subscribe to monthly email newsletter — Wild Animal Initiative

Sign up to receive updates about Wild Animal Initiative and the field of wild animal welfare science.

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🐸 Emerging evidence suggests that frog calls could offer rapid insights into welfare. Funded by WAI, research from @erin-wall.bsky.social's lab will help identify acoustic signatures of welfare and develop a rapid, non-intrusive welfare detection tool for thousands of species of vocalizing frogs.

Our latest paper is out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social! It’s an overview of the emerging field of wild animal welfare science. 🔗 buff.ly/hcIUr0g See 🧵 for some of the key points we make about the field, as well as opportunities, challenges, and research priorities.

An excellent summary from Clear Sky Science on a new paper by Thomas Evans & Michael Mendl on the welfare impacts of biological invasions. We were excited to fund this research through our Grants Program. www.clearskyscience.com/en/10.1038/s...

Quantifying and categorising the animal welfare impacts caused by biological invasions · Clear Sky Science

The study introduces AWICIS, a framework that measures how invasive birds and ants cause physical and mental suffering in individual animals, highlighting severe impacts from invasive ants.

clearskyscience.com

Last fall, we received 400 expressions of interest in our call for proposals. Here are the 13 projects we selected to fund👇️ We're excited to share these researchers' progress with you over the coming months and years, and for the work they'll do to help accelerate science that helps wild animals.

Wild Animal Initiative awards 13 grants for wild animal welfare research — Wild Animal Initiative

This year, Wild Animal Initiative awarded $727,658 in grants to support high-priority research in wild animal welfare science.

wildanimalinitiative.org

We're hard at work on a serious research project. CRITTERS: What are they? Why is a mouse a critter but a bear is decidedly not? What are the attributes of a critter (versus a non-critter)? What we've got so far: 1. scuttly 2. smallish 3. ??? Let us know if you have any leads. 🤔

We know a great deal about the biodiversity and socioeconomic impacts of biological invasions, but the animal welfare dimensions have been almost completely neglected. @danielshailer.bsky.social covers new WAI-funded research by Thomas Evans & Michael Mendl for @mongabay.com.

How much suffering do invasive species cause? Researchers are measuring that

Avian vampire flies (Philornis downsi) were not discovered in the Galápagos Islands for almost three decades after they were thought to have arrived from mainland Ecuador in the 1960s. Even then, the…

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🥁 Announcing our latest research grants! This year, we're funding 13 research projects that will advance wild animal welfare science. Visit our blog to learn more.👇️

Wild Animal Initiative awards 13 grants for wild animal welfare research — Wild Animal Initiative

This year, Wild Animal Initiative awarded $727,658 in grants to support high-priority research in wild animal welfare science.

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The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is thrilled to be hosting our annual Wild Animal Welfare Summit! Two and a half days of talks, discussions, and networking among researchers, advocates, and policymakers about how to improve wild animal welfare at scale :)

“‘We mostly think of nature as biodiversity, a concept, but this made it so personal, so emotional and so horrific.’” Fascinating study that asked volunteers to imagine — first-hand — what it might be like to live as a wild animal.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2mo ago

‘Emotional and horrific’: volunteers ‘live’ as Somerset animals to study wildlife risks

At @scifaw.bsky.social ? Don't miss @janirecas.bsky.social's talk at 10:30 this morning — Associations between judgement bias and other indicators of affective state: a way to advance wild animal welfare science? #SciFAW100

#SciFAW100! Be sure to check out our poster on wild animal welfare science as you peruse posters and sip drinks this evening — @meekl.bsky.social and @janirecas.bsky.social will be around to chat. 🍸️ 📈 @scifaw.bsky.social

We're at @scifaw.bsky.social in London this week! Stay tuned for highlights from the conference. And if you're here, come say hi! And don't miss our talk — Weds @ 10:30 🗓️ ⏰️ @janirecas.bsky.social @shannonwrites.bsky.social @meekl.bsky.social #SciFAW100

We're at @scifaw.bsky.social in London this week! Stay tuned for highlights from the conference. And if you're here, come say hi! And don't miss our talk — Weds @ 10:30 🗓️ ⏰️ @janirecas.bsky.social @shannonwrites.bsky.social @meekl.bsky.social #SciFAW100

Looking for a new book? 📚️ Out this month, the Elephant Jungle explores the realities of advocating for wild animals in a place where poverty and human rights abuses are prevalent.

ICYMI: The latest paper by our research team looks at the representation and contribution of veterinarians to wildlife research. The takeaway? Vets have huge potential to contribute to research on wild animal welfare.

Injuries and deformities likely correlate with reductions in welfare in wild fish, but we know surprisingly little about how many fish experience them. New research by @simonliedholm.bsky.social takes a first look at the problem.

New research: Injuries and deformities in wild fish — Wild Animal Initiative

Injuries and deformities likely affect welfare in wild fish, but we know surprisingly little about how prevalent they are. A new paper by Wild Animal Initiative's staff takes a first look.

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Biological invasions can be severely damaging to biodiversity — but how do they affect animal welfare? Thomas Evans on the findings of his WAI-funded research and the novel assessment framework he developed 👇️

Biological invasions can cause severe animal suffering

Biological invasions can severely harm the welfare of animals, causing them to suffer. AWICIS is a new framework that can be used to assess the severity of these impacts.

theconversation.com

Our 2025 annual report is a collection of our favorite stories from last year and the progress they reflect in the field of wild animal welfare science. 👉️ buff.ly/WA8QUPy We're excited to share what comes next!