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karol orzechowski

The Faunalytics team shares your heartfelt desire to help animals by finding the best ways for advocates to save lives and reduce suffering. The following articles are written by karol orzechowski for Faunalytics.org.

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The Trouble with Insect Cyborgs
The use of animals by the military is not new, but it seems to be forever evolving into new areas. This article outlines recent moves by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop insect cyborgs - fusing insect bodies with hardware that facilitates their control by humans for military purposes. The paper acts as an overview of insect cyborg developments, as well as a deconstruction of the ways in which humans justify the use and killing of insects. READ MORE

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“Pets or Meat”? Ethics and Domestic Animals
There is often a deep disconnect and great variation in how we treat farmed, companion, and wild animals. Using a particular scene from Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me as a starting point - a scene where backyard rabbits are sold as "pets or meat" - this article unpacks the ethics around our perceptions of the different categorizations of animals. The author approaches the subject by viewing these categories of animals through the lens of an "ethic of care," and suggests ways of acting ethically towards all wild, companion, and farmed animals. READ MORE

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Overfishing and the Replacement of Demersal Finfish by Shellfish: An Example from the English Channel
When overfishing occurs in various parts of the world, the response from industry is usually always the same: rather than reducing fishing efforts (or abandoning the practice), they simply fish further down the food chain (or "trophic levels") until those species are also depleted, and continue the process downwards. This long-ranging study examining statistics from the past 90 years, finds that fishing in the English Channel has followed this same destructive pattern of fishing down trophic levels, with devastating results. The findings show that serious measures need to be taken to stop fishing in certain areas and governments have to take a more proactive role in marine protection, otherwise overfishing of marine species will have irrecoverable consequences. READ MORE

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Behavioral Differences Among Breeds of Domestic Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris): Current Status of the Science
Though there is a tremendous amount of visible variation among dog breeds, all domestic dogs belong to the species Canis lupus familiaris. This study examines how much breed variation has an effect (or lack thereof) on behavioral traits, recognizing that many particular types of dogs have been bred for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. The results show that the behavioral differences thought to exist among different breeds are more pronounced depending on the research methods used. READ MORE

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Emptying the Oceans: A Summary of Industrial Whaling Catches in the 20th Century
As on land, the "industrialization" of the oceans has a huge impact on the animals that inhabit it. This study looks at how the centuries old practice of whaling has become industrialized since the early 1900's, and how this process has impacted whale populations worldwide. The research uncovers a steady (and sometimes sharp) increase in whale catch numbers since the early 1900s, and also finds that record-keeping on whaling globally has been inconsistent and sporadic. READ MORE

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Package This: Beauty Consumers Favor ‘Cruelty Free’ and ‘Natural’ Product Claims
For consumers of beauty products, labels are an important way of discerning which items to buy, and for addressing a wide variety of consumer concerns. A Neilsen poll shows that purchasing products that are "not tested on animals" is important for a majority of beauty product consumers, and labels are the primary method of finding out this information. However, there is some discrepancy between the number of consumers who consider animal welfare important, and those that are willing to pay extra for cruelty-free products. READ MORE

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Land, Irrigation Water, Greenhouse Gas, and Reactive Nitrogen Burdens of Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Production in the United States
The environmental consequences of our food choices are becoming more apparent as evidence emerges of animal agriculture's impact globally. This study looks specifically at the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the production of dairy, and compares the outcome to other kinds of animal farming. The results show that, although dairy production generates less GHGs than the production of beef, it is comparable to the farming of chickens, pigs, and egg products. READ MORE

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Unmasking the Shelter Dog
The suggestions that black dogs are frequently overlooked for adoption, or that animals given as gifts are more likely to be given up, are just a couple of many theories becoming increasingly entrenched in our language, and these are having a serious effect on the operation of many animal shelters. This article from the Journal for the American Veterinary Medical Association, notes that scientists are working hard to verify whether these ideas have any substance in fact or if they are simply myths. The central theme of the piece is that there are no "shelter dogs" or "shelter cats," but instead each animal in a shelter is an individual being that needs to be considered as a separate case. READ MORE

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UK Funders Demand Strong Statistics for Animal Studies
In animal experimentation, the replacement of animals wherever possible, reduction of the number of animals tested on, and refinement of experiments to use fewer animals is known as the "3 Rs." This guideline is supposed to govern a great deal of animal experimentation around the world, yet many millions of animals are still used in laboratories every year. In the U.K., a research council has presented 2015 guidelines instructing that "funding applicants must now show that their work will provide statistically robust results or risk having their grant application rejected." This may mean that researchers have to use more animals in experiments or they risk having their funding cut. READ MORE
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